MadCap Software Forums

I may need to produce a help system (web-based) for a product whose users have multiple roles. Product management would like the help filtered by role so that the user sees on the content appropriate to his or her role. They do not want a menu for the user to select the role as one of the security r...

Use WebWorks ePublisher to generate an EPUB version of the book, then use Calibre (open source tool) to convert it to Kindle.

Regards
Keith

We are currently looking at oxyGen which is the only editor that I know of that allows you to directly generate Eclipse help plugins. You still have to do some tweaking with the output but not as much as in Flare. However, oxyGen is a feature bloated, usability nightmare. And if you are a tech writ...

If you are happy writing in FrameMaker and just want to convert your content to HTML Help, I would go with WebWorks ePublisher. Once you set up your templates, it's a matter of minutes to produce your output. You will face significant effort to convert FrameMaker to Flare.

I started using Flare almost a year ago, and have mostly abandoned it and gone back to WebWorks. The main reason was that WebWorks Help would not work on our production web servers due to the way they are configured - something we didn't find out until we completed our first project in Flare. Based ...

This looks similar to a problem we experienced, which was traced to the fact we are using WebLogic. Our server is not configured for the proper mime type for XML and WebHelp projects display blank frames in IE7. They work fine in Chrome and Firefox. See this thread: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/...

Just got my upgrade email a few minutes ago.

Keith

Paul Griffiths wrote:Hi Graham, I think the whole Flare community would benefit from your notes, if you have time to post them!

I'll second that. We are looking at Subversion and this would be helpful.

Keith

:P So now I'll have to figure out how I can work with a copy of the project on my local drive without messing up the linking to the common project, which is on the network. You could try setting up source control (like SVN) and checking out the files local. I'm trying to get that set up - have been...

The only time I've seen something that slow on a reasonably fast machine is if I'm accessing the project on a network with very high latency. For example, our projects on our local network are great, but when I connect to our satellite office a few thousand miles away, I want to tear my hair out. T...

Intellisense is off and GDI rendering is not enabled.

Keith

I'm finding that typing text in the XML editor (the psuedo-wysiwig mode, not the text editor) is ...s...l...o...w. I'm not that great a typist and I can easily type 5 or 6 characters ahead of what appears on screen. By contrast, the edit window I'm typing this in now has no trouble keeping up with m...

Customizable metadata at the topic level - for example, SME, Reviewer, Status. Alternatively, customizable markers, a la Frame.

Keith

I suspect the table within the table, but that's just a guess.

I have the opposite problem - I have a row that breaks in the middle of the row and I am trying to find a way of keeping it together so the page break is before the row.

Regards
Keith

I've completed my first Flare project, which involved importing a user guide from FrameMaker and setting up the WebHelp and PDF targets. My plan is to use this project as the basis for setting up a global project, so I can reuse the style sheets, skin, page layouts, and so on in other projects. The ...

Is this available in a download edition? Shipping to Canada, along with possible customs/brokerage charges could easily double the cost of the book.

Regards
Keith

I was getting this error in 5.0.0, because I had a non-breaking space in my FrameMaker cross-reference formats. I thought that this had been fixed in 5.0.1.

Keith

To clarify, here's a screen capture from the PDF. chapter_number.jpg My chapter number is contained in a paragraph class p.ChapterNumber, which has the auto-number format set to C:Chapter {chapnum}. This seems to work OK. My h1.Heading 1 class does not have any autonumbering. I thought I could modif...

I am working on getting my PDF output setup to match the current FrameMaker-generated output. I don't use heading numbering in the PDFs, but I do use a chapter number, set up as a numbered paragraph called ChapterNumber. I have my TOC set up to display it in front of the TOC1 heading, like so. 1. Th...

Frame is more flexible when it comes to running headers and footers. If there's a way to put a non-heading style paragraph in a header, I haven't found it. Frame's page layout tools are easier to use too - the page designer in Flare needs a major rework. If I was just doing PDFs, I'd stick with Fram...

I agree that change bars are important for reviewers. I will have to submit a feature enhancement request.

Would it be possible to do this in CSS by modifying the border settings (add an outside paragraph border) instead of an image?

I don't think you can use two body frames if you're doing Word output. At least you couldn't in v4 -- haven't tried it in v5. I believe it should work for PDF output, but it causes a few other problems if you do it (e.g., two bookmarks appear in the bookmark pane of the PDF output). I did get it wo...

That's a known bug -- make sure you submit a bug report, too, at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx . I believe the workarounds are to use a frame in the title page of that layout that has "Index" written in it, or to have an "intro" topic whose body is just a headin...

You won't like my answer: I want this, too, but I too can't get it to work. I don't recall now what I tried, but I eventually gave up. And I agree with you that the index formatting in general leaves something to be desired. Actually, it has to be possible, because if you look at the MadCap PDFs th...

I am trying to get my index format set up. Allowing for the way that Flare formats indexes (which I don't like, but can live with for now), I have it pretty much the way I want, except for one thing. I have set my body frame to two columns. My index title (the word Index formatted as h1.IndexTitle a...