Flare index: I have figured out what is "off" for me

[samjones6]

Flare index: I have figured out what is "off" for me as a robohelp user:

1) When editing a topic, there is no three-keystroke way to see what index keywords are on the topic. I can run reports and stuff, but that is too hairy.

2) I find the best time to deal with index is when editing a topic, because that is when the content of the topic is fresh in mind
--- Also, this is the way feedback happens. People don't say "there is no index entry for DOGFOOD" they say "I was looking for the topic about dog food, and could not find it in the index"

IOW, topics are the center of the world, and we work toward the index from the topic

3) The index editor is locked in the lower right of a large display, kinda kludgy. (yet another thing to undock....)

4) The index editor itself is not wysiwig. The keywords and topic file names are all jumbled together. I can't visualize the index unless I build the project (which is slow).

--- In robohelp, the index is quite wysiwig in the ide itself


I think the Flare editor would be a lot easier for users, new and old, if some of the above were addressed.

Just my $0.02


(And no: The funny keyword tags in the non-wysiwig editor don't count, cause they are not in one place and the text in em is truncated! Those darn tags just clutter up the editor (and probably slow it down also.))

[Nita Beck]

1) When editing a topic, there is no three-keystroke way to see what index keywords are on the topic. I can run reports and stuff, but that is too hairy.

Are you working with "Show Markers" on? You'd see the index entries then, right in the topic, no?

[LTinker68]

3) The index editor is locked in the lower right of a large display, kinda kludgy. (yet another thing to undock....)

What version of Flare are you using? There used to be two index-related panes -- one to add the terms, one to view the terms in the project. And yes, it was very annoying to work with, so people submitted bug reports or feature requests. Those two were combined into one pane that (by default) fills the right side of the screen, like the Styles pane does. So in the top portion you can type a new keyword, or you can drag-and-drop an existing keyword from the bottom portion. You can also expand a keyword in the bottom portion to see which topics it's used in.

I don't remember in which version of Flare those changes were made.

[samjones6]

3) The index editor is locked in the lower right of a large display, kinda kludgy. (yet another thing to undock....)

What version of Flare are you using? There used to be two index-related panes -- one to add the terms, one to view the terms in the project. And yes, it was very annoying to work with, so people submitted bug reports or feature requests. Those two were combined into one pane that (by default) fills the right side of the screen, like the Styles pane does. So in the top portion you can type a new keyword, or you can drag-and-drop an existing keyword from the bottom portion. You can also expand a keyword in the bottom portion to see which topics it's used in.

I don't remember in which version of Flare those changes were made.

I use Flare 7.0.1

It seems to work the new way you describe, which is problematic in the ways I describe above.

Also, the new layout of the Index pain is a real hassle, because the "index layout" is on the bottom. On a tall (portait) display, this is really awkward.

[LTinker68]

Also, the new layout of the Index pain is a real hassle, because the "index layout" is on the bottom. On a tall (portait) display, this is really awkward.

I guess that's a matter of preference then. I prefer the index entry portion to be at top since it's non-scrolling and the index layout on the bottom since it seems more logical to me to scroll the bottom portion of a pane than the top and middle. I may, however, have been conditioned to prefer that since the behavior is similar to how other programs do it, like Photoshop and Visual Studio, so I'm used to it. Although in those programs you can stack the panes so two or three are always open and you can adjust the heights of the pane if you need one to be temporarily taller than it was before.