From late summer to the present, I have been developing and supporting a library of MadCap Flare templates for the NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT). The CBIIT Technical Writing team is transitioning to Flare from a FrameMaker-to-ePublisher workflow.
Flare templates provide a lot of publishing power and flexibility. Using Flare, I was able to provide a single sourcing solution that includes templates for authors, collaborators, and contributors. I am now building a Flare Knowledge Base on the NCI Wiki (Confluence-based) so that NCI CBIIT Flare users can search for and contribute to a repository of tips and solutions. I will write more about my process for developing the templates in an upcoming post.
I have also been serving as technical editor on a collaborative project between the NCI and the Health Level 7 (HL7) organization. The project involves implementation of the Services-Aware Interoperability Framework, also known as SAIF (pronounced “safe”). I work closely with enterprise architects to develop content that will eventually become part of a blended learning solution for NCI analysts, architects, and developers.
NCI CBIIT is also considering a DITA strategy. As part of the preliminary work, I conducted a formal evaluation of two prospective DITA editing tools. You can view the results of my testing on the HL7 Wiki: XML Tool Considerations page. I welcome comments from readers who are experienced with either tool.
In the meantime, here’s to 2010! I wish you the best.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the post and the evaluation of the two DITA editing tools. A question on the NCI work: as you move from Framemaker to Flare, are you keeping ePublisher?
Isabelle, thank you for visiting my site and for adding a comment.
At this point we are working with an older version of ePublisher, and our maintenance has expired. We want to be able to produce both online and printed output from one tool, so we decided to make the move to Flare.
Eddie,
Nice comparison of the software. I especially liked the comparison of feature sets.
Any thoughts about the overall ease of use of XMetaL and oXygen? It’s been a while since I’ve used XMetaL (actually, the last time I did SoftMetal Corp. developed it), and I’m wondering how much better or not the interface is compared to that of oXygen.
Hi Scott. Thanks for the comments and the compliment.
On a surface level, the two editors are quite similar. Both have numerous toolbars, left panels for managing DITA maps, and right panels for adding elements and assigning attributes. Both offer a simple tags-on view for DITA authoring. Where the tools differ is in the task path. XMetal tends to mask certain complexities by providing button clicks or dialog boxes to handle them. oXygen often requires more steps to perform the same task.
Even so, I like a lot of things about oXygen. I appreciate that I can run it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The DITA features are still evolving, but it seems like a better all-purpose editor. It has a built-in SVN client, SVN Syncro, which you can also use as a standalone tool. And my experience with the support team has been consistently good.
Are you considering either of these tools?
Right now, I’m using the Open Source version of Serna for whatever XML editing I’m doing. It’s a good tool, but it doesn’t hurt to see what else is out there.
“I am now building a Flare Knowledge Base on the NCI Wiki ”
Are you truely integrating Flare and Confluence for the wiki, or are you accessing the Flare KB through Confluence? What I think I hear you saying is that there is the Flare KB and users leave their thoughts, etc, using the Confluence wiki and its editor.
The reason I ask is that I have a CEO that is tech-ish and he wants a wiki and he likes Flare. Could you expand just a bit on how the templates work with Confluence without giving away any of your trade secrets?
Tks
Lew
Hi Lew, and thank you for your comments and questions.
I wish I had trade secrets to give away (or sell!), but I am not truly integrating Flare and Confluence. As far as I know, wiki integration is not yet possible from Flare. At one point, I submitted an enhancement request to encourage MadCap to add a couple of types of wiki output. I work in a very wiki-centric environment where much of what passes as wiki “documentation” isn’t managed by true information developers. Right now we use Flare mainly to produce WebHelp and PDF output, though I believe that Flare is an interesting hybrid of a tool that, with continued evolution, will no longer be classified as a HAT.
For now I am simply building a Confluence knowledge base so that our Flare-related information is all in once place. I also want to give the other writers on the team opportunities to contribute content.