MadCap Software Forums

I found that I had to manually add the following to the table code in the text version of the topic.

margin-left: 0;margin-right: auto;

Otherwise, I see exactly what you are seeing in some tables. Setting the table margin properties in the table style sheet doesn't seem to work although it should ...

Hi Alison,

Have you ever built this Word output successfully? If so, what has changed?

If not, here are a few things you could try.

Firstly the old favourite of closing Flare, deleting /Analyzer, /Output, (and /Filesync, /SourceControl if you have them), then reopening Flare and trying again ...

It is always worth trying closing Flare, deleting everything below /Analyzer and /Output, and also, if you have them, below /FileSync and /SourceControl, then reopening Flare and your project, and trying again.

That gets rid of all sorts of problem. If not, can you tell us what you were doing when ...

I'd guess that something somewhere in your table (the main one, or the table in the second column) has also set widths on one or more cells/columns. That's usually what causes odd layout issues for me. So have a look at table spans at the top of your topic, or the XML code for your table and see if ...

MadCap did eventually acknowledge the fact that text in drop-downs paginate poorly as a bug. But I've just checked my records and it turns out that they never gave me a bug number, although I do have bug numbers for all the other issues I raised against drop-downs in PDFs. :-(

Initially they told ...

This is all driven by your targets . You will have a target for each output, for example a target for your User Guide for OEM A and a target for your User Guide for OEM B.

You can then define conditions like OEM-A-Only and OEM-B-Only, and apply them as required to your various bits of content.

You ...

I always use variables for "small differences between the names of things". I single source three different products, so I use a variable for each of

the product short name (the name with all the acronyms)
the product full name (the name fully spelled out)
the install folder name (includes the ...

If by different software builds you mean different software versions (rather than different software products), then I would strongly encourage you to let this aspect be handled by different branches in source control. Your developers will already have this problem, and I am almost certain they ...

I don't do mobile help, just WebHelp and HTML. I've got four nested levels in some places with no problems. So in principle, nested drop-downs work OK.

Weird. More things you could try . . .

Cut down the problem output so it is, say only one topic, but leave everything else the same. If that builds OK, then add a few more topics. Keep doing this until the problem appears. Then you know the problem is triggered (but not necessarily caused by) by ...

The background-position attribute is buggy. :-( The only ones I could get to work are the % ones. So background-position: 50% should work, but then it will be relative to the centre of the paragraph, not the centre of the first line, which I assume is what you want.

What I've done is used ...

Another voice to those who think the Flare Word outputs are so spectacularly bad that they must be a joke. Like Todd, I try occasionally when I really can't find anything better to do. And like Todd, I dissuade folks from asking for them.

The only thing I can think of doing is creating special ...

Yes it does get overwritten when you build, but it doesn't change, I don't think. It is just copied from wherever MadCap hides the master copy. So once you have the version you want to use, with your changes, just add a post-build step to overwrite Flare's version with your modified version.

It ...

Oh Shawn - I see what you mean now. Global Project Linking is really Global Project Copying, isn't it? In an ideal world, I'd prefer not to have duplicates even if there is a clear re-import path, and one is nominated the master. But I've got a workflow that works, at last, so I guess I'll live with ...

Msquared - I would guess that your scenario might be a lot easier using togglers, rather than using dropdowns with elaborate workarounds

Thanks. Will try those when I get a minute. I've not really got into togglers - for some reason I decided they weren't what I needed.

I'm in a bit of a lull ...

I use snippets all the time, including for various "legalese" things like copyrights.

My content references the snippet, and if I change the snippet source the text in the content changes. Some of my snippets (like the "legalese" ones, the company address and other boiler-plate stuff) are in my ...

Yes you can assign an H2 style. I do all my styles by editing the CSS file directly, so I just defined
MadCap|dropDownHead.h2
MadCap|dropDownHead.h3 etc
and copied the h2, h3 style definitions for the PDF.

Big, big, big BUT . . . .

In theory this should work beautifully, and make single sourcing ...

Oh Tom! Groan.

You're exactly where I was a couple of years ago. Don't worry about being a forum Pest. There are lots of lovely and very knowledgeable people here who are very willing to help.

It sounds like you're reasonably confident working in the XML. That's good as you will need to dig in it a bit to tidy up ...

Hi Alforino and welcome,

To take your points in order.

Tables - not sure why your content was imported into tables, but it's a one click operation in Flare to convert each table to text once you've selected it. Whether that leaves you with anything else to tidy up will be another matter. And of ...

Although, just thinking this through a bit further, how would getting an error page instead of the default page help your readers?

Instead of going to a page that is at least in the right help system, they'll get an error, which won't help them find the help they are looking for.

It will certainly ...

It is a nice idea, but so far as I know, you can't specify a specific error page, unless you make the default page the error page. That may mean you get the error when you don't want it.

But do you not get a build error saying that the topic is referenced in the alias file but is missing?

Do any of the xrefs of that type in the Word output work correctly? Can you get the same xref style to work in a very simple topic that perhaps references another section in the same topic?

I wonder if that xref format has never worked for Word output? Every time I think I've got all my day jobs ...

If Tom's suggestion doesn't solve it (which would be my first suggestion too), then happens when you do try to open the project? DO you actually get an error, or just nothing?

If you're not generating PDFs from the same content, you should be good to go, so long as you remember the need for referenced bookmarks to be inside the dropdown in order for them to open when they are the target of hyperlinks.

If you do need to generate PDFs from the same content, or think you ...