Is it best to set up global projects at the outset?

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Msquared
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Is it best to set up global projects at the outset?

Post by Msquared »

Hi there,

I've spent the last couple of weeks getting my head round Flare, and trying to plan the best project structure for our needs. I've still got a lot to learn, but I' think I'm ready to try a "proof-of-concept" using some content that has been crying out to be single sourced.

I think that eventually I will have some global content (stylesheets, conditionals, variables, some graphics etc) and probably one project for each existing document or group of related documents. I was planning to use global project linking eventually, but I don't want to get bogged down in the details of that just yet - I'd prefer to get some useful output first then fine-tune the global structure and content later on.

My question is - if I adopt this approach, will I land myself with a big headache later on trying to move things around, or will that be relatively simple once I'm sure what I'm trying to achieve?

If this goes well, then as well as having proved that Flare meets our needs, I will have the basis of a real project, with real content that I can work on for real. As a sole tech author, with very little spare time between product releases, that's really important, so I need to increase the chances of producing something useful from the outset, and avoid making obvious mistakes.

All opinions and advice welcomed. :-)
Marjorie

My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dogs already think I am.
whunter
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Re: Is it best to set up global projects at the outset?

Post by whunter »

It's not difficult to implement global project linking in an existing project. I think the only issue I encountered was when I used the same file in two different projects but I put it in two different places in the file structure, so when I went to use global project linking in both projects I had to adjust one project to use the same place...but that's not so difficult to fix. Shouldn't be any real headaches in your future I don't think.
DocuWil
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Re: Is it best to set up global projects at the outset?

Post by DocuWil »

You can also have a look in a post from a while ago how I did it:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... 13&t=12331
Wil Veenstra

Documentation and Training Centre
Infologic Nederland
(Using Flare 11.1.2, Capture 7.0.0 and Mimic 7.0.0 in Windows 10 64-bit)
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