A Few Beginner Questions

[stephencoxy]

Hi, hope it's OK to do a post like this, not familiar with forum etiquette etc! I've been a tech writer for about 9 month. So far we've only been using Word documents then publishing to PDF and now is the time to start single sourcing before things get out of hand. I'm trying to get familiar with Flare (9) at the moment and have a license also. I have a few questions if anyone would be kind enough to answer them:

-Will I be able to use Flare with no experience from other tech writing authoring tools (the stylesheets/formatting stuff scares me!)? So far I've watched a couple of Webinars on the MadCap website and will be attending the online basic/intermediate training/webinar next week. I just imagine that the target will not produce print layouts in the right format I need etc when it comes to publishing. Is it common for Word targets to be edited in Word after? Like image size/location etc?

-We also eventually want a help system type file in addition to PDF, Word and want to include videos. Is that all possible in V9?

-I don't have Madcap tech support unfortunately, though I do have the rest of the suite which won't be used! Will I be able to get by without this?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Sylverre]

Welcome to Flare!

The propellers must be spinning elsewhere right now, but no doubt you'll get a few detailed responses soon. For now: yes, you really can use Flare with little or no training. If you have some time, check out the "How Did You Do That?" tutorials in Flare's Help. Otherwise, just import a Word doc or three and start playing. If your formatting isn't clean, you'll see errors in the output, and cleaning those will teach you most of what you'll need to know about editing content after importing.

Have fun,
Sylverre

[ChoccieMuffin]

Hi Stephen and welcome. A friendlier, more helpful forum you couldn't wish to find.

As to your question, it is probably a good one to ask when you're at your training course. I'm really glad you've got that, because while it is possible to get to where you want to be without training it can be a very painful journey and at the start the learning curve becomes a learning cliff.

The webinars are really useful, but I suggest that at first you limit your learning to those areas that you need, rather than trying to absorb everything that Flare is capable of. So if you're not importing from FrameMaker, ignore that bit.

A good resource to help you learn about cascading stylesheets (css) is http://www.w3schools.com. Take a look, have a play with the CSS tutorial and that will help allay the fear somewhat.

Are you intending importing your existing material into Flare from Word? If so, you need to make your source Word file as clean as you possibly can. I can't stress the importance of the pre-import tidy-up enough. NO inline formatting, watch out for odd behaviour with lists - there are LOADS of things you can do to make the journey less painful and I suggest you ask for specific pointers during your course if possible. If you are, do take a look on here for helpful advice from those who have done this already.

Are you sure you need WORD output? As you are currently creating PDF output from your existing Word stuff, would it be sufficient to work with PDF output from Flare? The reason I ask this is that Word and Flare don't play together very nicely (more Microsoft not knowing the rules rather than Flare) and you can't export to Word output, edit it, import back to Flare, then export to Word output again, without vast amounts of pain and loads of bald patches from tearing your hair out. So do make sure you know exactly what you're trying to achieve. You may need to examine your workflow very carefully to ensure that things work smoothly for you (and to avoid those bald patches).

It IS possible to work in Flare without digging around under the bonnet and playing in the code, so after your course I'm sure you'll be a lot more confident about what you can achieve.

Flare produces very good help systems once you get your head round topic-based authoring, but you will need to identify what format of help you need.

In brief, you will probably be able to get by without tech support, but you would find it extremely painful without some training.

Good luck, and keep asking questions. There are also some really good books that I'm sure others will give you isbn numbers for.

[stephencoxy]

Thanks for the responses/encouragement Sylverre and ChoccieMuffin!

As for importing existing material, I would like to but my tech comms manager and I just don't envisage it being a smooth process. I will try of course but if it becomes too troublesome I may just copy and paste content in.

I would prefer PDF output but again, I just see myself having to re-position images that go alongside the steps of my documentation. For example, I usually have smaller buttons/icons beside the end of number sentences whereas larger images are aligned with the numbered sentence and also right hand margin of the document. Maybe I need to scrap this style we ahve?

I suppose I should go through the training first then reassess the situation! Just getting a little anxious at the moment haha.

[ChoccieMuffin]

I suspect that you will be able to do what you need with your images, with the careful use of styles. But that's a guess as I haven't seen your current stuff. If your current output is PDF from Word, you should be fine outputting PDFs from Flare without having to output to Word first. And if you're having a problem doing something, ask on here and see what happens.

As for whether to import or copy and paste, it all depends on how much stuff you have. If it's not too much, you may well find that it's quicker (and a lot less painful!) to copy and paste.

I suspect your first big task is going to be to set up your environment. That will include designing your page layouts (for print), master pages (for help) and stylesheet(s) for everything. Don't expect miracles, and plan to take a fair amount of time getting this bit right first.

Good luck, and I'm sure you'll enjoy Flare, once you get past the labour pains.

[stephencoxy]

Thanks again! Those three things worry me but I'll see how I feel after this training which starts tomorrow. I'll come back after, hopefully with some more confidence:)