Flare Print Publishing, Stage 3: Creating a Book Structure

This is the third installment in a series of articles outlining my suggestions for developing a Flare 4 print publishing strategy. Each article represents a stage in the process. This article provides suggestions, tips, and key points for successful print publishing with Flare. It is not a replacement for Flare’s comprehensive online help and how-to guides.

Recommended prerequisite reading:

• Stage 1: Laying the Foundation
• Stage 2: Defining Styles

In previous articles, I explained how to lay the groundwork for successful print publishing in Flare 4. I recommended methods for planning and developing your print style set. As a starting point, I provided a core set of style examples. If you have completed the initial style work, congratulations!

The next stage in the print publishing process is to create a set of specialized, print-only topics that you can use to determine a book structure for printed content. Each topic serves as a placeholder for content that appears in various sections of a book.

Goals of this stage:

• To define a book structure
• To set up the book structure using specialized, print-only topics

After creating the topics, you will use page layouts, a print-only TOC, and a print target (such as PDF, Word, FrameMaker, or XPS) to connect the topics to book sections and create the final book. This article focuses only on the steps for determining what book sections you want and adding print-only topics that correspond to each section.

Step 1: Define a book structure.

Let’s say that you want to create a user’s guide with the following sections:

• Cover page
• Copyright page
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Chapters
• Glossary
• Index

To set up the above structure, you need a topic for all sections except chapters. Why? Because chapter content comes from your informational topics (concepts, procedures, reference material, and other information types). While authoring topics, you manage print-vs-online variations through styles and conditional text. Later in the print publishing process, you add a print-only TOC (.fltoc file) that combines all of your print-only topics and informational topics in a hierarchy. Thus, you don’t need a specialized print topic for chapters.

Step 2: Set up the book structure.

This section explains various aspects of setting up a book structure. It includes the following topics:

• Setting up a folder for print-only topics
• Adding topics
• Adding content to topics
• Excluding print-only content from online help output

Setting up a folder for print-only topics

When working in a Flare project, you need a storage location where you can easily find print-only topics. I recommend creating a print-only folder under the root folder of the Content Explorer.

To set up the folder, follow these steps:

1. Display the Content Explorer.
2. Right-click the Content folder (root folder), then select New Folder from the shortcut menu.

Adding topics

Now that you have a designated folder for print-only topics, you can start adding topics.

To add a topic, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the name of your print-only folder, then select select Add Topic from the shortcut menu.
2. Add a topic name that describes the topic’s purpose (such as printGlossary). I recommend prefixing the word print to each print-only topic name.
3. In the topic, add a heading that corresponds to the appropriate section in the book (such as Contents, Glossary, or List of Figures).

The initial contents of your print-only folder might resemble the following alphabetically ordered list:

• printCopyrightPage
• printCoverPage
• printGlossary
• printIndex
• printLOF (for a list of figures)
• printLOT (for a list of tables)
• printTOC

Adding content to topics

Like online content, the content of your printed books is generated during a build. Content comes from various sources:

• Cover page content comes from your cover page topic. You can add a book title, subtitle, and other identifiers to the topic, then apply styles and add images. If you need more sophisticated text and image placement, you can also set up a page layout for the cover page. When you later create a print-only TOC (.fltoc), you can set up the first TOC page so that it points to the cover page topic. You then set the TOC page properties to point to the appropriate page layout. I will discuss page layouts and print-only TOCs in the next two installments of this series. I promise that it will all make sense!
• Chapter content comes from standalone topics. Using a print-only TOC, you can assemble the topics in a preferred hierarchy for print.
• Content for a printed TOC, lists of figures and tables, glossary, and index comes from print-only topics that contain proxies.

Understanding proxies

A proxy is a placeholder for content. When you use Flare to create online help, the help content is generated from a master page that can include proxies for breadcrumbs, body text, and mini-TOCs.

When you use Flare to create printed output, you insert proxies into your specialized print-only topics. Flare offers proxies for many types of typical book sections, including a TOC, list-of elements, glossary, and index. You can also include mini-TOCs at the beginnings of chapters.

As shown in the following image, an inserted proxy appears as a gray box:

When you build a target, Flare replaces the proxy with generated content:

Inserting a proxy

To insert a proxy into a topic, follow these steps:

1. Place the insertion point wherever you want the content to appear.
2. Select the following menu command: Insert > Proxy. Each command on the Proxy submenu inserts a different type of proxy.

Modifying a proxy

Most of the time, default proxy settings will probably suit your presentation requirements. If you need to change global proxy settings such as margins or padding, modify the proxy style settings in your style sheet.

Here is a list of proxies included in a Flare style sheet:

• MadCap | bodyProxy
• MadCap | breadcrumbsProxy (for online navigation)
• MadCap | conceptsProxy (for a list of concepts)
• MadCap | endnotesProxy
• MadCap | glossaryProxy
• MadCap | indexProxy
• MadCap | listOfProxy
• MadCap | miniTocProxy
• MadCap | tocProxy

You can also change some proxy settings after inserting a proxy into a topic. To do this, right-click the proxy and select Edit {Name} Proxy from the shortcut menu.

The following table summarizes settings found in proxies used for printed output.

Excluding print-only content from online help output

Since your print-only topics are designed to create a book structure, you probably don’t want them to appear in your online help. You can exclude them from the online TOC, and you can apply a print-only condition tag to the folder that contains the topics. The problem is, search results can sometimes include conditionalized content.

Fortunately, Flare provides a useful setting that includes or excludes content from full-text search. Thus, you can apply a condition tag to the topics and apply the setting to exclude them from search results.

This section explains how to (1) exclude print-only topics from full-text search; and (2) apply a print-only conditional tag to those same topics.

To exclude entire topics from online help output, follow these steps:

1. Open the File List pane by selecting the following menu command: View > File List
2. Using the Filter drop-down on the upper right, filter the list to show only *.htm,*html files.
3. Click the Path column to sort the list by file location.
4. Scroll through the file list until you see the contents of your print-only folder.
5. Click to select the first print-only topic.
6. Press and hold the Shift key, then click the last print-only topic.
   
7. Right-click the selected list, then select the Properties command in the shortcut menu. The Properties window opens.
8. Exclude the selected topics from full-text search:
   1. Select the Topic Properties tab.
   2. In the Searchable section, clear the check box labeled Include this topic when full-text search database is generated.
9. Apply your print-only conditional tag to the selected topics:
   1. Select the Conditional Text tab.
   2. Check the box to the right of your print-only tag.
10. Click OK to close the Properties window.

What’s next?

Creating specialized print topics is a significant step in the Flare print publishing process. You’re almost there! In the next installment of this series, I will explain how to design a book layout.

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