Hve you imported a large Frame project into Flare?

[Spectre]

By large I mean, multiple chapters, with hundreds of images, and a thousand or so pages. I have read the Best Practices doc for importing into Flare, and I've been in touch with Madcap about various issues with the import process, but I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone who has actually done it, successfully.

[GregStenhouse]

Not quite that big, but a recently completed project was fairly complex:
38 frame files, 24 graphics, approx 200 pages (shared across two product variants via separate books & conditions)
Engish, French and Spanish (Chinese wasn't supported at the time, but apparently is now with 4.1)
Output to context sensitive HTML help, and Word
All without any additional work in Flare once set up (i.e. use Flare as a conversion tool, similar to WebWorks)

It was a fairly long road, but got there in the end successfully.

Is there anything specific you want to know?

Cheers
Greg

[RickHenkel]

We have a few that have over 300 images and nearly 3,000 FrameMaker pages. I use FrameScript to clean up a lot of things before I even try to import into Flare.

[doc_guy]

The reality is that the size isn't really an issue except for:

1. the time it takes to convert the project
2. the size of the Flare project (make sure you have space on the drive that contains your project folder)
3. the complexity increases with cross references, and potential for different style overrides with more pages.

But as for the conversion itself, it shouldn't matter what the size of the FrameMaker project is. Flare opens the Frame files, converts the file, closes the frame file, closes the Flare file, and moves on to the next file in the Frame project. So, if you have a big enough hard drive and enough time, then you you can import any size Frame project into Flare.

Of course, the flat file structure that happens on import is kind of a bummer, especially if you are talking hundreds and hundreds of files; that can be a pain, but not unovercomeable.

[Spectre]

Thanks for the replies.

When importing I've received a number of error messages that I describe here http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... f=5&t=7057

The advice from Madcap is to import the Frame project file by file, rather than attempt to import the entire book. I'm still getting the messages and as the quality of the images on import is also poor then it looks like I'm going to have to import the text only, then re-add the images later. This is no small task as there are hundreds of images. I have to concede that the images were stored in the Frame files rather than linked, which is obviously the approved method in Frame.

The recommendation from Madcap is to import the Frame files into Flare, such that I would be producing printed and html output from within Flare, rather than use the link option and keep the source files in Frame.

So, why did I start this thread, given that the course of action is fairly clear, if somewhat painful? Well I just wanted to know whether people had achieved this import, had removed Frame from the equation and are successfully using Flare to produce both printed and online documentation. However, I'd also be interested to know whether you have found that the the quality of images on import is acceptable.

Cheers.

[doc_guy]

I imported my Frame projects into Flare.

For the first book, I did everything manually (copy and paste) because I wanted to learn how to do everything in Flare. I had time on my side for this project, and I'm glad I did it, because I learned a lot about Flare during the process.

For my next book, I used the Frame importer. It took me a bit to tweak the importer to get the result I wanted. Mostly around topic breaks, but I was able to successfully import the Frame files. The images were fine for me, but I had imported the images into Frame by reference, not inserting them into the Frame file. However, our UI underwent a significant change during that process, so I ended up replacing most, if not all, of my images at that point anyway.

So the short answer is (1) Yes, I successfully imported Frame files into Flare. (2) I think image quality was fine, but for me it was irrelevant, because I had to change the images anyway.

I HIGHLY recommend the workflow of importing existing content into Flare and then using Flare as your primary editor. The re-importing process does work, but it can be very painful. My personal opinion is that you will be happier in the long run doing all your work in Flare.

[GregStenhouse]

I would recommend giving Flare's image conversion via distiller the big sidestep. It is not good at generating quality images, and offers no flexibility in defining the image type or compression etc.

Try going with an online-friendly format to start with (e.g. gif, jpg or png), import by reference in FrameMaker, and select not to preserve the image size. That way Flare should copy images to the project, and not generate new ones. If you must have callouts, either create them in a graphics program (i.e. in the image itself), or use a borderless table to position actual text next to the graphic.

An alternative is to use PassThrough markers to show images you have coped to Flare's image directory. This may be useful if:

• you have hundreds of images in TIF format etc - you could batch process the images using a graphics program, or
• you have embedded images, save FrameMaker as HTML to output online-friendly images (there is a setting in FrameMaker you can set the graphic format)

Copy the images to "[project]\Content\Resources\images" and insert a marker in FrameMaker where you want the image to appear. The PassThrough marker will look soemthing like:
<img src="../Resources/images/image.jpg" />

[NorthEast]

I've also imported a large project from Frame to Flare (10 books / 120 Frame files, converted to approx. 1800 topics in Flare).

On the whole I was quite pleased with how the import worked, the only negative points I had were:
- If you're mapping the Frame styles to a stylesheet, numbered lists in Frame cannot be mapped to standard HTML lists (i.e. ol or ul tags), only to paragraph styles. This means you have to use autonumber formats for lists.
- Graphics with call-outs didn't convert at all - I just got grey boxes. This was due to be fixed in v4, I haven't checked if it has.

[Spectre]

Greg,

I would recommend giving Flare's image conversion via distiller the big sidestep.

I couldn't agree more. Incidentally I received the following message from Madcap on the result of importing Frame files with images:

"We have discovered that Frame files with embedded images require that the Generate Images from Anchored Frame option be checked. If one uses referenced files, the import will behave as indicated, but with embedded images, since there is no actual file in the anchored frame, the image must be generated."

Though again, I would accept that having my images embedded in the Frame file is not recommended in Frame, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that there are problems with it elsewhere.