Here are a few additional likes and dislikes from my own experience (using Flare 2.0 to Flare 6.1):

Likes:
——–

Embedded .NET Help – Using the .NET Help output, we can seamlessly integrate help into our software applications. From an end user’s point of view the help is simply part of the application.

XML Back-end – All the things that interact together to make your outputs, such as the targets, TOCs and condition sets, are XML files. If Flare can’t do something that is required, it is easy for somebody with a bit of programming knowledge to create an add-in to provide that functionality.

Easy integration with third-party products by right clicking on an item and selecting Open With. Flare updates the WYSIWYG viewer in real time, so if an image is edited using a third-party editor, the WYSIWUG viewer is automatically updated to show the changes.

Variables – Our software is branded differently depending on the country that it is sold in. The ability to use variables, in conjunction with targets, to update our brand names on the fly is an absolutely critical feature. I don’t know how we would do without it!

Single-sourcing across Flare projects – We have a very complicated software suite, where several modules of functionality are shared across multiple applications. The ability to share content across multiple Flare projects provides a real productivity boost. Especially when combined with variables (see above). Whilst this feature isn’t perfect yet (deleted topics are not deleted from child projects), it has come a long way in the last couple of releases.

Helpful Customer Support – Overall, I have found the customer support team to be both friendly and helpful. They may not always provide a solution at the first time of asking, but they will keep on trying until a solution is found.

The ability to build from batch files and scheduled tasks. I can’t even begin to describe how many man hours this has saved.

Dislikes:
———–

Inconsistent/broken Conditioning – The way that conditioning is applied to items in a topic differs from how it is applied to files and folders. This has caused hours of frustration. Within a topic, if a parent tag is conditioned to be excluded, all child tags below it are also conditioned out (which is what I would expect). However, with files, if a parent folder is conditioned to be excluded, files and folders below the parent are still evaluated. In reverse (and even more worryingly), if a top level folder is conditionally included, all items below that folder are included in a build, even if they are conditionally set to be excluded.

Upgrade Issues – When upgrading to the latest version of Flare, almost without fail, something is guaranteed to break. I sometimes wonder whether I am working for Madcap’s QA Department (or whether they actually have one) with the number of bugs that we report. Fortunately, Madcap do have a helpful Customer Support team, who are usually quick to diagnose problems, and even release patches to correct the issues detected.

Half-finished features – I share the original author’s opinion, that in Madcap’s rush to release new features, they sometimes leave things buggy or incomplete. An example is the automatic image resizing feature, which allows you to automatically resize images based on settings specified in the stylesheet. This would be an absolutely fantastic time-saver, if it didn’t totally destroy the image quality to the point that the resized images are totally unusable.

Overall:
———-
In my opinion Flare is a fantastic product and I am yet to see a better help authoring tool on the market. If they could fix the conditioning issue I would give it 9/10. However, with that issue I would give it 7/10 overall.

Wonderful article! We’re currently using RH7 and are looking to either upgrade to RH8 or convert to Flare. We currently produce HTML Help and are looking to produce WebHelp. We rarely produce printed documentation.

Do you have anything new to add to your Flare Love/Hate list? It’s been a while, and I’m curious to hear whether Madcap has fixed some of the things you hate, or whether new versions of RH have improved and are now better than Flare.

Thanks,
Ling

Bear with me, but I am stil unsure of what to do with that Y topic. I have it linked to a “book” entry in the outline TOC. (Actually, my structure looks exactly like the picture MadCap provides in it’s Help topic on creating MiniTocs.)

What I have currently is this:

–an outline TOC (AdminToc)with the topics I want to include in the printed output. The “book” topic for each of the three chapters is linked to an intro.htm file, with the MiniTOC proxy in it (my “y” page). beneath each chapter are other topics (also H1s), but indented in the outline TOC.

–an .htm file with the TOC Proxy in it, called AdminGuideTOCProxy.htm. In my TOC outline file, the entry “Table of Contents” is linked to this .htm file.

–three .htm files, called AdminIntroChap1.htm. These are intended to be my Y pages, containing both the MIniTOC proxy and an intro page to the chapter, with the sentnece “This chapter contains the following sections…”

I am hoping you can look at the set of building blocks I have created so far (the files described above) and tell me how I am putting them together wrong.

Also, I have not yet applied those style sheet settings that you kindly sent… could this be the issue and not my “building blocks”? let me know if so and I will go edit my stylesheet now and rebuild.

