Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Option C?

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coleymarie80
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Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Option C?

Post by coleymarie80 »

I desperately need to reduce the file size of my help. I have one Flare project that houses Help A, Help, B, and Help C. They are all included in the install shield of our software. They all use some common images, and my developers are screaming that I need to get rid of "duplicates," when, in fact, the same image must live in each Help's Content folder.

From what I understand, Global Project Linking won't work because, while the source image is living in the Global Project, it gets imported and copied into Help A, Help B, and Help C. With External Resources, the source image simply lives on the network instead of in the Global Project, and is again copied into Help A, Help, B, and Help C.

Is there a third option in which I can have a Common Images folder outside of my project, and each Help can reference/link to one image from there without the image living in each Help's Content folder?

I hope that makes sense!
ThomasK
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Re: Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Optio

Post by ThomasK »

I'm also interested in this, should anyone have found a solution to this?

I'm currently using project linking to house our "common" information such as legal statements, icons, etc.. however the way that Flare handles these results in quite a lot of duplicate data.
Of course when building a HTML5 output, the images must be copied to the target location, but is there a way to make it so that the source images are not duplicated into the flare project, or at the very least, selectively exclude folders from the import?
ChoccieMuffin
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Re: Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Optio

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

As you say, it doesn't matter whether you use external resources or GPL to get your images so you can work in Flare, because in the output the images go where the output needs them to be.

I don't know of any workaround for that, so is there any other way you can make the image file sizes smaller? Could you reduce the resolution or the number of colours? On the Advanced tab of your topic do you have the Generate resized copies of scaled images check box selected? On the same tab do you have the Exclude content not linked... check box selected?

Could you use screen sketches rather than full-blown screenshots? (There's a term for that but I can't remember what it is, but it means representing the screen diagramatically rather than with a regular screenshot.)

It may be that my suggestions make the quality of your output just not good enough, but might be worth thinking about them as a starting point, while waiting for someone to come along with a whizzy solution.
Started as a newbie with Flare 6.1, now using Flare 2023.
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Nita Beck
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Re: Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Optio

Post by Nita Beck »

ChoccieMuffin wrote:Could you use screen sketches rather than full-blown screenshots? (There's a term for that but I can't remember what it is, but it means representing the screen diagramatically rather than with a regular screenshot.)
The term of art is a screen portrait.
Nita
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RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
ChoccieMuffin
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Re: Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Optio

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

Cheers, Nita, I wasn't too far off! :D
Started as a newbie with Flare 6.1, now using Flare 2023.
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jbananak
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Re: Global Project Linking vs. External Resources vs...Optio

Post by jbananak »

Did you find a solution apart from changing all your images?
My pdfs in Flare seem to be much bigger than pdfs from Word, and also the helps (HTML5) are huge too (some 100+mB).

Joanna
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