Authoring and Publishing for Print, Online, Desktop and Mobile Documentation
MadCap Flare is the professional content authoring tool used by technical writers and documentation specialists to create, manage, and publish content for both print and online documentation. Whether used to create content for complex digital print publishing (PDF) or online Help systems (WebHelp and WebHelp Mobile), MadCap Flare provides a robust authoring and publishing solution for your professional technical communication needs.
Flare Features
MadCap Flare™ is packed with features and has been designed to give technical writers, content authors and documentation specialists a versatile XML-based authoring and publishing solution. Flare’s intuitive user interface allows users to easily create and manage content, import legacy authoring projects, and publish to a wide variety of sources, all from a single source document. MadCap Software is passionate about its users, and strives to provide all of the features you have come to expect in a high-end authoring and publishing system, including:
Topic-based Content Development
- Author in structured, topic-based content development for powerful, sophisticated, information delivery
Maximum Content Reuse
- Easily create, manage and reuse content with conditional text, variables, snippets, TOCs, style sheets, and more
XML Flexibility And CSS Design
- Enjoy flexibility with XML (extensible markup language) and control the look and style of your content with CSS
(cascading style sheets)
Global Project Linking and External Resources
- Share and update common elements across multiple projects
- Direct Microsoft SharePoint integration
Product Integration
- MadCap Flare allows for seamless integration across MadCap Software’s entire line of software applications.
- MadCap Feedback Server provides user feedback and reporting
- MadCap Analyzer scans and analyzes your project for suggestions to improve your project efficiency and consistency
- MadCap Mimic and Capture provide powerful multimedia publishing integration for your projects
- MadCap Lingo enables translation and localization
- MadCap Contributor makes it simple and easy for anyone in your organization to review and contribute content to your documentation
Source Control
- Native source control integration, including:
- Apache Subversion
- Microsoft® Team Foundation Server
- Microsoft® Visual SourceSafe
- Plus, integration with all industry source control systems that use the Microsoft SCC API interface
Import Existing Content
- Adobe® FrameMaker® (.fm, .mif, .book)
- Microsoft® Word™
- HTML/XHTML
- RoboHelp® projects
- HTML Help projects
- CHM
- DITA
Generate Multiple Outputs
- Cross-browser, cross-platform Help (WebHelp or WebHelp Plus)
- Microsoft® HTML Help (.chm)
- Help for .NET applications (DotNet Help)
- Adobe® FrameMaker® (.fm, .mif, .book)
- Direct PDF (no need for Adobe® Distiller or Word™)
- Microsoft® Word™ (.xml, .doc, .docx)
- Direct XPS
- WebHelp AIR (Direct Adobe® AIR integration)
- Pure XHTML
- DITA
- Mobile (iPhone, Microsoft Mobile, Palm Web OS, BlackBerry and Android)
Print-Based Output Features
- Choose between Print and Web layout views
- Page layouts
- Context-sensitive cross-references
- Footnotes
- Topic preview for print-based output types
- Generate headings in output based on TOC structure
- Heading variables (automatically generate page headers for content, generated glossaries and generated indices)
- Hyphenation control
- Mini-TOC for a single chapter or section
- Short line elimination
- Widow and orphan control
- Zoom/scale pages
- Page breaks on table rows
- Image resizing with aspect ratio maintained
Power and Flexibility
- Advanced reporting with Analyzer (over 70 project-specific reports)
- ASPX, HTML, and other custom file extensions for WebHelp output
- Enhanced Indexing (including index links and auto-indexes, which let you automatically generate index terms based on words or phrases used throughout your project)
- Supports both raster and vector graphic formats including .xps, .xaml, .wmf, .emf, .ps, .eps, and .svg
- Context-sensitive Help testing (now available for DotNet Help)
- Wildcard search support for DotNet Help
Team Collaboration
- Incorporate document contributions from others
- Send topics out for review and accept or reject changes
- Incorporate/transfer review comments (annotations) into topics
- Contribution templates (contributors use elements and formatting you want)
- Locks (choose areas of content that reviewers can and cannot edit)
Multi-Language Support
- Fully Unicode enabled
- Double-byte and Asian language support
- Language support for Eastern European languages
- Seamless integration with MadCap Lingo for easy localization
Single-Sourcing Features
- Generate multiple targets from one project
- Variables and Snippets (re-usable text and content)
- Single-sourcing of images
- Conditional text (at all levels)
- Style sheets for topics and tables
- Easily synchronize with Word™ or FrameMaker® documents
- Global Project Linking — share and update common elements across multiple projects
- Master style sheets
- Master TOC at project level
Ease of Use
- Auto-numbering
- Visual document structure display
- View and edit multiple docs simultaneously
- Command line compiling
- Drag-and-drop table columns and rows
- View, filter, and access all files from a single list
- Disable styles that you do not use
- Auto-suggestion for approved phrases, variables, and snippets
- Zip and email projects
- Project toolbar for easy access to common tasks
- Style pick window (quick way to apply styles)
- Open files by dragging from Windows to Flare
- Insert snippets by dragging from Content Explorer
Server
- Integration with industry source control systems that use the MS SCC API interface
- Faster server-side search
- Searching of non-XHTML content (Word™ documents, PDF files, etc.)
- Automatic runtime merging of projects without any in-project work
