AuthorIT conversion tool

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Maramoe1991
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 09, 2019 12:56 pm

AuthorIT conversion tool

Post by Maramoe1991 »

Hello - I've been working on a conversion project in Flare and have hit several walls. I was wondering if there was anyone who had successfully converted from AuthorIT to Flare who can share their process. I have gone to support but it would require a feature request and I no longer have the option of waiting.

I am at the point where I will have to "manipulate" the XML output prior to sending it through the conversion tool. The tool doesn't process "variants", doesn't know what to do with "drop-down/expanding topics" and it takes the "Print topic heading" rather than the assigned file name that I use. This causes so many errors that I have yet to publish successfully. From my perspective, this conversion is a big failure, however I have no other choice but to continue forward. Any guidance would be so very appreciated. Thanks.
doloremipsum
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 290
Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:11 pm

Re: AuthorIT conversion tool

Post by doloremipsum »

I do a lot of conversions from AuthorIt to Flare as we move our entire old document base across. I've accepted at this stage that there's no chance that the output will be immediately publishable. Basically it needs a bit of cleaning up in the topics themselves, and is moved into our new 'Documentation_Master' project that already has all of the variables, styles, etc set up independently. The stylesheets are designed to be back-compatible, so that the styles that come with AI content (e.g. Listbullet, etc) don't need to be replaced; you could do this with new variable files.

The process is essentially:
  • Publish AI book to XML
  • Run through converter (Tip: Put it near the top of your C: drive or similar to prevent 'filepath too long' errors.) I use the 'Flat' type because the organisation of the directories in Flare is very different to that in AuthorIt.
  • Open the new Flare project. Create new content directories that correspond to Documentation_Master's directories and move the topics/images into them (preserving the links).
  • Using the Windows Explorer, manually transfer the new content and TOC into the Master project. (If you do it in Flare, it will try to preserve the links to the converted project, which is bad!) Now you've left behind everything you didn't want from the conversion.
  • 'Clean up' the content, topic by topic, so that it publishes nicely out of Flare. This is probably the bit you're trying to avoid.
So, in practice you're probably going to have to create new 'template' files like stylesheets and variables - but once you have, they'll work for anything you bring over from AI. I personally don't see any reason to edit the XML before you run it through the converter instead of cleaning up afterwards.

However, I'm probably comparing apples to oranges here - my content is 90% small, individual PDFs which I'm happy to throw into a single master project. You might have a different experience if you're using more complex features.
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