Icon Graphics update for 700 topics takes 168 hours plus

[Joywriter]

It's taking one writer 18 hours to write scripts to update icon graphics for one project (only 700 topics) and another writer 168 hours to go into each topic and do "clean-up" ... plus other writers cannot be working in the project while the clean-up takes place because of the danger of links that are in the process of being changed, not getting to the files that are open. I am so disappointed with the lack of functionality of FLARE to efficiently deal with a standard occurrence in producing online help and perform an icon update. Who has over 180 hours to do this process? I cannot recommend this software.

[Andrew]

It's taking one writer 18 hours to write scripts to update icon graphics for one project (only 700 topics) and another writer 168 hours to go into each topic and do "clean-up" ... plus other writers cannot be working in the project while the clean-up takes place because of the danger of links that are in the process of being changed, not getting to the files that are open. I am so disappointed with the lack of functionality of FLARE to efficiently deal with a standard occurrence in producing online help and perform an icon update. Who has over 180 hours to do this process? I cannot recommend this software.

I'm a bit confused as to what you are trying to do exactly, but I've found that Flare is typically very reliable with its automated link updates. Plus, when that fails, the Find / Replace tool works well.

Do you mean updating icons from your software, as in, the software you document's icons have changed, so you have to update them all in Flare? If so, why not just replace the graphic files and use the current img links you already have?

[Joywriter]

Our software is undergoing a major GUI update and will incorporate over 60 new icons. Our FLARE guru writer had to write scripts (18 hours) to automate the (Find and Replace) process and point graphics to a new folder. Finding and Replacing multiple occurrences of changed icon is a time intensive process. Because we started with FLARE in its inception, graphics were placed in one communal folder for all "folders." Our first phase of GUI update is for one folder only, and the other "folders" will be phased in as developers refresh them in stages. The writer charged with the 168 hours to accomplish this task is doing essentially relinking. I can't believe the amount of time this process will take.

[Andrew]

I guess I still don't understand why you would have to relink anything.

I would open the Find / Replace tool and find/replace in code, in the current document, then I would find /Resources/Images (or wherever your images are stored) and replace it with /NewImagePath. Then I would open each topic in the folder that had to be fixed, use Find Next and Replace until that topic was complete, save, close. Then move on to the next topic. I can't imagine this taking more than a couple of days for some subset of 700 topics.

[Joywriter]

Hmmm. Our flprj (containing some six folders) had most icon images (some duplicated) not in Resources/Images. Again, we were new with the product and weren't trained to place iamges into Resources/Images. One of the folders is identified for the GUI update with new icon graphics. The others will still contain the old icons. All the icons have to be reshuffled into individual resources/images folder so links can be made to new icons for only one folder (700+ topics).

[Andrew]

If you wanted to, you could move all your graphic files into the Resources/Images folder using Flare's Content Explorer, which would change the links for you.

Then, you can do as I suggested above and Find / Replace for the topics that need it.

Then, using the Content Explorer again to move the pictures into any folders / subfolders you might want them to use, which updates the links for you.

Or am I missing something?

Hope that helps!

[Joywriter]

Perhaps, but what would be great is to have multiple select to move items into Content Management. Otherwise this too is a time-intensive, one-by-one manual process. Hence the 186 hours.

[Andrew]

Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "Content Management" but the Flare Content Explorer supports multi-select and then move multiple graphics all at the same time (yes, while updating all the links).

[LTinker68]

Perhaps, but what would be great is to have multiple select to move items into Content Management. Otherwise this too is a time-intensive, one-by-one manual process. Hence the 186 hours.

You don't have to move one file at a time, if that's what you mean. In the icon row at the top of the Content Explorer, click on the icon that looks like a calendar, sort of. The tooltip says "Show Files". When you click that, it splits the Content Explorer pane vertically, so you'll probably want to widen that pane while you do this. The new view is similar to what you see in Windows Explorer when you enable the Folders option.

Anyway, in this split view, click on a folder in the left split pane that contains images you want to move. You'll see the contents of that folder displayed in the right split pane. You can select multiple files in that right split pane and drag them into a different folder in the left split pane. Flare will then ask if you want to update all links -- select Yes.

There have been some who've reported that Flare throws an error if you try to move more than 100 files at a time. It still moves them and updates the links, but you have to close down Flare and restart it to get past that error. So move 25 or 50 images at a time.

[KevinDAmery]

... and I'd start questioning the qualifications of your "Flare guru" - this is pretty basic functionality and has been there since at least version 2.0 (that's when I started using Flare and it was there when I started - I ran into the same trouble you did when I was evaluating the software and a single phone call to my sales rep pointed me to the solution).

Edit: ok, just saw Jeff's post here:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =13&t=9863
and concluded that they must be related to the same issue.

If I'm reading this correctly, it sounds like the real problem is that the 700 topics were originally written as if the UI would have common images (i.e. the Add button was going to be the same everywhere) but now things are changing so that you'll have different buttons for similar functions depending on where you are (i.e. Add in Module A will be different from Add in Module B).

Leaving aside the wisdom of that approach (if it were me, I'd make the Add button look the same everywhere so that your users won't get confused... but hey, not my application so not my call...) this is different from just updating the locations of files - now you have to have some links follow the image to the new location but others go somewhere different. I'm not aware of any tool that would automatically do that unless you went through the process of tagging the images in some way. What we're describing is not a simple content management problem - it involves some degree of revision of the topics. Inevitably that is going to take longer than a simple file move.

[Paul Griffiths]

To be fair, moving multiple files can be a little unpredictable. Drag-and-drop seems to work OK, but cut-and-paste which works fine in the Folder view seems to become copy-and-paste in the Files view.