Single Source Diary - Day 3 Postamble

I spent most of this morning struggling with how to put two separate graphics on the same line in a Flare 4 page layout to mimic what we have in our Frame frontmatter template.

One complication is that both graphics are 72dpi reduced in Frame to 15%, and are in separate frames, grouped, one left-justified and one right-justified.

Full size, one of the graphics is 22 inches wide. So I pasted both onto one big hunkin' canvas, positioned them by hand, imported this monster into my Flare decoration frame, and then used the right-click Object selection to size it (I set both the Size and Print Size settings because it seemed like setting just the Print Size settings didn't let the graphic display in the Page Layout Editor.

Now that I think back, I probably could have used separate frames in the Flare layout also. DOH!

I don't like LCD monitors because when you bang your head on them, it doesn't hurt enough.

I just tried using the two frame method and it worked (to the degree I tried it; I did not want to nuke what I already did). I saw enough to know that I had picked the wrong road to travel.

So getting that demon behind me, what I really want to describe is the process of going from defining a page layout to match your Frame template to reviewing the results in a PDF target.

First of all, you need to have some content to apply the page layout to. I created a titlepage.htm file in Flare 4 to hold the title page content. When I open it in the XML editor, by default the first time it looks like a help topic.

If you have used Flare before, you will notice that the XML Editor toolbar in Flare 4 has some new gadgets. There is a Layout button and a Medium button. At first the Layout button defaults to Web. The Medium button defaults to Default (shocking!).

If you change Layout to Print, Medium changes to Print also, and your topic looks more like book than help suddenly.

You also need to create a new target (from the Project menu or the Project Organizer) and pick PDF as the output type.

You should then create a TOC for your PDF target, then associate that TOC with the PDF target (Edit the Target and pick Basic>Master TOC>your print TOC name).

Then add a topic or two to the Print TOC. To experiment with the page layout options, right-click on a toc entry and select Properties, then select Chapter Break>Start a new chapter document. Choose a Page layout from the drop-down for Configure chapter using this Page Layout, then pick a Page Type, and click OK. I love bolding text; it makes me feel like a real tech writer.

Now you are ready to try making a PDF.

You will also see another toolbar called Project (under View>Toolbar>Project) that has a Build Primary button with a drop down. Click the drop-arrow on the Build Primary button and select "Build PrintTarget" or whatever you called your PDF target. The compiler should be off and running, and in a short time a PDF should be viewable.

It might not look pretty at first, but here is the beauty of it. It is so easy in Flare to make a few

changes and kick off a target build that you can make incremental improvements and build every couple of minutes. Of course if you have a project with hundreds of topics, once you add them to the print TOC I imagine the builds will take a bunch longer. I haven't done that yet, to be honest.

Now I need to take a break for lunch and then this afternoon take stock of what I need to do next, because I am doing this on the fly and haven't thought it all out. That's a painful admission, but hey, I'm having fun. But this isn't a best practices course now is it?

Which should have been obvious after reading the first paragraph of this epistle.