Which has fewer bugs? 32bit or 64bit?

[Jeong]

Anyone have experience with both and know which has fewer issues? I'm using 64bit on Windows 10 and when it works, it's the best tool I've seen... but it's the flakiest commercial software I've ever used.

[NorthEast]

I've used Flare since v2.5 (12 years), and can confirm that it does crash (exception errors) a lot - around 10 times a week for me.

So I'd agree it's the flakiest commercial software that I've used - I can't think of anything that crashes this much.

However, it is rare that crashes cause any actual data loss. Also, crashes are not usually fatal and hang/close the application.
So usually you can save what you were doing, close Flare, and start it up again.

I still think Flare is great, but I've always had to put up with frequent crashes/exceptions.
I don't think it's something to do with my environment, since I've used it on many PCs over the years, and it's never been stable.

[Jeong]

I get really strange things and encounter a LOT of bugs. The crashes don't matter so much to me... as you said, you can work around those.
Just now, I'm looking at a ToC that references a particular PDF (it's an engineering drawing that I add at the end of the manual, with a mini ToC). I'm looking at it right now and it's the right path with the right name, and when I build the PDF output, Flare has attached the wrong file (it's the last one I worked on). Removed it, added it... wrong file again.

Also, I think this is true for everyone, not just me - Try taking a topic, open it, and use the File > Save As method to save that topic in another directory. All links will be broken and images and snippets disappear. (You'll have to create a copy in the same directory and drag and drop).

I also had a really weird one the other day... copied a topic, and when I went to rename the "Copy of ...." to something else, Flare tells me that it's referenced by two ToCs (what the?).

Also yesterday, the NOTE and CAUTION div styles I've been using... all of a sudden, any content that is made bold turns invisible in the output (looks fine in the XML editor).

Also yesterday, Conditional Text > added two new conditions and made some edits. In one of my target files, all condition flags had been unset (I produced an output earlier, so I know it was set correctly). When I investigated, attempting to turn one particular condition to "Include" causes all conditions to change to "unset". Couldn't workaround that one... had to delete the condition, create another one, go back to the snippets where the old condition was used and recreate all of those...

It's these kinds of problems I'm having issue with... the kinds of problems that are going to cause errors in the output without making it evident to me, causing me to work like someone with OCD, checking and re-checking every output in my project again and again.

Tried updates of .NET Framework yesterday after seeing something in the Forums. Unfortunately, MadCap are all Marketing about this sort of thing, rather than taking an Engineering attitude to their paying customers. It's kind of blowing my mind how *so many bugs* are in a product that's been around for so long.

- Do I sound angry? I am not! - not at you... sorry... this is going to be a 70 hour week.

[Jeong]

Just an update in case it helps anyone: Don't keep the PDF preview window open. I've stopped doing that and things seem much better.

And either don't use Flare's built-in source control at all, or commit and push before you do any renaming or moving of files, lest you want to risk not being able to open the project at all (which has happened to me now).

[ChoccieMuffin]

Just an update in case it helps anyone: Don't keep the PDF preview window open. I've stopped doing that and things seem much better.

And either don't use Flare's built-in source control at all, or commit and push before you do any renaming or moving of files, lest you want to risk not being able to open the project at all (which has happened to me now).

Your first point is a new one (but it would never have occurred to me to keep it open in the first place) but the second question about source control has cropped up loads of times in the forums.

I hope you settle down in your use of Flare, and do keep asking questions in here, there's usually someone who can suggest a solution to help.

[Jeong]

Yup. About the PDF preview.. I started doing that because the way the topic looks in the XML editor is not always how it looks in the PDF output. When I noticed the discrepancy, I started keep the PDF preview open.

I might be getting a little over-cautious here, but I'm thinking perhaps disabling Auto-save / Auto refresh might be a good idea too. Flare occasionally halts / behaves unpredictably when auto-save kicks in. I was in the middle of updating condition sets and the halt/hiccup caused the text input field to switch from one field to another, overwriting the name of one of the conditions. I think I prefer manual save anyway - thought one glitch was enough to warrant disabling a not-very-much relied upon feature.

I am starting to find my peace with Flare. Ommmm.

[ChoccieMuffin]

I've never used the auto-save so I wouldn't know what effect it has, but I do prefer to specifically choose when to save stuff. Didn't even know there was an auto-refresh setting so I don't know whether I'm using it or not! (Wonder what it refreshes?)