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Building Output

After you have completed the first part of the development process (i.e., creating and designing content, developing targets), you are ready to build the final output. Of course, you can build the output at any point during the development process, but if you make additional changes to content, targets, or the look and feel, you will need to build the output again to make sure the changes are included in the files that you deliver to your end users.

Building the final output is very easy in Flare. It involves generating one or more targets in your project, usually with just the click of a button or two. Following are the different ways you can build your final output:

Primary target Do this if you are only concerned about building the primary target for your project. See Building the Primary Target.
Single target Do this if you want to build a target that is not designated as your primary target. See Building a Single Target.
Batch target Do this if you want to build and/or publish one or multiple targets in a batch from the user interface, perhaps scheduled to run at a specific time. See Building Output Using a Batch Target.

Tip: Because scheduled tasks in batch targets use Windows Task Scheduler, the settings in that utility are applied. By default, scheduled tasks will run only if you are logged on. However, you can change this setting in Windows Task Scheduler so that the batch runs whether you are logged on or not. To accomplish this, first open Windows Task Scheduler. The steps may be different depending on the operating system. For example, in Windows 7 click the Start button and select All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Task Scheduler. Then select Task Scheduler Library to see a list of your scheduled tasks. In the list select the appropriate task and click Properties. Click Run whether user is logged on or not (in Windows 7 this is on the General tab). Click OK. You will be prompted to enter your Windows login password. When you are finished working for the day, log off your computer (instead of shutting down completely). The task will run as scheduled.
Command line/batch Do this if you want to build targets from your operating system's command line. Using this method, you do not have to open Flare at all. In addition, this method allows you to build a single target or all targets in your Flare project in one batch. The best way to use this feature is to create a batch file with the necessary commands in it. Then you can use a scheduling tool (such as the "Scheduled Tasks" utility in Windows) to run the batch file automatically whenever you want. This is similar to the "batch target" feature. However, the command line feature works outside of the Flare interface, is a bit more manual, and does not support as many processes. See Building Targets Using the Command Line.

When you build a target, Flare creates output files and places them in a folder named after the target, which is stored in a subfolder of your project called "Output." For example, let's say your project is stored here: C:\MyProject. In that case, after you generate output, the files would be stored here:

C:\MyProject\Output\MyName\TargetName

Depending on the output type associated with the target, the generated output might consist of many files.

Tip: Before building output, you might find it useful to open the internal Analyzer in order to check for issues, such as broken links. Even better, you can open the project in the external Analyzer application to obtain a more thorough assessment of the project before generating output. For more information see About Analyzer.

Note: You do not need to build the target to see how a particular topic will look in the final output. You can always preview topics as you develop your project by clicking in the local toolbar of the XML Editor. If you click the face of the button, the topic preview is shown based on the format specified in the primary target. If you click the down arrow, you can select any of the targets in your project from a menu. The topic preview is then displayed using the output format specified in that target.

Note: Why does it take so long to generate output sometimes? It seemed like RoboHelp didn't take this long. Compile times can vary significantly from project to project. In some cases, RoboHelp is faster (especially with CHM files), and in some cases Flare is faster (most notably in some cases of generating WebHelp). All of this varies, depending on the functionality used in the projects. For example, RoboHelp projects with many tables or with very high counts of hyperlinks can significantly slow down RoboHelp compile times. In addition, Flare has a lot more single-sourcing functionality than RoboHelp and therefore can be faster than RoboHelp in some cases. The bottom line is that in some projects/outputs, RoboHelp will be faster; in some projects/outputs, Flare will be faster; and in some projects, they will be close to equal in speed. General guidelines for the fastest compile times possible include having a well-balanced PC. Many users make the mistake of getting an extremely fast processor and are then disappointed when the compile times improve only slightly. At certain points of the generation process, the processor is the slow point; however, at several other points of the process, it is the speed of the hard drive that is the slow point. Think about how many thousands of files must be read, analyzed, modified, and then rewritten to the hard drive in the typical project generation evolution. Therefore, the speed of the underlying hard drive system is just as important to generation times as is the processor. Finally, the amount of system resources also comes into play. Having an adequate amount of system memory can also significantly improve generation times in some cases.

WHAT'S NEXT?

After building the final output, you can then move on to the final step:

Distributing Output