Why are MadCap Book Viewer files included?

[AndrewW]

Hello to all!

Maybe I'm missing something very obvious, because I'm very new to Flare. When I create a target and set the output type to PDF, not only do I get a PDF, but I get a .mcbook file and some resources and images created in the output folder too. (Some of the page layouts that get copied aren't actually applied anywhere in the project.)

If I publish the target, the extra files get copied to the destination along with the PDF! I understand that they might be MadCap Book Viewer files, but I can't really get my head why they are included. I set the output type to PDF, and I was expecting to get, erm... just the PDF.

Additionally, in my publish destination, I find a file called catapult.log.zip, which in fact contains nothing.

Does anyone know a way to avoid creating and copying these superfluous files? I can't see an option anywhere, but it would be a bit tiresome to have to delete them manually all the time.

Thanks!

[pcalnan]

I'm curious about that myself, Andrew.

Especially since I'm discovering a problem that might be related to this and, if so, is rather disconcerting.

Namely, if you "publish" multiple PDF files to the same destination... the existence of the .mcbook file and other files can prevent the file transfer from taking place.

I believe this to be the case because I try to "publish" to a shared directory called "PDFs" (unoriginal, I know) but only one of the targets appears. If I delete the mcbook file and other extraneous stuff, the file transfer takes place properly without incident.

I too, therefore, would be most interested in an explanation about this.

Cheers,

Patrick

[pantherts]

I too have been experiencing this issue. I also publish to a single PDF folder containing various manuals and targets. The reason why you only see one target in your output is that the .mcbook file, I believe, tells Flare that a target has already been published to that location and therefore the PDF in that folder is "stale". Having said that, if you un-check the checkbox on the publishing prompt that says "Remove Stale Files" the target will properly publish to the location without deleting a different target's output. This is only a workaround and ideally it should be smart enough to know that you are using a different target and file name.

As for the Resources folder, I have noticed that some of my targets output this folder and some do not. This presents a bit of an issue since we have a server 1000 miles away that I publish to and for the targets that do include this folder it must copy every single image to that server every time I publish! I tried to narrow down the differences between a target that doesn't publish the Resources folder and one that does but was unable to come to any conclusion. Hopefully someone has some advice on this issue? I'm glad I'm not alone on this one.

[Andrew]

I've talked with MadCap Support about the publishing lots of extraneous junk with PDF files, and they are aware of the issue. I suggest going to MadCap's bug report/feature request page and adding your voices to those requesting that PDF output be just that: a PDF.