Sharing content between projects

[frma]

I have separate help projects for related products that share some common features.
The basic organization saves all topics for each project in the respective project's Content folder. Is there any way to put the shared topics in a separate folder so that the different projects access the same material?

/Francis

[Richard Ferrell]

Yes, Flare v4 has Project Linking, this allows you to share topics and settings from projects with other projects. Check out Flare's help file for more information.


http://www.madcapsoftware.com/support/w ... ojects.htm

[frma]

Ah! Another reason to upgrade from Flare 3.1

[Richard Ferrell]

If you have a Support contract in place, then V4 would be a free upgrade!

[Cecily]

I've dabbled with GPL and although it works and is useful when it's a few, self-contained topics/stylesheets/images in common, you need to read the help carefully as it's not entirely intuitive IMO.

A few observations:

• *It is straightforward as long as you are specific in the Include Files field/filter and don't rely on on selecting files in the (Re)Import tab
  
  *There is no tidy solution as to what to do about hyperlinks in the topics you import:
  • ** Use the flimpfl setting to import all linked topics too (but you may not want them all in the destination);
    ** Remove the links in the source/parent (but you probably put them there because they were useful);
    ** Remove the links in the destination and when prompted, opt to break the link (but then it won't be updated if changes are made in the source/parent);
    ** Set condition flags in the source/parent for the hyperlinks and use a conditional build in the destination to exclude flagged text (needlessly fiddly?).

[doc_guy]

I use GPL and I love it. I agree that there are some quirks. One I've found is that if you want to update the style sheet (for example), you either have to (1) close your project, open the master project, update the style sheet in the master project, close the master project, re-open your working project, and import the GPL changes; OR (2) open a second instance of Flare (takes up more resources on your computer), and update the style sheet in the master project, and then go back to the child project and re-import the GPL changes.

I wish that you could choose to modify a linked file that would over-write the changes back in the master project, so you could manage all the files in the current instance of Flare.

But other than that, I've found great benefits from using GPL. It is ideal for stable files that you don't update often that are shared across projects.

[frma]

Sorry to sound naive, but what is GPL?
Google search suggests GNU General Public License or possible Gothenburg Pinball League, but neither seems to fit in the present context...

[helen]

Sorry to sound naive, but what is GPL?
Google search suggests GNU General Public License or possible Gothenburg Pinball League, but neither seems to fit in the present context...

Global Project Linking

[Cecily]

Re the issue of what to do about hyperlinks in topics from the parent project, I've just used GPL and conditions to import a topic that included hyperlinks to pages that I didn't want to include in the child. It worked, but I went rather a long way round, so suggest that anyone trying this remembers to import the conditions tag set itself from parent to child project.

1. In the parent topic, I made the hyperlinks conditional (ParentOnly) and created alternative text with a different conditional flag (ChildOnly).
2. I set the target for the parent project to exclude anything flagged as ChildOnly.
3. In the child, I imported the topic, but the two bits of conditional text were shaded in grey as the conditions hadn't carried over.
4. I foolishly created them in the child project, using the same names, as it was only 2 conditions, but if I'd actually thought it through I would have imported the conditions tag set (*.flcts) instead.
5. I set the target for the child project to exclude anything flagged as ParentOnly.

[Cecily]

Another option for what to do about hyperlinks that you may not want in all destinations: you could put shared content in snippets, rather than topics. That way, you could have different (or no) hyperlinks in each destination topic.