MadCap Software Forums

Hello there all,

I am just starting to implement the documentation of our company in Flare. Most of it is working fine but there are a few things that I can't seem to find in the help section.

In my project I have a Titlepage that I like to use for each document. In thet titlepage I have a lot of variables thet will go from date, to authors name to Caption to registration code. What I don't understand is that I do not have a possibility to alter the number of the registration code other than in the variable editor. So I will have to check the target settings every time that I publish a new document. This is in my opinion unwieldy. The documents will be written and published by at least 20 people over a dozen departments, which asks for a more automated proces to check or change the authors and registration codes etc.

As I explained, I am just starting so if anyone can point me in the right direction......

Vince.

I don't have Flare open at the moment and it's been awhile since I've done this, so I'm not positive it hasn't changed in v2012... The variables list is your "master" list of variables, but you can overwrite those values at the target level. So instead of going into the variable set, you could change the value in the variable field within the Target Properties screen. However, that to me doesn't seem any easier than making the change in the variable set.

The other alternative is to not use variables but to use snippets. You insert the snippet into the title page, then before you build, you modify the contents of the snippet. The benefit of this option is that you can keep the snippet open as a tab in the editor all the time, so you can just click on the tab, make the change, then build. The downside is that if you have multiple values to change then you're taking away some of your edit real estate with tabs for your snippets. Or you have to open each snippet every time to edit it, which is again similar to modifying the variable set each time.