Communications from DMN

Following the tradition of previous DocTrain conferences, this one started off with a set of day-long pre-conference workshops. For a variety of reasons, I decided to take in the two sessions on topic-based authoring using MadCap Flare. Led my Mike Hamilton (MadCap’s VP of Product Management), the sessions opened my eyes to Flare’s capabilities and did a bit to change my opinion of the tool.

Not that I was anti-Flare or anything like that, but my brief flirtations with Flare left me thinking that it was a complex tool that would take a while to master. I still think that, but now I have an idea of what Flare can do and (to a degree) how to make it do the things that I want it to do.

The first session was notable because Hamilton gave some of the best explanations of XML, single sourcing, and multi-channel publishing that I’ve heard in a long time. You can see those explanations in the session slides that Mike Hamilton will be posting to his blog.

The morning session was an introduction to topic-based authoring with Flare, while the afternoon session focused on content control and publishing techniques. Hamilton took the participants fairly deeply into the application, and demonstrated how to use Flare to create content, and to import from Word and FrameMaker.

Hamilton also gave the group a quick run through of Flare’s upcoming DITA project import feature. At a high level, this feature can pull in a DITA topic map and enables you to map styles to the DITA files on import.

So, what did I get out of the session? A few things:

• Mike Hamilton stressed that when using Flare, you need to forget about how you worked with other tools. You don’t use Flare in the same way that you’d use, say, FrameMaker or Word.
• Planning a project is one of the keys to success when using Flare. Understand that needs, the scope, and the deliverables before even starting Flare. This seems like tech writing 101 but that’s something that some users of Flare seem to forget.
• Think in terms of topics. Hamilton suggested that you create what he calls a cloud of topics, and from there pull those topics together into your deliverables. Keep things based on tasks — identify the tasks, and then fold in the concepts (which explain why) and the reference material (which contain any additional information) into the tasks.

Overall, my impression was that the key to success in using Flare is preparation. Once you’re prepared, and once you know the application, creating content becomes smoother.