MadCap Software Forums

Hi everyone,

I am producing several sets of user manuals for our software products. For several reasons, our current customers want to receive them in Word format. They themselves take care of translations of these manuals but we are required to provide the screenshots from our translated product UI.

Of course I try to use screenshots wisely and don’t add any textual markup. Apart from that my workflow goes as follows:

1. Create user manual in Flare
2. Check which screenshots need replacing
3. Take new screenshots and add them to a folder outside the Flare project, saving them with exactly the same name as the original screenshots
4. Import Flare project in Madcap Lingo
5. Use the “batch replace” functionality to bring in the “translated” screenshots
6. Export a new Flare project from Lingo that contains the English source text and the new screenshots
7. Build Word output and deliver to the customer

This workflow helps me get by but I could imagine that there are better ways.

I used to put the translated screenshots along with the originals inside the Flare topics and use conditions to filter them but due to too many variables this was not sustainable anymore.

If anyone out there has a more efficient solution that might help me take the Lingo part out of the equation, that would be great.

Thank you

Best regards

David

Hi Dave. Can you elaborate as to why there are too many variables to make use of conditional tags? At face value, it would seem that would be the way to go. At least you have a methodology that's working for you. It's also possible there is no "better" way than the seven steps you've written. If it ain't broke don't fix it type of thing.

Hi,

The thing is that I have quite a lot of conditions in place already and I guess I am kind of worried that at some point they will start conflicting.

We are moving towards a standard product but for the moment we do a lot of project customization/configuration that I need to take into account.

By using the approach I have now at least I don't need to add any further condition complexity.

But as you pointed out, it might just be the best option in my current situation.

Thanks

David

You're welcome, David.

Best.

Hal