How do I stop Flare from generating .prop files?

ktbCA57 · Post by **ktbCA57** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 10:23 am

I have been noticing that some how prop files are showing up in all my project image folders... I am not using Capture - which I know can create them. I'm just adding images that I create elsewhere.

Is there a way to stop these .prop files from showing up?

Thanks.

doloremipsum · Post by **doloremipsum** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 3:03 pm

One other thing that can product prop files is when you put a conditional tag on a folder (because folders can't hold information in and of themselves). Have you been tagging folders?

ktbCA57 · Post by **ktbCA57** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 3:26 pm

hmmm... i have been setting conditions on a lot of things... the prop files I've seen are all in the various image file folders in my project. While some of the images themselves are conditionalized, none of the image folders are conditionalized.

doloremipsum · Post by **doloremipsum** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:46 pm

There's your culprit then! Flare needs to create a props file to put a conditional tag on an image (since that isn't something a normal PNG file or whatever can have defined). If you want conditions on your images, you'll have to accept the extra files.

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 2:51 am

As an extra point, if you are doing source control outside of Flare rather than using the integrated source control options, make sure you check in these .props files as well as your images, to make sure the conditions you've set are kept in source control too. If you're using integrated source control this will happen automatically for you, so you won't even notice them if you're wandering around in Windows Explorer.

ktbCA57 · Post by **ktbCA57** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 6:01 am

well... dang it... ok then... and my entire project gets saved into Git each evening.. but thanks for that warning... i deleted a bunch of the prop files... are they regenerated when i start Flare or maybe if I delete the output and analyzer folders... i'll know soon!

Thanks!

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:33 am

ktbCA57 wrote:well... dang it... ok then... and my entire project gets saved into Git each evening.. but thanks for that warning... i deleted a bunch of the prop files... are they regenerated when i start Flare or maybe if I delete the output and analyzer folders... i'll know soon!

Thanks!

How do you connect to GIT? If outside of Flare, then if you checked in your project and deleted your .props files, then you have effectively removed any conditions you had previously applied to those images. If you are working with Flare-integrated source control and deleted the .props files outside of Flare, then when you next open it, I would expect Flare to grab the .props files from your repository again and put them back. But I'm not promising anything, so I suggest you check very carefully the images in the folder where you deleted .props files, to check whether the images have the conditions you expect them to have.

As a bit of an explanation, when you apply a condition to just about any Flare file, it adds an extra bit of extra text to the top of the text file. You can see it if you open a topic, snippet, TOC, Target etc in a text editor. (For example, here's the first line of a random topic in one of my projects)
"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html xmlns:MadCap="http://www.madcapsoftware.com/Schemas/MadCap.xsd" MadCap:conditions="Primary.ScreenOnly">
"
But you can't add text like that to an image, so that's why they have to add a .props file, the content of which looks something like this:
"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<fileProperties conditions="Primary.ScreenOnly" />
"

ktbCA57 · Post by **ktbCA57** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:40 am

Thanks, @ChoccieMuffin...

After I thought about it, i realized why the props is necessary since there's no "text" in an image file like there is with topics or snippets...

Git is not integrated with Flare... the last time we tried to integrate source control with Flare it was a HUGE problem resulting in loss of info in my project... that was with TFS... now I have Git, but it's not integrated.

I did delete the props files OUTSIDE of Flare... I'm going thru trying to find all my conditioned images to see if conditions are gone, so far I have not found any.. worst case i can go back and copy them back into image folders from previous versions.

Thanks for your help and patience on this!

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 8:21 am

We use SVN so I'm not any kind of Git expert, but if you deleted them only recently, could you pull them back out from that revision in Git?

ktbCA57 · Post by **ktbCA57** » Thu Mar 19, 2020 8:29 am

yes... i also have a copy on our network from a couple of days ago.. i'm going thru that now.. but yes... I can pull stuff down from Git if I need it... Thanks!

Zauberlehrling · Post by **Zauberlehrling** » Fri May 12, 2023 1:01 am

I have a question regarding these .props files.
I had to rename lots of image files because the file names were too long, then I noticed all these .props files which were create to some images but not to all. Since I noticed some of these .props files were much bigger than the actual image I deleted them. Then I read about the reason for these files and restored them again.

Here an example.

filesize.PNG

The png file is 347 KB and the props file on the other hand is over 26 MB.
I have checked and neither the image nor the topic or the folder where the topic is stored have any conditions.
Would it be save in this case to delete the props file?

Will a props file be recreated automatically when I add conditions, after I deleted that file before?
Thank you

Post by **NorthEast** » Mon May 15, 2023 2:15 am

Props files will be created if you edit an image in MadCap Capture - do you use that?

The props file contains the source that's used to create the image - the image data, layers, captions, etc.
So don't delete the props file, as you'll lose the image source and won't be able to edit the image in Capture.
Whilst 26MB is very big, you might have a lot of image layers in the source.

As a simple guideline:

If the props file for an image is 1KB, it's probably just got a condition set on the file.
If the props file is about the same size of the image or larger, it's probably been edited in Capture.

Note that props files are text, so you can check them in any text editor.

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