DITA Export in Flare 5.0

[brianlaing]

Howdy folks!

I have some questions about the DITA export in Flare 5.0.

1. Is there any way to export a Flare project using a target where text has been conditionalized (to remove topics not desired in the output)? It appears that when you create a new target with a DITA output type, all Conditional Text settings become unavailable and everything (either at the topic level or within a topic) is included.
2. Is there a way to quickly designate what type of DITA topic a Flare topic is instead of having to select the topic in Content Explorer and then Properties > Topic Properties and THEN setting the Topic Style Class? Do I have to designate each topic one at a time?
3. Is there a way to export out the map IDs in the DITA topics? The initial few exports I created totally ignored these important IDs.

Thanks!!

Brian

[wclass]

I have done minimal testing with DITA and came across similar problems - see my earlier post at:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =75&t=9456

1. No, you can't expect conditions like you normally use in Flare - see this comment from the help file:

Note: Condition tags are not supported if you are generating a target using the DITA output type, in the sense that you cannot include or exclude condition tags for that DITA output. Therefore, when you open a DITA target, the options in the Conditional Text tab are disabled. However, DITA-specific condition tag attributes are preserved in Flare when you import from DITA; the DITA attributes are converted to condition tag sets in Flare. In fact, you can create custom condition tag sets in Flare that can be useful when you generate DITA output from Flare. You simply need to make sure that the condition tag sets follow the established DITA naming conventions for those attributes: condition tag sets can be named "audience," "product," "platform," "props," and "otherprops." When you generate the output, the condition tag sets are converted to the appropriate DITA attributes.

I have not explored those DITA attributes - I don't really want to work in DITA, just generate it so I'm not sure this is a help to me.

For large projects, I struggle to generate any output as I have too many other errors - one project, that normally works, bombed on DITA output with an index out of range, and another said it could not find part of the output file - go figure. I can generate DITA output for a test project, but it includes EVERY source file.

2. You can apply properties to more than one file at once - in the Content Explorer click the "Show Files" button, and then you can select multiple files.

3. Can't answer this one.

[brianlaing]

Actually Margaret, this was an incredibly helpful post from you

I'm investigating adding condtions for platform and audience and reapplying them to existing conditons so that there will be less work to do on the DITA end of things. Stay tuned!

Cheers and thank!
Brian

[brianlaing]

One more thing - is there a way to export out the context-sensitive IDs that are in the Flare project to DITA or is this a manual process? Anyone know?

Thanks!
Brian