> Some clarifications: Blaze is the younger sister of Flare 4. If you need > complex print and online docs, then you want Flare 4. If you only need > printed output, then you want Blaze. Everything that's in Blaze will be in > Flare 4.
I really don't understand this, I'm not trying to be difficult... But if Flare does everything that Blaze does and more, and Flare's been out for years, why develop Blaze at all? I guess I don't see the point of spending the time, energy, and money to develop a brand new product that does a subset of what another of your products already does. > One of the biggest differences in Blaze - and really, Flare - is that you > are not authoring long documents, but rather you're authoring topics. Then, > using Outlines, you put together the topics into the deliverables; for > example, a User's Guide and an Admin Guide. The classic authoring model for FrameMaker is indeed long document authoring, but it's not so with DITA. > There's nothing to prevent you from authoring just like you do in Word of > Frame in that you can open a new topic in Blaze and then write a 200 page > document in one topic. But by doing that, you lose the power of topic-based > content development that easily allows content reuse across multiple > deliverables for one or more projects. Well, agreed. That would be just silly. For the record, I've done topic-based authoring in FrameMaker years ago. It's all about how you approach your content structure. I needed to leverage topics in different documents in different ways, so I just created a new document for every portable topic. I don't think topic based content authoring is a revolutionary concept. > I strongly urge you to attend one of my online demos to learn more about the > paradigm shift for Blaze. I don't see a paradigm shift at all, but the UI is way different than what non-Flare users would be accustomed to. But paradigm shift, no. Topic based authoring is not a new concept. > As to DITA or CMS, > check out our just announced product Team Server. It's a workflow management > tool that's amazing. We have ideas about what it should do but we want your > input about what you need that tool to do. I'm confused. Is it a product or is it an idea for a product? > I'm delighted to answer questions about Blaze or any of our products. If you > could send those questions to my MadCap email, that would help me a lot. > sburton at madcapsoftware.com, please. I'll keep my questions on the list since that's where they originated. -- Bill Swallow HATT List Owner WWP-Users List Owner Senior Member STC, TechValley Chapter STC Single-Sourcing SIG Manager http://techcommdood.blogspot.com
