MadCap Software Forums

You may want to look at the Relationship tables. Not exactly what you're looking for, but I suspect you could get those to work fairly painlessly.

Wayne

I'm working with an older manual that is in MS Word. In the front matter there is a section explaining that change bars are used to mark chunks of text to be reviewed. There is an example of a vertical bar in the left margin of the Word document. How would I recreate this change bar in Flare ...

The problem with creating a pdf straight from Flare is the awkward page breaks.

While part of this can be helped along in two ways, neither are ideal. First, just like in the DITA world, it has become commonplace to see strange breaks in documentation. Most of that is due to how the focus has ...

As far as Flare is concerned, there isn't much where it would benefit from 64 bit processing that isn't already handled by the OS. Not sure what the impact would be on the build process, but for that it seems that a fast drive and a beefy processor are key. I think running parallel processes on ...

I have had a similar issue, but when I do a cross-reference to a table, I get not only the caption, but the entire contents of the table. I too started using the paragraph tag to work around this, but as previous stated, with the continued variable on the caption now, this solution is a whole less ...

Nevertheless, more RAM is always better, but adding more than an additional GB would be pointless, because 32 bit systems cannot address more RAM.

Actually, a more correct statement would be Windows 32-bit systems can't address more space, but that's due to how MS engineered things. Unix and ...

2 GB of RAM seems a bit light when you factor in how much RAM the OS takes off the top. You're probably pretty deep into swap space right off the bat when you start the build. How much real RAM is available right after you open your project?

Wayne

Has anybody else noticed how Flare really wants to use pixels for its measurements? In my print format, I try to use inches and I've noticed several times that after changing one column size to some value, another of the columns will change from inches to pixels. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme ...

You should be able to work from home because you would be on a different network. The idea according to the EULA, is that you get to install one copy on your work computer, one on your home computer, so you can work there. The new activation scheme enforces this rule. Are you working through a VPN ...

So, I cheated a bit, but was able to do this. However, there is still a lot of cleanup. First, save the PowerPoint as a PDF. Then using Acrobat, save it as a Word document. Then import the Word document. It's not the perfect solution, but it does work.

Wayne

I ran into what Lisa mentions in a project recently. It wasn't until talking with the support staff at Madcap that I realized you needed an empty page for the auto-left to work. I certainly didn't see that in the docs I read. So as Lisa mentions, I would certainly look there first.

Wayne

In addition to what Dave suggests, you may want to experiment with the DITA output. DITA has it's own set of DTDs, but it is another XML flavor that may work better for whatever it is your developer is doing. I've noted that the Flare 8 DITA output seems to be a bit cleaner, but I have only done ...

My "strategy" is fairly simple and probably the one most people follow.

I try to use default as much as possible. For print/PDF, I know I need figure numbers, table numbers, and section numbers, along with a defined type, so that all goes in the print section. For web/online, I don't need the ...

Pick your poison as far as CMS systems go. The real key is what is needed is individual locking/checking-out/versioning of files. In our case, it's essential that multiple people be able to access, use, and share files among projects. A code management system/source control really lacks some of the ...

I'm wondering if anybody else laments the lack of a real content management system options vs. source control options? While the current crop of source control tools is OK, but once you use a real content management system, it's really hard to see how a source control system can replace it with 50 ...

According to Flare support, we can't use the ePub format because
· Our help project uses folders
· We use dropdowns
· We have tables within the dropdowns


Are you sure ePub supports drop downs and tables within drop downs? (I don't think it does). The entire ePub format is a bit weak at this ...

If I were you, I would deactivate the product, then uninstall it. Reboot, then run the Flare 8 installer again. I suspect something has gone amiss in the original installation.

Wayne

It's ironic, I've used Flare almost exclusively as a publishing engine for so long, some of the simpler things in the editing mode elude me. -- Thanks. I didn't think of adding a paragraph before and after.

Wayne

While snippets are close to what DITA conrefs are, they aren't exactly the same. For example in DITA, I can conref a table if needed. Then when I insert that conref in my other topic the table appears. I'm doing a trial using Flare as both the publishing engine and editor, thus not using DITA with ...

Thanks Lisa! of all the places I looked the css wasn't one of them. Doh!

Wayne

In Flare 8 has anybody been able to find a global setting for changing the continued in the table properties? I've noticed that by default the table title looks like this:

Table Title Herecontinued

So, if you're not in the habit of putting a space at the end of your text the continued and title ...

Craig:

We have two formats for documents, one has the engineering numbers with each heading: 1.0, 1.0.1, etc. The other doesn't. What I do is have stylesheets one named numbered and one named unnumbered I use one stylesheet as the master for changes . I copy that css, rename it outside of Flare ...

Hmmm... I need to look. I know I read this somewhere in their docs. But, you're right, this is exactly how it should have worked out the gate.

Wayne

Found a DITA import related bug. It seems they changed the behavior of the DITA import when it comes to tables and table titles. Both <title> and <table><title> are being set to the same heading. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why my table titles disappeared until I looked at the code ...

Actually, I do use these at the target level, but you're correct that is one more thing for folks to get wrong at publishing time.

Thinking out loud here, could you create multiple targets? Just make one the editing target and one the publishing target. Assign the editing stylesheet to the editing ...