HTML importing, interface quirks

[beagley]

Hi all,
I just started my trial of Flare. I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions. These are about importing my HTML (compiled DocBook, actually).

1. When importing a Word file, you can do some cool mapping... such as telling Flare to start a new Topic with each H2 (or whatever). Is there anyway to do that when importing an HTML (and converting it to XML)? The Wizard doesn't seem to have any options, so maybe there's a way to do it in post-processing? Maybe my question is: If you had a long topic with lots of headings, how would you (quickly, automatically?) break that topic into five separate topics?

2. If I import a folder with lots of html files in it (by dropping them into my Content folder in Windows), it looks like I then have to double click on each one individually and do the XML conversion wizard. Anyway to convert them all at once?

3. By the way, is there any way to select more than one item in the Project Organizer or Content Explorer? I've tried click with the shift/ctrl/option keys, but it seems like I can only select one thing at a time or do it by folder. This is a pain for dragging items to a new TOC, deleting a bunch of topics or targets I decided I don't need, or doing the aforementioned "open them all at once!" Am I just a dunce, or can you really only select items one at a time? I notice a tell-tale "item(s)" in the message when attempting to delete an item...

Side note: I sure wish that Flare had a nifty conversion tool for importing DocBook files. I sure wish their HTML importer was a little more slick than dropping the files into the content folder and then running a wizard with no options. But in the end, I suppose if I can get it to do everything I want, it will be fine...

Side note 2: I definitely want to learn about styles and stylesheets. They seem really powerful. I've been writing everything in straight text and using markup for so many years. (vi is my usual editor). At the outset, I'm curious: is there a way to have a style that behaves one way when contained within another element but behaves differently within another? I'm thinking of a "Title" style that was bold on its own but became italicized when it was the child of a list item... maybe I'm thinking too hard.

Happy trails,
d

[wclass]

Hi d,
I'll start with the easy ones.

3. By the way, is there any way to select more than one item in the Project Organizer or Content Explorer?

Yes. In Content Explorer there is a button on the toolbar (2nd from left) that lets you Show/Hide files. It splits the Content Explorer view in 2 and you can do multiple selects from that.

[wclass]

Side note 2: I definitely want to learn about styles and stylesheets. ... I'm curious: is there a way to have a style that behaves one way when contained within another element but behaves differently within another?

and yes, you can. You can create complex selectors. For example, this CSS entry sets the colour of paragraphs within lists to red:

Code: Select all

li p {color: red}

You can do a lot more with selectors and classes. There are good tutorials at W3Schools: http://www.w3schools.com/css/

[KevinDAmery]

For question 1, mapping isn't necessary with HTML files. When you import a Word or Frame document, the mapping tells it which tag type to apply to specific styles. Since HTML documents already have tags applied (i.e. p tags, h1 tags, ol tags, etc.) there really isn't anything to map. All you have to do is assign a stylesheet that applies the styles you want to each tag and you're off to the races.

For question 2, converting isn't strictly necessary--Flare will automatically include any content in the content folders when you do a build unless you exclude it with a condition, and as long as the files are html they will work out of the box. All the conversion process does is add a line in the Head section that defines the namespace to use Madcap's schema. So if you have topics that you need to include in your documentation but don't need to do any more work on, you can just copy them in and run with them. (Of course, if you want them in your TOC you'll have to make sure they're added, but that's about it).

[beagley]

<i>For question 1, mapping isn't necessary with HTML files. When you import a Word or Frame document, the mapping tells it which tag type to apply to specific styles. Since HTML documents already have tags applied (i.e. p tags, h1 tags, ol tags, etc.) there really isn't anything to map. All you have to do is assign a stylesheet that applies the styles you want to each tag and you're off to the races.</i>

Thanks for all the input so far!

The reason I LIKED the mapping and extra import features for a Word document is that it allowed me to indicate that a NEW topic would be created at every header2 or whatever other header style I wanted.

I want that same feature when I import my library of HTML files. All of our manuals are available as HTML, and I think that would be a good source to input them from. But for that to be effective, I've got to map H2 to "new topic please!"

So, any help with that would be appreciated. Maybe not possible.

[KevinDAmery]

Ok, so for the sake of example, you currently have 100 HTML files, but when you import them you want Flare to split them into more? Or are your HTML manuals all one big HTML file? (I'd expect not, but I'm asking to be thorough.)

Basically, if your HTML files are already divided into logical topics, when you import them to Flare they will maintain those topic breaks. It would only really be a problem if you want to break the existing HTML into more files. (Which isn't supported currently--you can submit a feature request if you want.)

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[beagley]

Thanks! I'll probably submit a feature request... it would be logical (IMHO, of course) to bring HTML import up to the same level as Word import... make the processes more uniform. And, selfishly, I have hundreds of manuals to import.

I've heard that there is some kind of batch import tool, confusingly bundled in with MadCap Analyzer. I'll have to read up on that.

Not to be confusing... but I create my HTML manuals from DocBook... so I actually have the ability to create a "chunked" HTML by section. I could then import THAT into Flare, but then I'd have a lot more cleanup work to do at the back end, because the chunked HTML has a lot of navigation/breadcrumb stuff included on each file that I would need to strip. If I was just a little handier with perl, it would be a nonissue. *grin*

[RamonS]

How about reversing the process and create the manuals in Flare and go from there to what you need? No idea if that is any easier.

[beagley]

Thanks for the thought, Ramos!

I have hundreds of manuals currently marked up in DocBook (which I can compile into HTML). I am trying to find a way to import them to Flare effectively.

[LTinker68]

I've never used DocBook. Does it have a HTML Help project file (.hhp)? Because you can import that file into Flare. Maybe that would be easier???

[Ina]

Did anyone read the book HTML to Flare by Peter Lavin? There is a chapter in it about importing Docbook into Flare. The book‘s instructions explain that you have to write several scripts and then it’ll work. But I don’t know how and where to do that. I am not familiar with XSL.
Could anybody help me?