Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

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Baum&Help
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Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

Unread post by Baum&Help »

Hi,

Some of the products for which we create help, are based on Smallworld GIS from GE. In their new version they abandoned the CHM format, and deliver only Web help, created with Madcap Flare.
Until now they did not offer us any way of integrating our additional user help besides using Madcap Flare too. We (and most of our customers) invested heavily in building project files and libraries that are published based on publish tags. And we want to stick to H&M.
My question is this: is there any way to import/export to Madcap flare from H&M? In the end we want the same as what we have now: 1 master library for every application, containing resources from ourselves, GE and third parties.
The goal is to present our users one Webhelp with seamlessly integrated TOC's and a SEARCH that goes over all content, regardless where it comes from.
Can you help us with this?

André van den Boogert
Realworld Software Products
Culemborg, The Netherlands
André van den Boogert
Realworld Systems
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Tim Green
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Re: Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi André,
Baum&Help wrote:My question is this: is there any way to import/export to Madcap flare from H&M?
Flare projects are not supported for importing or exporting. Your only option here would be to import Flare's HTML output. However, that would probably involve a lot of work, since the formatting would be imported as inline CSS.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Baum&Help
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Re: Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

Unread post by Baum&Help »

Thanks for the quick answer. This indeed isn't the best solution.
Maybe I might ask you a general question: is there anywhere software that merge 'plain' Webhelp into one?
André van den Boogert
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Tim Green
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Re: Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi André,
Baum&Help wrote:Maybe I might ask you a general question: is there anywhere software that merge 'plain' Webhelp into one?
Help & Manual's HTML import feature does allow you to import the plain HTML without styling. There is a filter for that. After you select the folder containing the HTML files and tree (sub-folders will be turned into chapters) the HTML import options include a setting called "Ignore HTML styles and use default styles (except margins, bold, italic and underline)". This allows you to import the raw HTML with basic formatting that you can then style in Help & Manual without additional work to remove all the cruft from the source HTML. 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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cindynotbrady
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Re: Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

Unread post by cindynotbrady »

Do you think it possible to create a sort-of "Frankenstein" site with both Flare and HelpAndManual delivering the content? We did that with Dreamweaver and Help&Manual. We keep the Dreamweaver files within a different folder than the content generated by Help and Manual. Then we added a Global Search that searches all of it.

With the help of our web gurus, we designed both skins to look as similar as possible.
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Re: Integrating H&M (Webhelp) with madcap Flare?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Cindy,

You can achieve the global search with both the full version of Zoom (provided you use a separate search page, not in HM WebHelp output) and with Google Site Search. As for combining HM and Flare: I wouldn't try to combine them in the same page or folder. However, the V3 skins in Premium Pack 3 have the ability to be embedded in any other page, so theoretically you could put a HM WebHelp inside any page you like. In addition to that you can also call V3 WebHelp topics from any other web page and display them on their own, without leaving the other page and without having to display the entire WebHelp interface (which can still always be displayed if the user wants it).

See here in the PP3 documentation for details on this:

http://www.it-authoring.com/info/pp3hel ... edded.html
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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