Category: Flare for Programmers

material about MadCap Flare and document automation

Version Filters in HTML5 Output

Keep the condition tags but skip the target settings. Quick unpaid promotion! Attend MadWorld for my session and many others. Meet and learn from top technical communicators. sample project You can apply conditions to your Flare content and use those conditions to create a version filter in your Flare HTML5 output. The main ingredients are… Continue reading Version Filters in HTML5 Output

Combining Generated and Flare-managed Content

One way to combine generated content with Flare-managed content is to use snippets. Here is a generic structure: Generated topics each contain: Generated snippet – periodically refreshed Generated snippet – updated with Flare editors Consider a simple case where the generated content comes from a CSV file. For this example, the CSV is analogous to… Continue reading Combining Generated and Flare-managed Content

Web Services Can Be Used in Dynamic and Static Content

Dynamic content and web services complement each other. Flare topics generated from HTML5 targets can use JavaScript to call a web service to show dynamic content based on what is returned from the web service. An advantage of dynamic content is it is always up-to-date. Disadvantages include slower loading times due to extra scripting and… Continue reading Web Services Can Be Used in Dynamic and Static Content

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 6, of wiki template articles and snippets)

A mapping effort chronicled in a blog is less than exciting to read. So let’s switch gears and lay some groundwork for the parser. We will use a Wikipedia article as the first test and as a guide for what parts of the markup to tackle firstly. Since wikis are moving targets, we will work… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 6, of wiki template articles and snippets)

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 5, Still Mapping)

Initially I wanted to distinguish between parsing and mapping. But as I study MediaWiki markup, I am increasingly convinced the best approach is to map the markups and create a parsing algorithm based on that. I took a break from this series for some other posts. This is a late evening endeavor. So the pace… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 5, Still Mapping)

MadCap Flare + Python + Google Calendar = Topic-based Training Session Scheduler?

There is no code at the end of this post. I’m just brainstorming. What triggered this is a blog post at Google: Python Client Library for Google APIs is out of Beta. Here are some other links for the library: Google APIs Client Library for Python & Write your First App: Prerequisites (Google Calendar API v3). The idea is… Continue reading MadCap Flare + Python + Google Calendar = Topic-based Training Session Scheduler?

A Simple Flare HTML5 Output ‘Re-skin’ with PHP

Although I am not a huge fan of PHP, there are some things it does well. One of those is content reuse on web pages. Having previously built a (no longer extant) website which used little more of PHP than the include function, I admit the choice saved a lot of time and code for… Continue reading A Simple Flare HTML5 Output ‘Re-skin’ with PHP

Flare Topic Titles, Topic Headings, and TOC Labels

If you create Flare topics and TOCs outside of the Flare application, it is a good idea to learn the differences between topic titles, topic headings, and TOC entry labels. In the Flare UI, when you drag a topic from a Content folder to a TOC in the TOC Editor, the topic is added to… Continue reading Flare Topic Titles, Topic Headings, and TOC Labels