MadCap Software Forums

My client has version 11. Can I create project files in version 2019 and they be readable/compatible with her version? Could not find an answer in google search.

I would say the answer's not out there because "it depends" on which of the madcap features you plan to use and which type of targets you are creating.

The topics themselves are just xml files and will be read by an older version of Flare just as much as a new one, but you might find yourself using features which were affected by bugs or limitations back in Flare 11, so don't render in quite the same way, or you might happily set things up for (say) SideNav help ... which didn't exist in Flare 11.

So if you keep things very basic, it could work, but the gap between Flare 11 and today's edition is pretty big. I wouldn't choose to author something new in Flare 15 and hope everything would work in Flare 11. Even if you create it initially in Flare 11, then work in Flare 15 but keep testing things as you go, that's a lot of overhead. On the other hand I might do a bit of maintenance on something built under Flare 14 in Flare 15 and leave it building as a Flare 14 project.

Hope that helps.

Why not just use v11? If you don't have it, maybe contact MadCap support and ask if your licence can be used with v11.

I doubt MadCap would recommend doing it - and if you did, I wouldn't expect support in fixing any issues.

ajturnersurrey wrote:I would say the answer's not out there because "it depends" on which of the madcap features you plan to use and which type of targets you are creating.

The topics themselves are just xml files and will be read by an older version of Flare just as much as a new one, but you might find yourself using features which were affected by bugs or limitations back in Flare 11, so don't render in quite the same way, or you might happily set things up for (say) SideNav help ... which didn't exist in Flare 11.

So if you keep things very basic, it could work, but the gap between Flare 11 and today's edition is pretty big. I wouldn't choose to author something new in Flare 15 and hope everything would work in Flare 11. Even if you create it initially in Flare 11, then work in Flare 15 but keep testing things as you go, that's a lot of overhead. On the other hand I might do a bit of maintenance on something built under Flare 14 in Flare 15 and leave it building as a Flare 14 project.

Hope that helps.

Yes very helpful! Maybe I will try to get the client to let me use their license (I assume they need to deactivate it first)

tekwrite55 wrote: Maybe I will try to get the client to let me use their license (I assume they need to deactivate it first)

As suggested, speak to Madcap, who may say you can install v11 because you have a current licence - they can exist together on the same machine so installing v11 doesn't mean you have to uninstall your current version. Might be easier than faffing around with your client having to uninstall and deregister.

Do you know what Help output you'd be doing for them for V11?

As other posters have suggested, on the surface, the html and css files shouldn't have changed that much in themselves since 11. The catch comes with the underpinnings of the jscript/jquery and other Flare subsystems in the 2 versions. The old Flare may not be able to read/compile because 11's jquery was most likely a bit older and would be missing functions.

There might be too much of a gulf in versions between 11 and 2019 (which is 15). I've skipped versions before - like authoring on 11 and reading/re-compiling on 9, but that was a long time ago.