MadCap Software Forums

There are two separate things here, I think.

1. By default, Snippets are not associated with a stylesheet (they just pick up the stylesheet from the topic they are inserted to at runtime, the same as the topic's paragraphs do). You can associate a stylesheet if you want using the Add Stylesheet ...

Not sure (those labels may be predefined in the app) but even if you did it wouldn't affect your built output. When you deliver your Help, the colour depends on what is written in the CSS file, not what is in the colour palette. Changing the palette doesn't change topics or stylesheets that have had ...

Not automatically, because the colour picker isn't part of the CSS - it's there to help you when you are building a help system, but it isn't linked to the stylesheet.

However, what you could do is open the stylesheet in the text editor then use the find and replace tools to replace #32cd32 with ...

I would be fully supportive of enhancing XREF behaviour to allow you to edit the link text, to include variables, and to do anything else you could do with HREFs. I would not be supportive of anything that would change how HREFs work.

how do I flatten the folder structure?

You restructure your content so that there are fewer levels of folders. For example, if previously you had

Application Module B\Dialog Box X\Page 1\Procedure iii

you would look into reducing the number of levels to something like

ModB\Box_X\Prcdrs

So now ...

I don't know if Flare supports SharePoint as a hosting platform. WebHelp is normally designed to be a stand alone frame set, so how that would interact with SharePoint isn't clear. You may want to contact Madcap support directly to see if it's supported and what you might have to do to get it to ...

I would think so. Sounds like a good bug report.

Couple of questions:

1) Where are you counting the path length from? You have to count all the way from the drive letter (so for example if the files are in the My Documents folder you don't start after My Documents, you have to go all the way back to C:\ -- which may be quite a lot of characters ...

Or more simply... why not check all the Flare files out locally, do the build, then check everything back in? (The same way you would with a traditional source control system.)

Bob,

While I understand, it's not as you describe at all.

MOTW disabled:
No warnings locally.
Warnings from network server (\\path)

MOTW enabled:
No warnings locally.
No warnings from network server.

I'm wondering if anyone else can confirm this behavior, since it seems to work against what we ...

Unfortunately, this is the reason why a separate Index keyword file would be useful. We've had to edit index keywords several times, because they were capitalized or had different sub-keywords, so searching and replacing was not viable. I really wish Flare had a TOC-style index keyword file.

The ...

Why would they do that?? Who wants to save "ignored" words on a per-topic basis ?? Why would they use an industry standard term in such a non-standard way? At the very least, they should add a Skip All button so that you can "ignore" a word for every topic during the check.

Because Flare doesn't ...

When it finishes, I have to close each file individually and try to determine which ones actually had changes. I found this out when I ran spell check on my largest folder (over 100 topics). I finally just gave up and closed all files, losing whatever spell check changes I had made.

By all means ...

FWIW I've been using SP3 for a while and have not had a problem with it.

However, having just looked at it now, what I'm seeing is that before you can add a dropdown hotspot you have to a) add a dropdown text and b) select text in the dropdown head. From your screen shot I don't see a pre-existing ...

First thing I would do is try it in a basic paragraph, possibly in a different topic. Dropdowns have rules around where they can be placed, so it's possible that you're attempting to add it in a place that doesn't qualify. (I can't tell from the screen shot where your cursor is, so I can't give you ...

IMHO, if I am writing for software or any product where the documentation is "built in" and can't be remotely updated, then I am working on a broken product and/or a broken model of information dissemination. It's 2009! :D

Our product doesn't do automatic updates, largely because it's deployed on ...

RamonS wrote:There is also tech writer arrogance...like those who rather use Frame and WebWorks than Flare.

... or AuthorIT....

(Boy, we're opening ourselves up to some "look who's talking" criticisms here, ain't we? )

I've never seen that method of connecting to a CHM before, so I'm not sure what to suggest. I'd contact Madcap directly and see if they have any suggestions.

Hm, I haven't heard of page titles being a supported format for CSH with CHM files. As far as I know the alias and header file set was specified by Microsoft in the Compiled HTML Help spec.

I do know that you can use file names directly in browser-based help, but as far as using it in a CHM goes I ...

In other words, if a piece of documentation is improved by images, that's an end-of-line statement. No argument about time, tool limitations, or a difficult workflow with developers can change the statement, "This document would be easier to understand and more user-friendly with images." The two ...

Assuming the header file you are talking about is a context sensitive linking header, you will also have to map the header entries to an Alias file. You can do this in Flare's Alias editor (use the pulldown at the top to choose which header file to use so that it doesn't use a default one).

Once ...

Flare picks up the sort order from Windows Explorer. So if you or another user sorted that folder in reverse, Flare will just run with that.

I have one about how the help system is organized and where to look for certain types of topics. But I don't see much point in adding content about "how to open this help system" (if you've got it open, you don't need to be told how to open it, and if you can't find how to open it putting the ...

Online help (for example, a CHM) is invoked from the application, and I think that, for the most part, screen shots are a bad idea there. Not just extra work; but rather extra work which actually makes the help less helpful.

One good way around this is to hide the image in a toggler or dropdown ...

Sure it will work in print: what you do is put the image in a paragraph that is set to be hidden or shown by a toggler, then use a condition on the toggler hotspot to make it appear in Online outputs only. When you do this, the image automatically appears in print outputs and the toggler text is ...