Can you exclude images during an import?

[Macrosheep]

Is there any way to exclude images during the import from FrameMaker to Flare?

Part of our team is currently using ePublisher (formerly WebWorks) to bring their Frame files online.
In ePublisher, they have specified certain paragraph tags to exclude, and that allows them to exclude the images in the doc.

We're trying to help get them moved over to Flare, but we can't seem to find a way to exclude images during the import.

Is there any way to accomplish this during Flare's import, aside from setting every image to a conditional text tag?

[Spectre]

I am currently evaluating Flare and I have the same query as this orginal post. I have not seen anything in the import process to suggest this is possible, but I'd like to confirm.

I have a 900 page document in Frame that I want to import into Flare, but with the Link generated file to source files check box selected. I want to exclude the many images I have in the Frame files, which I have tagged with a specific style. It seems to me to be much more efficient to exclude this and any other content before it gets into the Flare project, rather than undergoing all the processing involved in converting all the images and content each time the Frame files change, and I want to produce new online help.

Assuming the above is not possible, I have read that you can make specific styles "Print Only" within the Flare project. Is this the best way of achieving what I want.

Thanks.

[wclass]

I work with MS Word rather than Framemaker, but I think the import options are pretty much the same. You can manage this using CSS styles.

I don't know of any way to exclude paragraphs from being imported. However, once the topics are in Flare you can use the CSS styles to set specific paragraphs to "display: none;" and they won't appear in your online help. You would only need to set this up once for the project, and then map your image paragraph to the css style on import. The images are still part of the project, you just won't see them displayed.

Another option would be to apply the "print only" condition tag, but you would have to manually do this to every image - very time consuming, and it would be overwritten if you did a re-import.

Do you plan to continue to maintain your printed output in Frame (if you are maintaining the links then I assume so)? The reason I ask is that the export from Flare to Word does not manage the "display" attribute nicely - not sure if Flare to Frame has the same problem. If you are not exporting then this is a non-issue.

[Spectre]

Margaret,
Many thanks for your reply. At this evaluation stage, I'm trying to find the best method to do what I want. Basically the 900 page existing PDF is as important as the online help. The idea of keeping the link to the original Frame files came from running through the Flare demo on the MadCap website.
I've imported the Frame files into Flare (with the link flag on) and this process took a very long time, with numerous error messages, so the idea of keeping Frame as the editing program, and importing the files into Flare every time a change is made, is not particularly attractive. That you can exclude the images through the CSS is good, but as I say, I don't think my first anticpated way of working with Frame and Flare is the right one for this project. So I'll continue to look at Flare, and see if there is a better way of proceeding, and also check out other options.
Thanks again.

[KevinDAmery]

If you're not married to keeping the source material in Frame, another option would be to import it to Flare and maintain it there and use the export to PDF feature--this uses Frame and distiller to create a PDF in one step.

[Spectre]

Kevin,

To be honest, I'm not sure what I'm married to at the moment. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it.