Complete Noob - Need Help

[Frustet]

Hello all.

I am totally new to Flare (less than 1 month) and my colleague is not much of a help either. I am currently reading the documentation and watching some tutorials, but I would appreciate any help in the below questions since I am expected to work with it now.

We have multiple projects with numerous TOCs and different outputs. There are two of us, using the same source and we commit to a Tortoise SVN repo, but just for backup (at least that's what I was told) I'll use an example to give you an idea.

We have a Flare project called Android, about the Android OS (not really). It has:
- the main TOC for the basic functionality of the latest OS version
- TOC for a limited free OS version
- TOC for a licensed OS version with extra functionalities
- different TOCs (more than 20) for specific brands that all have additional/missing functionalities from the basic OS
All of the above have outputs in PDF, HTML5 and some of them have other output formats as well.

My first question is, do you think that the above setup makes sense or should we split them and use different projects for each doc? They all share content (images, topics, snippets, styles, etc.).

2nd question, and my main concern, is versioning.
This is an example of how my colleague works:
Say the current version of the basic OS guide is 5. Most of the brands guides are v5 as well.
Version 6 is on its way to be released in the near future, so he continuously updates version 5 (without publishing, but with committing all his changes).
In the meantime, if there is a bug/complaint/needed change in v5, I see no way of modifying and publishing version 5.1 without containing his changes for v6. Do you know of a way or am I correct in my assumption that his way is highly problematic? Do you have any suggestions on how to solve this?

Does Flare handle versioning in some clear way? I've seen in some posts that you can use different TOCs, but (forgive me if I'm completely wrong) if you update the topics and snippets, what does it matter which TOC you'll use? The content is already updated.

Is there a way to use drafts or copies of your current project and then somehow merge them with the current one?

Any insights would be extremely helpful, since I'm starting to get really frustrated with the situation.

Thanks

[NorthEast]

Q1) Use a single project, but use conditions to control what content should be excluded from each output (with Flare, you'll usually have to think about what to exclude, rather than include). So you'd set up a bunch of conditions for the free/licensed versions, and the brands.

Q2) You probably want to use source control branches for the different versions. If you don't want to do that, you could use conditions to mark content that's specific to each version, and set up separate targets to build each version from the same project.

[Frustet]

Thank you for your prompt reply, Dave.

I'll focus my reading on conditions, thanks.

Do you know if there is a built-in way for source control in Flare or do I have to use Tortoise SVN?
Will the branches/versions be visible in Flare ?

you could use conditions to mark content that's specific to each version, and set up separate targets to build each version from the same project.

This is still a bit confusing to me. Imagine I have a snippet used in version 1. I am working on version 2, editing and saving that snippet every day. Suddenly, I need to edit and publish version 1.1. Will the conditions you're talking about somehow prevent all the changes I made for version 2 appear in version 1.1? Even if I create separate targets for versions 1 and 2, the snippet is still the same, right?


Thanks again.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Welcome to the forums! I'm sure you'll find lots of helpful advice from forum members.

As for your problems, I'll try to answer your question re conditions with an example.

I suggest you create a couple of condition tag sets, so you can try to keep your head straight. Let's say you have bits that are for different brands, and bits that are for different versions, so you'd create a Brands condition tag set and a Versions condition tag set.
Remember that you can apply conditions to entire files, or to bits and pieces of text inside a file.

Here's some example content, with where it's needed in (round brackets) and conditions you need to apply in {curly brackets}:
This is a fab product. (Needed for all versions and all brands.) {No conditions applied)
It works really well with Windows 2012. (Version 5 but NOT version 6, included in all brands.) {Versions.V5}
It looks lovely in Brand x. (Version 5 but not 6, only for brand X {Versions.V6, Brands.BrandX}
This is a beautiful shade of pink. (All versions, but only brands Y and Z, not X) {Brands.BrandY, Brands.Brand.Z}
Brand Y's got a fab new feature. (Version 6, not version 5) {Brands.BrandY, Versions.V6}
Brand Z's got an existing feature. (Version 5, not version 6) {Brands.BrandZ, Versions.V5}

To create a target for version 5, Brand X
In your target EXCLUDE the following conditions:
Brands.BrandY
Brands.BrandZ
Versions.V6
From the above, you'd get this:
This is a fab product. (Needed for all versions and all brands.) {No conditions applied)
It works really well with Windows 2012. (Version 5 but NOT version 6, included in all brands.) {Versions.V5}
It looks lovely in Brand x. (Version 5 but not 6, only for brand X {Versions.V6, Brands.BrandX}
This is a beautiful shade of pink. (All versions, but only brands Y and Z, not X) {Brands.BrandY, Brands.Brand.Z}
Brand Y's got a fab new feature. (Version 6, not version 5) {Brands.BrandY, Versions.V6}
Brand Z's got an existing feature. (Version 5, not version 6) {Brands.BrandZ, Versions.V5}

To create a target for version 6, Brand z
In your target EXCLUDE the following conditions:
Brands.BrandY
Brands.BrandX
Versions.V5
From the above, you'd get this:
This is a fab product. (Needed for all versions and all brands.) {No conditions applied)
It works really well with Windows 2012. (Version 5 but NOT version 6, included in all brands.) {Versions.V5}
It looks lovely in Brand x. (Version 5 but not 6, only for brand X {Versions.V6, Brands.BrandX}
This is a beautiful shade of pink. (All versions, but only brands Y and Z, not X) {Brands.BrandY, Brands.Brand.Z}
Brand Y's got a fab new feature. (Version 6, not version 5) {Brands.BrandY, Versions.V6}
Brand Z's got an existing feature. (Version 5, not version 6) {Brands.BrandZ, Versions.V5}

For your snippet that you're editing, apply your conditions while you're editing, so when the snippet is used in your eventual output as above, the bits you don't want will be excluded.

Hope that helps to explain things.

As you progress, you might find your stuff gets full of conditions being applied, so it IS possible to remove condition tags from your content at a later stage. I wouldn't worry about that right now, just be aware that it is possible (so by the time you get to version 24 you might want to remove some of your earlier condition tags).

As for source control, you CAN use SVN from within Flare, but a few people have found it problematic, so you might want to try doing it outside of Flare to start with. The downside of that is that you have to remember to ADD new content files - something that still trips me up! (But I prefer not to use Flare's integrated source control, others will disagree with me.)

[NorthEast]

I think Flare's integrated source control only supports branches for Git, but not TFS or SVN.

You could manage your source control outside of Flare though, and use branches.

I only use TFS though, so you might want to get SVN advice from someone that actually uses it - like CM there ^

[Frustet]

Wow, thank you both.

Off to play with conditions then.