MadCap Software Forums

My CHM file grew from 1.5K to over 5K after upgrading from Flare V11 to Flare 2018. The compiler appears to be inserting a ton of content from a sister CHM that is generated from same Flare project. I had this same problem previously under Flare V11. It was caused by a hyperlink to the wrong topic--...

Not sure why I feel compelled to reply, but here are one person's thoughts: Thoughts on Slack (+1) It is nice to get some exposure to a tool that the cool kids on the coasts apparently are using. I wouldn't have known about it otherwise, because I'm getting old :lol: (-1) A primary member and co-fou...

Anyone use the PDF Forms feature in Acrobat to create forms? I'm thinking of using Flare to write the questionnaire and output it to PDF, then work in Acrobat to finish creating the form. I'm curious if anyone has attempted this route, and if there are tips or tricks for streamlining the process. Th...

Yes, I made a judgement call early on that may have added unnecessary work for me--but the developers appreciated it. :) I couldn't create Aliases with the exact same name as the screens because many screens have identical names but reside on different nodes on the tree hierarchy, and thus require u...

We use HelpID values. The alias file doesn't include a listing of the screen names found in the C# .NET application. The topic names and aliases in the alias file resemble the screen names, but they aren't exact enough to be a reliable guide for the developers, especially given that many of the scre...

Thanks! It's neat to see how others use the Plugin capabilities in Flare.

FWIW: I'm trying to build a plugin that reads the selected text, generates a string that includes the selected text, then inserts a bookmark using that string as the bookmark name.

If you're referring to the challenge of communicating to developers which screen gets which ID, sorry to say that I couldn't find an easy way to manage it. Just grunt work. But I got it done for 900+ screens. My approach was to manually build a detailed spreadsheet that listed every screen name and ...

Has anyone written a Flare API plugin using C#? If so, are you willing to share the code? I'd like to learn more about how to write plugins. Partly because I'd like to automate some tasks in my 3,000+ page reference guide, but mostly because I'd like to practice coding in C#. FYI--Although I've been...

Are you using a source control system such as TFS? There may be artifacts (old forgotten files) on the server that need to be deleted manually. If so, the Flare project cannot see the errant files, so you will have to delete them directly off the network drive or source control system and not by usi...

I got this error with Flare V10.2.2 and Ghostscript 9.0. I upgraded to Ghostscript 9.15 and it fixed the problem. Whew!

I think I figured out a solution, although it isn't the most elegant. I created an additional style for when the first character is a number (instead of a letter). I do not use a pseudo-class with this style. I also create a character style for that number, in which I apply bold and the same "l...

I have a list of items and I want to make the first letter bold. I used the "first-letter" pseudo class as documented in Flare Help. It works great when the first character in the paragraph is literally a letter but it chokes when the first character is a number. Ha!! For example, in the s...

I haven't tried to validate my EPUB yet, but it has some minor formatting issues that don't inspire confidence (such as the compiler treating <ul> as <ol> in certain circumstances, random hyperlinks don't work, etc.). Any good workarounds? I see that Smashwords accepts Word files and Amazon's Kindle...

I discovered the following bug in V10: The CHM compiler in V10 adds an extra space under the paragraph if the tag is like this: <p class="Proc" MadCap:conditions="Default.WebOnly"><b>See also</b> </p> If I remove the "<b></b>" formatting tags, it compiles the same as in...

Anyone else having issues with Flare 10 compiling CHMs? 1. It seems to be adding extra space after certain paragraphs. I haven't determined the common traits, but it may have something to do with using formatting tags like <b> within <p></p> tags. Notice the extra margin added under "Tasks"...

Is there an easy way to count the number of times a particular style is used in a project (or target)? For example, I created the styles "p.FieldName" and "p.FieldDefinition" that I use for documenting field definitions in my project. The project has thousands of field definition...

Thanks! That appears to have fixed the problem!

Incidentally, I now get a long string of errors that begin with "Generating alias file: Missing topic". Looks like I may have gotten a little sloppy with keeping the alias file current when deleting and rearranging topics.

I'm having this same problem. Did you find a solution? There seems to be some sort of caching going on, in which older versions of topics (that should have been overwritten with newer versions) are not purged completely from memory. These phantom topics somehow get included in the CHM and are visibl...

Here is an example of the file tags that I use. I then generate reports on those File Tags, which identify all the topics that have been tagged. Very handy!

Thanks, Nita! I just watched your Webinar. I was especially impressed with your marketing efforts prior to launching the group.

Just as a follow-up on my Kansas City efforts, I found one additional person interested. So we have an unofficial user group of 2 members!

As I recall, disaster recovery plans contain a large number of short, interconnected tables of information. So we are in a grey area of whether this type of information is best stored in a database, spreadsheet, or content management system like Flare. Right? I have a similar dilemma with whether to...

I spoke too soon. There is one problem with the process above: it doesn't handle LaTeX macros. This is a deal-breaker, unless I'm doing something wrong. For example, here is an equation in LaTeX: \begin{equation} (1-\qw) = \prod_{M=1}^{12} \left(1-\kwth{M} \cdot \qwm \right) \label{eq:qwprod} \end{e...

I think that in order to do the import from LaTeX to Design Science, you need the full blown version of MathType. I don't think you can do it with just the built-in version that MadCap is using. Here is an example of how I took a LaTeX formula from a webpage, pasted it into MathType, then did a Cop...

QUESTION #1: Has anyone converted a manual from LaTeX to Flare? BACKGROUND: I've inherited a 250-page manual written in LaTeX. It has 100+ equations in 60 separate TEX files and was written by a LaTeX guru who used all the bells and whistles of LaTeX to their fullest. I am not a LaTeX user, but I un...

I'd like to start a local user group in my area (Kansas City), but I'm having a hard time identifying whether anyone else uses Flare. As a result, I have the following questions: - Are there any good resources for finding other local users of Flare? Either in my city or in general? - Should MapCap a...