MadCap Software Forums

I see that a lot of online help pages include a link to the "Parent topic," either in the header or footer. How do I do that if I use Flare to generate HTML5 Help? I know how to make breadcrumbs but I'm not sure if this is a variant of breadcrumbs. Thanks!

I called tech support and found the answer to this question. The following steps will let you display different levels of headings in the navigation pane (Contents pane) of an online output (e.g., HTML5 help):

1. Use the Target editor to open the desired target.
2. Select the topics that you want ...

How do you specify the heading levels in the TOC that shows up in the navigation pane of the HTML5 help?

In know that in print output, you specify the mc-heading-level-property for the heading for it to show up in the print Table of Contents. But if I want h1, h2, and h3 to be in the TOC of HTML5 ...

I can answer my own question. I realized that there's a paragraph within the table that uses the "pre" style. As a result, the column containing this paragraph can't be resized. It's set to a width that's required to accommodate this paragraph.

I can resize a column by dragging the arrow within a table cell or in the span bar. However, the result is not what I intend. E.g., If I try to resize a column to a width of 550 pixels, after dragging the arrow, the width is changed, but not to as great an extent. It would be changed by just a ...

I'm not sure I understand the reply. I have no problem including variables in the headers. But I want to know how not to print a first-level head in the header of a page if the page already contains the first level head.

I know how to add a heading variable in the header. For example, on each odd-numbered page, I'd like to include the first-level heading that is in effect for that page so the reader knows what the section that page is related to. However, if the first-level head happens to be ON the page, it's ...

Is there a way to specify that a particular paragraph style be the default style used in the body of a table? Currently I have to use "Cell Content Style" to apply the paragraph style but would like the cell to default to the p style.

What are the pros and cons of using the ol style as opposed to defining your own auto-numbered lists? I can think of two advantages of defining a style:
(1) you can format the number (e.g., using bold)
(2) you can cross-reference the number (e.g., In the sentence "Repeat step 2 through step 5", the ...

Thanks. I got it now. If you have a structure that matches a complex selector, the appearance defined for that complex selector will take effect for that structure. You don't need to "apply" it as you would a style.

I've read about complex selectors and about how to define them. But I can't figure out how to apply them. For example, if I want to apply the "ol ol" complex selector that's pre-defined in Flare, what do I do? I can't get the complex selector to appear in the list of styles that I can choose from ...

It seemed that IE doesn't respond to my changes in the window size specified in the Size window of the Skin Editor. The "Preview Window Size" is a convenient way to set the window size and placement, but the resulting window the user sees is different. It's annoying to have the IE window so tall ...

I don't understand how the advanced search works. Often it would say that my terms are too general for results to be displayed. For example, if I want to find topics about window size used for online help, should I put "window size" in quotes? The instructions don't mention quotes but the plus sign ...

Yes, I see that Manage Project part now. Thanks.

I'm using Flare 8.0. In the File menu, there's a section called Recent Projects. Some of the projects in this section are dimmed, meaning they are no longer accessible (because they have been renamed, removed, etc.). I don't know how to remove these from the list so that they no longer show up on ...

I know folders are for organizing similar topics so that it's easy for the writer to spot missing information. But I don't know if there are implications in terms of how easy to generate the TOC, to import styles, to build multiple outputs, etc.

For example, I can have folders like this:
Main ...

I'm new to Madcap and internationalization. Could someone tell me what's the difference is between (1) using Lingo together with a translation vendor and (2) sending files generated by Madcap Flare to a translation vendor?

Thanks.

When you're creating a new project, if you know that a PDF version will need to be generated, but you're not sure what other formats (e.g., online help) are required, do you start off pretending that the project is just for print, and worry about conditionalizing the text later? I'm just wondering ...

Thanks for the suggestions. They are helpful! (If there are other ways, please post them as well.)

What are the advantages of this approach, which is:
1. Use Acrobat to save the PDF into Word.
2. Import the Word document into Flare.

vs this approach:
1. Open the PDF file.
2. Copy and paste the content into Flare.

You can preserve the appearance of the document in Flare with the first approach ...

Thanks for the response. Yes, I think I can do a find and replace globally. But as kwag_myers mentioned, the string being replaced might not be unique. If a third level list item is also using the circle as the bullet marker, I don't want to replace that. I was hoping that there's a way to indicate ...

Sometimes you can't anticipate what styles you want to use for various paragraphs. What is the easiest way to change paragraph-tag association? Here's an example:

When I start writing a document from scratch, I don't want to think about style. Let's say I have to create a nested list, I use the ...