Meanwhile in the workplace

We are awaiting the release of Flare 4. I tried the beta and it was pretty good, but then my PC got crabbed up and we had to give it a wipe, so bye-bye Flare beta. Did not reload it because by that time we were under the gun to release product, so no play time.

Now the release is just about out, so it would be a good time to do some more preparation. We are ready to upgrade Framemaker and Acrobat to 8 (yes we lag a good bit; but if we upgrade and hit a bug that stops our production, we are hosed so better safe.

Between releases, I am looking at making changes to our Frame templates, and to go back through our Flare help and update the css files (in the rush, they tend to get out of synch). Also looking at aligning the Frame template formats closer to the Flare css formats. The books are Book Antiqua while the Help is Verdana, and we do move info between them so it would help to reduce retagging.

It is nice to dream about single sourcing in Flare (or Frame if it actually worked well, but) and also about moving to DITA, but in our undermanned situation, the conversion would bog us way down. So small steps is the best way we can make progress.

Boy this is boring stuff for anyone reading from the outside. But it is good to record it in frozen electrons, rather than mentally rehash it on a daily basis.