Any way to know what is conditional in Frame output?

[amatsumoto]

This may be a question of trying to do too much with Flare, but I thought I'd ask in case anyone else is trying something like it.

Before we started our migration to Flare our docs were in Frame and we used WebWorks to output to HTML. When we added new release content in Frame, we applied a "Future" condition tag to the text. We did this so we could easily find what was new, and also because we could apply change bars to that text to help our reviews spot what they needed to review. Our documents are large, so this was very helpful. At the end of the release we would go through our files and anything marked with the Future condition was made "unconditional."

In Flare I created conditions for Print, Screen, Future, and Delete (to mark text that needs to be removed from the upcoming release, also for the benefit of our reviewers). I was thinking that somehow these indicators would make their way into the Frame output - for example, text marked as Future (and set to display in print output) would not only show up in Frame, but also be tagged by Frame as conditional text. This doesn't appear to be so. If this is true, then we will need to manually go through our Frame docs and find the new text and apply a change bar (versus doing a search in Frame for the Future condition, the block is selected by the search, and we apply change bars to the block).

Does anyone else have to highlight text for their reviewers? If so, do you have any easy way of doing it, or is it manual? Perhaps there is some other nifty way of doing this in Flare?

Thanks!

[LTinker68]

I do a couple of things. I have "finished" and "notFinished" conditional tags. If a topic in the Content Explorer doesn't have one of those conditional tags applied, then I know I haven't written anything in that topic. If I have some content written but not finished (or verified), then I apply the "notFinished" tag. If a topic is completely done, then I apply a "finished" tag to it. So I can tell at a glance in the Content Explorer what topics need to be changed. (I have the targets set to include the topics with both these conditional tags, but you may choose to exclude the "notFinished" topics.)

I also create a generic class called "needToComplete" that I use to remind myself of what needs to be completed in the topic. I created a generic class because I can apply it to any tag. I set the background color of this class to a light green (kind of like a highlight color). In the topic, I'll have notes to myself about what to add/modify/verify, etc., and I'll apply that class to that paragraph, list, whatever. Before I finalize a product for distribution, I do a project-wide search on the "needToComplete" class. If it returns something and it turns out that I forgot to remove the class, then I can do it then. I don't distribute the project until the search function in Flare returns zero results for the "needToComplete" class.

Others, of course, may have other methods. I'm the only writer here and I don't use source control through Flare. Both of those factors could affect your process.

[amatsumoto]

Thanks Lisa. When you distribute your content to your SMEs for review, do you have a way of highlighting new content for them? I'm wondering if there is a way in Flare to highlight text that is new, so the reviewers know to skip over old text and focus on the new? Since the conditional text colors go away when you generate output, I'd love to have a convenient way to point out changes.

[LTinker68]

I haven't stabilized a formal review method, mostly because the help projects I've done have all been for internal use, so they tend to get moved to the bottom of the priority list as far as being reviewed by any SMEs. One of the projects did get reviewed by someone, and he liked to print the topic from the WebHelp output, so if I had set up a generic class with a background color, then he would have seen that as an indication of modified text. If you go that route, make sure that A) the modified class is used for the print output (either add it to the print medium or add it to the default medium to be used for online and print output), and B) you use a background color that will show up in black-and-white printouts (our printers default to printing in B&W, not color).

I could have also printed Word output, but since the help project wouldn't be delivered via print, I didn't bother to set it up, beyond setting some styles in the print medium.


My processes will change with MadCap's X-Edit, but that's something I'll have to work on to establish a good process.