MadCap Software Forums

I started this thread (way longer ago than I care to remember) fully expecting to told that I was too dumb/tired that evening to find the correct options, rather than - as far as I can tell -start the first and only really acrimonious discussion MadCap and its user-base have had. Here's hoping it's ...

Er:

(1) Mimic (and Captivate, and Camtasia, and...)-style content depend, to a large degree, on the documented system being finished, documented, bug-free and so on. Which usually means there isn't much time to do it. And if you need this stuff in several languages, the time-line gets even more ...

Thanks Richard. I hesitate to ask when that might be because I know you can't answer :shock: . But, 1.2 came along pretty quickly, as might 1.3 (if considered needful). But if you're thinking 2.0 here, I guess that could be next year or even later. So, would you reckon point release, or next full ...

Let's imagine you don't have tmx (aka 'unclean' files) from a previous translation because, for example, it was done by a bi-lingual colleague working out of an office in the target country.

What you do have, though, is a set of matched projects, or a set of bi-lingual projects (where the source ...

That e-Book you mentioned. I'd spend my money on it, never mind the company's.

All you say is true, and is sound advice, but isn't pertinent to the issues that I want to address right now.

The ability of a vendor to use Lingo isn't a key criteria as such, although the ability to localize help projects developed in Flare is - whatever tools are used. However, the ability of ...

THX

Granted - although it's a nice distinction. And in principle, I don't need Lingo. However, as I understand it, I do need to supply the (zipped) Flare / Blaze / whatever project to the vendor, yes?

Anyhow, where can I find vendors who are comfortable with this, such as the beta test customers you ...

Can I now assume that many localization vendors can handle Flare projects? If not, who?

In general, I find Word input more time consuming to sort out than Word output, and the .pdf (from Word/Flare) is one of our deliverables anyway. Enabling that for review in Reader, and then consolodating the comments for a last polish of both the help and .pdf is just another non-ideal task.

I'd ...

I invested some effort into round-tripping Word and hit the self-same buffers. Another killer is the way our localization works, which requires the preservation of htm filenames and links in en-US, which a direct import of a translated .doc can't do.

Re-naming the files in, and re-linking, a small ...

What's wrong with taking the Viewer to 3.something, other than resourcing? Why wait for Flare 4, which must come some months after the recent 3.1 release?

To be honest, I was rather hoping madCap would be doing something more radical by then!

Somehow, MadCap got sold on the idea that the viewer could be used as a marketing, or brand-awareness tool, an idea that is both out-and-out wrong (users aren't authors) and destructive (see previous posts in this thread).

You, and I, can probably take one look at any document or help system and ...

I don't feel that you should expect any progress from MadCap on this one. There's (1) A truely tragic blindspot within the company, and (2) A desire to do other stuff instead.

What other stuff? Well, wouldn't you try to build a target that uses Silverlight before Adobe does the same thing using ...

and

'they'? Try 'we'.

Which is why I asked about Word 2007. Didn't MS hide some XML in there somewhere? Or is it, in practice, just a ribbon on the same old, same old? :shock:

Seriously - Good idea. Surprized no-one's asked already. This 'feature' is just a huge waste of time, especially as Flare's interface doesn't ...

Not quite. li. styles are not available in the import mapping dialog, only a p. style of the same name.

So, one can choose to import such that all li. elments need reformatting (first case), or lose list enumeration (the second, even less useful, case).

This dim-wittedness for Word imports seems ...

This is an issue I hit today as well, with Flare 3.0.3 & Word 2003. Do you happen to know if Word 2007 helps?

I could not agree with Ramon more.

Hi Richard,

It's the splash screen on startup that killed this during evaluation - and I mean stone dead, at first sight, \"Completely unacceptable\" the most printable comment. The Help About animation would have impressed even less, had any evaluator seen it. As for the grayed out 'no topic' logo ...

Well, it says V2.5 at the top and asked what language I want (until I deselected that option)!

OK guys, I solved my download problem, and have now installed the new viewer.

Looks to me as if the splash logo is still there, as large as if ever was, and have you tried selecting Help>About? There's no way our team will accept this....

Now off to weep for the lost opportunity, sulk, or ...

I've had problems with this download (NOT, I think, down to MadCap in any way), so haven't been able to check this out yet.

If all that's happened is a key language viewer with no splash logo I shall be delighted, since it means I can take this back for our next point release.

Of course other ...

Ramon's impressions are not mine. Based on the presentations I've seen, upcoming Team System and Expression tools seem to be predicated on .NET3.

It's clear that help has to move on from .chm and may become embedded. MadCap's DotNet could be useful, if only the stepping-stone of an acceptable-to ...

Seems to me that MadCap have expended a great deal of effort on WebHelp, but that the chm and print targets aren't there. Indeed, Flare has the rather old-Word-like qualites of having features that work fine individually (but fail in concert in messy ways), and having some rather basic stuff ...