And I REALLY appreciate your help…

tana

4.0 offers the mini-TOC for print now as well as online. Here’s more detail about how to get the Mini-TOC feature to work.

In your folder of topics (your help book), create a new topic (I’ll refer to it as Y) and go to Insert > Proxy > Insert Mini-TOC Proxy. Now here’s the catch: In the table of contents for your target, don’t include the Y topic. If you do, the Mini-TOC won’t appear.

Also, if you try specifying different depth levels in the Mini-TOC proxy, you might get an error — I’m not sure. I’d just leave it as the default.

As far as styling your Mini-TOC, I’ll show you what I use. You can pretty much copy this (except for the little graphic) directly into your stylesheet. I know I have some overlap with the default and online and print styles, but I’m too lazy to go through and remove the overlap. It’s working, and I simply left it as is.

Default (top) section of stylesheet:

MadCap|miniTocProxy
{
background-image: url(‘../Images/toolboxbg.jpg’);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-color: #e8e6da;
padding-left: 30px;
padding-right: 10px;
background-position: top left;
border: solid 1px #ccc9be;
margin-top: 0px;
padding-top: 5px;
width: 375px;
padding-bottom: 10px;
}

p.MiniTOC1
{
display: list-item;
list-style-type: none;
background-image: url(‘../Images/Topic.gif’);
background-position: center left;
padding-left: 20px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
}

p.MiniTOC2
{
display: list-item;
list-style-type: none;
background-image: url(‘../Images/Topic.gif’);
background-position: center left;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
padding-left: 20px;
margin-left: 35pt;
}

p.MiniTOC3
{
display: list-item;
list-style-type: none;
background-image: url(‘../Images/Topic.gif’);
background-position: center left;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
padding-left: 20px;
margin-left: 70pt;
}

Online section of stylesheet

MadCap|miniTocProxy
{
background-image: url(‘../Images/toolboxbg.jpg’);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-color: #e8e6da;
padding-left: 30px;
padding-right: 10px;
background-position: top left;
border-top: solid 1px #ccc9be;
margin-top: 0px;
padding-top: 5px;
width: 375px;
}

p.MiniTOC1
{
display: list-item;
list-style-type: none;
background-image: url(‘../Images/Topic.gif’);
background-position: center left;
padding-left: 20px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
}

p.MiniTOC2
{
display: list-item;
list-style-type: none;
background-image: url(‘../Images/Topic.gif’);
background-position: center left;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
padding-left: 20px;
margin-left: 35pt;
}

p.MiniTOC3
{
display: list-item;
list-style-type: none;
background-image: url(‘../Images/Topic.gif’);
background-position: center left;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
padding-left: 20px;
margin-left: 70pt;
}

a.MiniToc1
{
color: #720000;
text-decoration: none;
}

a.MiniToc2
{
color: #720000;
text-decoration: none;
}

Print section of stylesheet

p.MiniTOC1
{
mc-leader-offset: 0pt;
color: #686865;
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 10pt;
margin: 0;
padding-left: 0px;
width: 100%;
margin-left: 80px;
margin-bottom: 6px;
}

p.MiniTOC2
{
mc-leader-offset: 0pt;
color: #686865;
line-height: 10pt;
margin-bottom: 6px;
margin-top: 0px;
font-size: 14px;
margin-left: 125px;
}

MadCap|miniTocProxy
{
color: #686865;
margin-top: 6px;
margin-left: 100px;
background-image: url(‘../Images/toolboxbg.jpg’);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-color: #e8e6da;
padding-left: 30px;
padding-right: 10px;
background-position: top left;
border-top: solid 1px #ccc9be;
border-bottom-width: 1px;
}

Let me know if this works for you.

I was particularly struck buy your #14 under what you dont like: I have yet, after three weeks trying, to get MiniTocs to work. Can you please explain what you mean by your sentences:

“But the topic that the MiniTOC is embedded on can’t be listed in that TOC book or else the MiniTOC won’t show. You do, however, link the TOC book to the topic with the MiniTOC.”

I am unsure what you mean by “TOC book.” Do you mean the outline TOC?

Thank you; I am really hoping you can save me. I am incredibly frustrated with several issues to do with print output in Flare.
tana

Proxys last blog post..quietweb.info

Rather than the current: (type the text then) open the insert menu, select insert snippet, scroll through the 300 hundred snippets I currently have…

I’d be so much happier if the common tasks had quick shortcuts that don’t require I switch to mouse-navigation.

That being said, Flare rocks