MadCap Software Forums

On the first issue... I am SURE there is a logical split in the form or functionality of Content Explorer vs. Project Organizer in the Flare developer's mind... I just disagree with it. If it were really Content vs. Project, then (in my mind) "Content" would be Topics and Images, and Project would ...

I have a similar problem.

The chapter titles in my PDF output appear to be reverting to the text of the first H1 of each topic.

I want the names I've entered in the TOC in Flare. But I can't figure out how to make them appear in the PDF.
(I've had to resort to using conditionals for Print/Screen ...

Thanks for your thoughts. Naming conventions had vaguely occurred to me as a solution... maybe I can figure out a good system.

Yes, I know, if I were a good boy I'd submit a feature request. It's just that once again (as with publishing locations for PDFs) the way the product performs these tasks ...

I've never tried it myself, but ... First, go to the Skin Editor then go to the Styles tab, left-click TocEntry, then click "Add Class". Give the new class a name, then specify new images for the topic and book icons. Second, for each topic (or book) you want to be different than the default, right ...

Hi,
I'm going to have over a hundred targets and TOCs when our transition project is complete... one for every discrete PDF manual that we distribute.

That's going to make the "Targets" folder and the "TOCs" folder in the Project very difficult to use, since the Project Organizer doesn't have a new ...

If I set top and/or bottom padding for paragraphs (padding-bottom, padding-top), then my paragraphs are spaced nicely. They are too close together by default, IMHO.

My ordered lists sometimes contain paragraphs, however. (Two or three <p> inside an <li>), and the additional padding means that the ...

Nope, it is not highlighting the style of the cursor location.

It is highlighting the last style I applied. With an orange box. The style stays highlighted as I click in all kinds of places on my topic.

There may NOT be a keyboard shortcut for applying it, of course. It just seems like there must ...

Three questions:

1. As I am pasting and modifying TONS of old HTML articles, is there a keyboard shortcut for, "Apply the last style I just applied?"

I've noticed that when the Styles panel is open, the last style I applied is bordered in orange, as if Flare is anticipating that I might want to ...

Hey Phil,
I'm 90% certain I encountered this bug while using 4.1.

Actually, I'm glad to find out that this is a known issue. I thought I must have done something wonky.

Fortunately, links within topics seem to update fine when renaming folders and such. It was the Table of Contents that got ...

Hi Heather,
There is no "user based" model for hiding items in a help file. As far as I know, CHM/WebHelp do NOT support a login system that will allow only certain users to see certain information.

Instead, as the previous poster stated, you will need to mark topics (or paragraphs within topics ...

Thanks for confirming.

This is... utterly bizarre... the inability to pick a publishing location/file name... and a bunch of stuff that makes it look like you CAN when really you can't? It's just... bizarre.

It looks like they spent a great deal of time designing their publishing system. The idea ...

I also just realized that Flare Projects in their raw state are essentially HTML files, so even if Flare's own PDF output weren't good enough, I could still go for an XML/XHTML-to-PDF renderer such as Prince XML or RenderX.

Yes.

Though it may mean a good deal of effort in the initial setup.

(I ...

When I add a Publishing destination and assign that to my target, it actually copies a "Resources" folder and a whole bunch of other cruft to that location.

To sum up:

I want to output one thing:
a PDF file,
to a specific network folder.

Is there really no way to do this?

Seriously, "Save As ...

I'm not sure what you mean.

Do you mean:

1. Set the Output File and Output Folder to some place locally. Nothing you can do about the nutty nested folders.

2. Then open up a window, navigate to the folder, and drag the output file to the appropriate location.

?!

Or do you mean that there is a ...

I want to output productname.pdf to a particular folder.

That appears to be impossible.

I set "Output File" in the Basic section of the target to "productname.pdf"

I set "Output Folder" to the path to the specific folder I want to put it in.

When I compile, I get a \Output\TargetName\productname ...

Dave: I actually decided to put a splash image of my video in a topic and make that a link. Clicking on the splash image replaces the topic with the movie file, so I didn't need to fiddle with the TOC.

So no, I didn't try the multiple skin thing.

Looking at your "ideal" example again, I'm not sure I've been helpful. You want the first LINE of the paragraph to indent OUTWARD, but no the whol first paragraph of a step.

I'm not sure if CSS has elements for controlling the first line of a paragraph.

Maybe my system will serve as a close second ...

You're really close.

I have done exactly as you are trying to do.

I did it with a paragraph style assigned to the first paragraph of each step, with mc-auto-number-format set to "Step {n+}:" I set mc-auto-number-position to "inside-head".. Then I set margin-left to -4.50em. I put the whole ...

I guess I will try to demo Capture.

I have several thousand images prepped and ready to be used in my project. To have to someone run/open them all in Capture is a depressing option...

Le sigh.

-d

The max-width will indeed scale all images down to a certain size OR a certain percentage of the enclosing element.

Unforunately, I want to scale all images to 50% of their original size in the PDF.

I'm trying to find a way to do that with CSS (or elsewhere in Flare).

For anyone interested:

After a lot of testing, I've submitted this as a bug.

It appears that whenever Flare handles an image in any way (either scales it or puts it in a PDF) it changes all transparent parts of the image to WHITE.

I thought it was a problem with PDF/print output, but found it did ...

Just to follow up:

It appears that Flare discards the transparency of images whenever it touches them.

Whether scaling the image, or just putting it in a PDF, whenever Flare manages an image, it changes the transparent parts of the image to WHITE.

I have submitted this as a bug, but if anyone has ...

You want to apply the height and width settings to the <img> tag in the print medium... Unless your images are all exactly the same size, I recommend using percents on the width and height instead of using points or inches.

Lisa,
I have done exactly as you suggest, setting the width attribute of ...

(By the way, my scaling needs are a little less strict for non-print stuff. I'm going to use Max-Width for my WebHelp images. Thanks!)

I missed that one.

Are you using a max-width of pixels, or percentage?

If I do pixels, then it scales them all to (for example) 300 pixels or less. The problem with that is that my images start at all different sizes. Scaling them all down to 300 pixels makes for a really inconsistent result ...