"Convert" a Flare project to another project's formatting

[kevinmcl]

I have some projects (well over 1000 topics each, hundreds of graphics each) that became WebHelp in RoboHelp, seven or eight years ago, then became Flare projects with Flare 1.1, and have grown and mutated over the years. They were intended to be WebHelp, and so they used many, many expanding text and dropdown text blocks. Fewer than 100 snippets per project... so far. Topic-to-topic links by the hundreds (though I've replaced a couple of hundred of those with Cross-refs recently).

A new writer was given time to learn Flare and create brand new templates. He started with the premise that his docs would be PDFs, with an option to do WebHelp.

I want to convert my stuff to use his... everything.
There is no overlap at all.
Is there a guide somewhere that lists all the things that have to be converted?
For example, I would need to change the names of most of my non-standard styles. I would need to (somehow?) convert every expanding or dropdown text to ... I guess... footnotes.
I'm sure there are dozens of other standard things I'll need to attack.
Is there a list?
Better, is there a step-by-step?

Kevin (not looking forward to doing it all by hand if not required)

[kwag_myers]

I went through a similar process when the company I was at migrated to DITA. We had a programmer work for weeks to develop a conversion script and we still had to go through our projects afterward and check the conversion. I've had to do it on a smaller scale, too. We've all had projects change direction and this is why having standards is so important. Unfortunately, it's a big undertaking.

Changing style tags is a simple Find and Replace in the source code. You just have to decide how to assign your styles to his stylesheet.

Anything with a <MadCap: tag may have to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, I think. Is the content of an expanding text section indeed a footnote? Or can it just be a paragraph within the content of the topic? You'll probably have to use Find in the source code to look for these instances.

Having done this more than once, I'd recommend keeping a NotePad open and making a note of each change, such as p class="whatever" is p class="this". This helps to speed up the process, but I don't know of any quick and easy way to do what you're proposing.