Madcap's policy on partial and wildcard searches

[lmhundley]

I am using madcap Flare 6, and a portion of our implementation depends upon a good (not necessarily exceptional) search capability.

We are deploying as WebHelp.

We want/need to offer partial/wildcard search capibilities.

I have researched this forum, the madcap KB, and the web and what I get from all of that is that madcap Flare, with the exception of HTML help, does not support partial/wildcard searches. Especially from the forum, it appears that there is no desire, plan, or percieved need for it in Flare.

Can someone from madcap please state what the plans are for implementation of this type of search in all of Flare? One of the forum posts from 2008 had a suggestion that this was a good idea for an enhancement request, but it is obvious that, if it were submitted, it was not implemented.

Our going forward with using madcap will be affected by this search ability.

Tks in advance

[lacastle]

If you call customer service, you may get a quicker response directly from MadCap.
858-320-0387

You could also email Jennifer Morse [jmorse@madcapsoftware.com]. She is with Sales i think, but i've talked to her before and she is very nice.

[Andrew]

Are you talking about support for wildcard searches *in Flare*, or do you mean wildcard searches in output (such as WebHelp)?

If it's WebHelp, I believe wildcard searches are supported when you use a SQL database for search indexing -- it's an option in the target. Check the Performance tab, and the option is called "Include SQL Search Database."

If you are talking about Flare, it supports both wildcards and regular expressions (also known as RegEx). To use it, you must open the Find and Replace panel (Edit > Find and Replace > Find and Replace), then enable the Use checkbox, and select either "wildcards" or "regular expressions."

Hope that helps,
Andrew

[Richard Ferrell]

Indont believe wild cardvsearchesvare support. The old madcap toolbar add on for IE would do wildcard searches of a flare web help system. But that product may of been dropped. You would need to talk to madcap about that

[Andrew]

Indont believe wild cardvsearchesvare support. The old madcap toolbar add on for IE would do wildcard searches of a flare web help system. But that product may of been dropped. You would need to talk to madcap about that

The help file says that it's supported, but it wouldn't be the first time a help file was inaccurate. Sounds like I should test it!

[Andrew]

Tested it, and of course it doesn't work. I went back to review the help file, and somehow glossed over the part where it says this is a feature of DotNet Help; it does not work for WebHelp. Thanks for setting things straight Rick!

[kevinmcl]

Can someone (who has done it...?) clarify/expand a bit about the SQL database option?

If you are not using SQL for anything else, is this requirement (decent search in WebHelp) worth the overhead of setting up the SQL option?

I'm not clear on what the cost would be (in time and effort, both initially and ongoing).

Is there anybody out there with those specific arrows in their butt, who can save the rest of us from the need to be pioneers?


- kevin