Project Size

[ShannonF]

I am unsure of whether I should be maintaining a single Flare Project or multiple Flare Projects, to clarify:

My company designs Software, to this Software we add the Flare WebHelp output. For arguments sake I have 4 major Software Suites (Suite 1, Suite 2, Suite 3 and Suite 4). Each of these Software Suites is made up of a Base Application (including various Modules used for day-to-day operations) and Utilities (used for other scheduled tasks, possibly carried out monthly for example). I have noticed that some of the Modules and Utilites are common among Suite 1, 2, 3 and 4. I believe that I could re-use a fair portion of my topic information by using snippits and conditions - but I am worried about my Flare project growing too large and corrupting.

How many topics can Flare handle before it says enough?

At the moment for example my Flare Project file for:
Suite 1 has 235 Topics and 545 Images.
Suite 2 has 105 Topics and 255 Images.
Suite 3 and 4 are still to be determined.

I want to arrive at a stable solution that involves as little maintenance as possible.

Sincerely, ShannonF

[Cecily]

I can't advise about size limits, though yours don't sound high, but in more general terms, I use a mixture of snippets, conditions and imported topics.

You obviously know something about the first two and as for the third, you can import topics from one project to another, using Global Project Linking (new in v4, I think). It's probably easiest to manage if you have one project where all the shared content resides (possibly a project that is never compiled or distributed). I had a few teething problems with it, but I think that was as much to do with the way it's rebuilt on the server, so I'd still recommend looking into it.

Overall, my gut reactions about their relative merits are thus (time and other posters will tell if this is right):
* Linking is good when it's a few, self-contained topics in common - as long as you don't accidentally import everything (you can't unimport, but have to delete the import file and start again). It is easy to set up, but can go wrong if projects are moved or renamed, or get complicated if too many projects are involved.
* Conditional flags/multiple targets is more fiddly (you have to consider hyperlinks, TOC, index entries etc as well as paragraphs and topics), but necessary when it's not just whole topics that are conditional, but little bits of them.
* Snippets can be used with either/both.
* All can be used for text and/or graphics.

[LTinker68]

There are people in the forums who have projects that contain thousands of topics and over a dozen conditional tags. You should be fine keeping it all in one project.

The conditional tags/multiple targets isn't an issue, really, so long as you properly include/exclude the appropriate conditions. The trick is to remember that applying a condition to a TOC entry does not prevent the topic from being included in the output -- it only prevents the TOC entry from appearing. If you don't want a topic to appear in a particular output at all, then you apply the conditional tag to the topic file itself, which also conditions out any corresponding TOC entries.

One project versus multiple projects also makes it easier for things like the index and glossary.

[RamonS]

The way Flare is designed to structure projects you can handle these project no problem. I think the limitation is not set by Flare, but how usable and manageable a huge project ends up to be. Flare only deals with the topics and components (such as ToC) currently open plus the project file. So it doesn't really matter of the project contains 5 topics or 5,000.

[Richard Ferrell]

I've seen Flare projects with 21k in topics and Images in them, It does take forever to build, but it can be done! With Large projects its best if the project is on a local drive and also in Source Control for backup purposes.

[Cecily]

I retract my recommendation of Global Project Linking - stick to snippets and condition tags!

I thought I'd got GPL sussed, but it's all gone wrong again (http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =13&t=7379).

[Andrew]

The way Flare is designed to structure projects you can handle these project no problem. I think the limitation is not set by Flare, but how usable and manageable a huge project ends up to be. Flare only deals with the topics and components (such as ToC) currently open plus the project file. So it doesn't really matter of the project contains 5 topics or 5,000.

I'd agree with this pretty much 100% -- your ability to organize information (as well as your computer's performance) seem to be the limiting factors in project size. There are problems with Flare in terms of organizing large projects -- for example, if you want to use a lot of snippets, there are no really good ways to organize and then use them. Once you get beyond a few dozen snippets, things start to get annoying.

[SusanNicholson]

To give you an example of my experience with what you are trying to achieve:

- I have one source project that has 6 different outputs.
- The source project contains 3 128 topics and 3 187 images.
- My project directory is 165Mb.
- I have used snippets extensively, organinsing these into logical directories. I currently have 625 snippets in the project.
- I have also used conditional build tags at a topic, snippet and text level to identify content.

I have had no problems with corrupting like I did with previous help applications. For example, RoboHelp used to corrupt as the project file stored so much information, and once it went over a certain file size, it corrupted.

Using snippets and conditions has made my life SO much easier, as I do not have to maintain 6 projects and apply updates across all of them individually.

[ShannonF]

Thanks, I think I am finally on the right track