About The Guide
Rough Guide To Flare – the Galaxy and Everything.
An independent, non-profit, collection of tips, tutorials and shortcuts to all things in the MadCap help authoring toolset. This site is not sponsored by MadCap Software, partners or any affiliates.
The Guide is authored in sunny, tropical Asia – where each day is a hot, humid summer or a tropical monsoon.
The guide covers topics on MadCap Flare, MadCap Blaze, MadCap Capture, MadCap Lingo, MadCap Analyzer, single-sourcing, DITA , style sheets and XML.
I have also included topics on Microsoft Visio, InDesign, Framemaker or PhotoShop, since that is what I find most of us use on a day to day basis anyway.
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Currently working exclusively with DITA in an enterprise environment – which means not as much time on Flare.
I always manage to find time to explore new versions of Flare, which is always fun.
The implementation of relationship tables from DITA in new versions of Flare, simply does so much more for WebHelp and HTML Help outputs. It is simply a more robust solution for linking related pieces of information. Great for creating and curating large repositories of web based information.
No simple undertaking, DITA authoring in Flare is something to look forward to. As a writer you’ll need to adjust to a new authoring style, which can be a bit restrictive and isn’t probably for all authoring projects. I am sure, building it into Flare and doing it right is no easy feat either. See DITA related podcast on Flare.
Writing posts
Most of the posts are typed on an offline blog posting application – Windows Live Writer. Not a whole lot of post-editing is used for the posts. Guest posts are encouraged.
Certified
Certifiably MAD for Flare v4 (its outdated). The current MAD certification available is for Flare v6.
Learn more
This Guide is no replacement for any of the following excellent resources.
- Community. For fast answers by a community of real experts and professional, your best bet is still the MAD peer-to-peer forums.
- Support. Get in touch with the MadCap support professionals.
- Training. Sign up for MadCap training by certified MadCap training professionals all around the world and get certified MAD.
- Books. Get books on MadCap Flare and related XML, help authoring best practices and CSS technologies to beef up your knowledge. Be a star – a single-sourcing authoring professional.
Statistically
Interestingly, my most popular post is still on high resolution graphics with Microsoft Visio – a recurring hot post.
Ted Rose
August 26, 2009
What are the main differences between Blaze and Flare? Which tool should we use, if most legacy input will come from Framemaker, and [most] output will be tri-pane HTML-based help?
Do these tools require that we “chunk” our existing manuals, i.e. prepare them for single-sourcing, before using Flare or Blaze?
Which tool offers the most options for outputting source files to translators who may still be using Word or Frame for their localized output?
Any advice you can offer will be appreciated. We need to make a purchasing decision in the next few months.
Thanks for your help.
Writer In Training
August 27, 2009
Hi Ted,
Great to hear from you. Blaze is essentially a print-only version of Flare. Flare is the full online/print xml authoring solution. Essentially everything else is the same from workflow, to UI. only the targets are limited to print only. Blaze was created to cater for a segment of tech comm industry where printed manuals were the main modus operandi. I can think of manuals for consumer electronics, Point of sales systems, machine operators manuals, hardware user guides. In your case, Ted, since you are looking for HTML help, you want to look at MadCap Flare.
You won’t have to chunk your existing manuals for Flare/Blaze. But you would get the best return on your investment if you did. Chunking in this case means, breaking existing chapters or sub sections into Flare/Blaze topics.
If you want to output to Word or Frame for localization then, then Flare and Blaze are both your candidates. If you want faster localization updates and want to maintain translations quickly , have a look at MadCap Lingo (currently at v2). If you don’t have a translation memory database but already manage localized deliverables, it would do well to consider looking at MadCap Lingo.
the current version can also import and translate not just Flare/Blaze projects but also localize picture caption text created in MadCap Capture, and native Microsoft Word documents.
Have a look at the reviews links section at the bottom of this site. I hope this is just enough information to get you started. Get in touch also with their sales staff, which are quite helpful. Trial and test the tools first to make sure they work for you in their current versions, probably the most important. Drop in a maintenance plan if you do decide to go ahead with a purchase.