Continuously ingesting text with its formatting

[JeromeR]

Here's what I want to do:

1. Manage content (text) in Flare.
2. Continually publish the text and basic formatting (such as bold text, a hyperlink, or a bulleted list) to a standard output.
3. An application automatically ingests that formatted text, where the text becomes part of that application's user interface—its labels, instructions, tooltips, error messages, and so on.
   The application handles where and when the text displays.

Question

• What's a good output to use in step 2 that lets the application automatically ingest the text and formatting in step 3?

[RamonS]

The only option that comes to mind is to generate Word output and then use Word to export that as RTF which might be easier to work with. There are also plugins for Word that generate Wikimedia markup that is fairly easy to parse. The main thing I don't like about my proposal is that it includes a manual step.

[JeromeR]

I think you misunderstood. I have edited my question to make it clearer.

This isn't a one-time task. I'm looking to push content changes into the application quickly—Agile, continuous improvement to the app.

[RamonS]

OK, now I understand a bit better...and then not. The output format to use depends on what the process who does the ingestion can handle or expects to be there. XML? RTF? Some flat file with markup other than XML?
If this is for an app crafted with VS you may want to look into generating resx files. There is the resgen tool (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... 2147217396) that can take a text file and craft a resx file from it. From what I get from the article the text file contains plain key/value pairs. That would address the content, but not the formatting.

If that's not it you need to wait for someone else to chime in, but from my experience of 20 years in software development I do not know of any standard means on how to accomplish this. While Flare has many benefits it seems to be not the right tool for this job.

A few years back I was working with a desktop app that used ini files and simple control characters (such as /b text /b for bold) in the value strings. We also used purely numerical keys so that the ini files could be spellchecked without tripping over the keys. Maybe that works?

[JeromeR]

I'm going to try this question again, but in a different way. So in a separate thread.