Project Setup Question

[sdimick]

I am in the process of migrating from FrameMaker to Flare. I'm trying to determine the best way to set up my project. I am a lone writer so I don't have to worry about sharing files/projects. I write about a modular software suite. We have various modules such as Payroll, Billing, AP, GL, etc. In Frame I have a Book/DitaMap for each one in separate file folders. I wondered if it would be best to continue this method in Flare and have a separate Project for each module or would it be better to have one Project and import each Frame book into it and have separate TOCs. Some of the topics do cross modules. I just wasn't sure how large of a project Flare can handle. In the end I will have a PDF of each module's book and one main CHM file that list each module as a "book" of topics within it. Any best practices or ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks for your help.
Sharlyn

[ajturnersurrey]

As you have already seen there are many possible ways to structure things ... and I predict you will be wise to which the best one would be a year or two down the line!

My own experience suggests that if content is all needed in one help target keep it in one project. I would be inclined to have separate folders in Content to hold the material for each pdf "book", with common material at the top level - eg cover page, print TOC etc...

(If you decide to spread the material between separate Flare projects I'd advise that your write down and maintain a strict heirarchy, so that common material lives in the top level project (cover page, print TOC, css) and is imported to each of the lower level ones, with the help project being the bottom level importing from all of the others used for pdf outputs. Unless your work is HUGE I personally wouldn't choose this, because of the time overhead of imports, particularly during the early stages of the project when things need fixing back up at the top level and cascading down all the time.)

You could have separate targets and TOCs for each output, or my preference is one TOC with conditions applied to deal with all of the pdf outputs and one to deal with the CHM output.

[abartz]

I have a single project that includes 16 books, each in a separate folder. Each book has its own PDF target, and some include HTML targets. As separate PDFs, they range in size from about 10 pages to over 300 pages. When I initially converted from FrameMaker to Flare last summer, I thought I would have to create separate projects. Fortunately, I haven't had any problems with a single project handling all of my documents.

[chunkee]

If they are not really related, perhaps keep them separate and merge any content via the TOC method. I tend to prefer to keep things structured the same ( i have created a template), but separate projects.

John C

[jdw2465]

I have a single project that includes 16 books, each in a separate folder. Each book has its own PDF target, and some include HTML targets. As separate PDFs, they range in size from about 10 pages to over 300 pages. When I initially converted from FrameMaker to Flare last summer, I thought I would have to create separate projects. Fortunately, I haven't had any problems with a single project handling all of my documents.

So I have a similar setup, but with 8 books. Before we introduce our company to actual help content, we want to maintain the status quo by NOT breaking their PDF habits just yet (and never completely). The problem is that I learned today that you can't maintain links between separate PDF books in Flare right now. It's a feature enhancement. So using a single Flare project as I am, if I have a link in book A (say, in /Content/BookA) the reads, "See BookB, "Uninstalling the Certificate" on page 166," that link can never work because page 166 and BookB don't exist until I generate the PDF for BookB.

That means the legacy FrameMaker doc I imported to Flare that has hundreds of these page-level links cannot be made to work until MadCap finds a way to allow this functionality (building multiple books at once? Using special IDs?).

Does anyone know a way around this, or am I relegated to removing all of those links and just telling the user to browse BookB to locate the desired topic?

Thanks for any ideas!

Derek