How popular do I think this Markdown import feature will be? It depends on your authoring scenario and how engineers contribute to your docs. For example, if you plan to edit and manage the content in Flare after importing the content, you wouldn’t select the “Auto-reimport before generate output” box because reimporting the same file would overwrite any changes you made in Flare.įor more details about the Markdown import feature, see the video What’s New in MadCap Flare 2021 (specifically, 2:05 to 9:41) by Paul Stoecklein, Director of Documentation at MadCap Software:įor a text version, see What’s New? on MadCap Software’s site. If you prefer to edit the Markdown files after import, you can also do that. (Note that importing Markdown files bypasses the content management features you might use in Flare, such as snippets, variables, and conditional tagging.) In the import workflow, you opt to essentially turn Flare off as an editor and instead use Flare as a publishing engine for the content. This workflow points to one of the most interesting aspects of the Markdown import. This treats the import not as a one-time task but rather as part of a regular authoring and publishing workflow. This setting (which is optional) allows you to reimport the Markdown files in an automated way each time before you build your output in Flare. The Markdown import options also include a box called “Auto-reimport before generate output”: Option to auto-reimport before building the output It’s much more robust and specialized to your project’s styles and settings. In short, the import isn’t just a Markdown-to-HTML conversion. When you create the import, Flare creates an import file that remembers and stores all of your settings. The import will also pull images directly into Flare - assuming the images are in the same import directory as the Markdown files (not web links). You can also specify which Markdown element should signal a new topic in Flare (such as breaking up the Markdown file at H1) this might be useful if you’re importing a massive Markdown file that needs to be chunked up. With lists, you can choose to map them to regular list styles or paragraph list styles. With tables, you can choose to map them to special table stylesheets in Flare.
#Madcap flare code
If a fenced code block has a language lexer, such as ```java, that code is mapped to a code block in Flare and will automatically be syntax-highlighted with the specified language. In this example, the CSS shown is just the standard HTML elements, but you could also have specific classes and divs instead. Here’s what the style mapping dialog box looks like: Flare's style mapping options with Markdown file import The mapped stylesheet can be your main stylesheet in Flare or a special stylesheet you’ve created just for the Markdown import.
With Flare, you can map each of the Markdown elements to CSS elements in your project. However, Flare’s Markdown import editor goes beyond just importing Markdown content. In this case, the technical writer acts more like a content curator and publisher instead of author.Īdmittedly, converting Markdown to HTML is a no-brainer with tools like Pandoc. The tech writer takes the Markdown files that these engineering teams write and imports the files into Flare, mapping the Markdown elements to CSS styles in Flare, mapping tables to table styles, deciding where to break the Markdown files into multiple topics, and more before publishing.
A tech writer might be working with various engineering teams that prefer to write content in Markdown.
#Madcap flare software
The scenario MadCap Software envisions for tech writers importing Markdown is as follows. The supported Markdown flavor is CommonMark Markdown (which is also the standard embraced by OpenAPI). Instead, the workflow is one of importing Markdown files (authored elsewhere) into Flare. Note that the Flare editor doesn’t support native authoring in Markdown directly.
In the Project > Import menu, “Markdown Documents” now appears as an option: Markdown file import feature in Flare 2021 In the MadCap Flare 2021 release, you can now import Markdown files directly into your Flare projects in a robust, automated way. Markdown Import Feature in Flare 2021 Release
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