: Re: Can we use MadCap Flare with semantic markup? My team uses MadCap Flare to produce a large body of documentation (thousands of topics). The source is "Flare HTML", HTML with some Flare additions

DITA is one of the output options for Flare. You can create a new DITA target right alongside any HTML or PDF targets. We don't use it at my company, but I've played with it a bit to see how it works.

I'm not sure how extensively the DITA structure is supported. In my brief experiments, I've seen that madcap's keywords are translated to indexterm element tags in the DITA output. Variables are wrapped in ph element tags with conref attributes in the DITA output and a mcvars.dita file is included in the output's Resources folder. That file lists only the variables selected in the Flare Target file for the DITA Output.

To illustrate, this is an small example of the DITA output from Flare:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic id="Get_Help">
<title>Get Help</title>
<body>
<p>
<indexterm>Get Help</indexterm>
<indexterm>Customer Service</indexterm>Get Help</p>
<p>
<ph conref="Resources/mcvars.dita#mcvars/variableId2" /> is committed to providing a variety of helpful resources to support your needs.</p>
<p>Online Help</p>
<p>From anywhere within <ph conref="Resources/mcvars.dita#mcvars/variableId1" />, click Help to browse our Online Help Center, where you'll find a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for quick answers to common questions.</p>
</body>
</topic>

And, for comparison, the same topic as seen in Flare's text editor:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html xmlns:MadCap="http://www.madcapsoftware.com/Schemas/MadCap.xsd">
<head>
</head>
<body>
<h1 class="NewPage"><MadCap:keyword term="Get Help;Customer Service" />Get Help</h1>
<p><MadCap:variable name="Text.Brand" /> is committed to providing a variety of helpful resources to support your needs.</p>
<h2>Online Help</h2>
<p>From anywhere within <MadCap:variable name="Text.AccountPage" />, click <strong>Help</strong> to browse our Online Help Center, where you'll find a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for quick answers to common questions.</p>
</body>
</html>

The output uses .ditamap and .dita filetypes and Madcap's help site for Flare makes note that you can't edit in the DITA structure natively:

As DITA takes on a bigger role in technical communication, more and
more tools are becoming available to create this type of structured
content. In this version, you cannot use Flare to edit DITA content
natively. However, you can use a third-party tool (e.g., XMetal) to
create your structured DITA files.

However, after doing a bit of research, I found this youtube tutorial on how to create custom DITA elements by using the mc-dita-type attribute on paragraph classes in Flare. For example:

p.Note
{
background-image: url('../Images/Icons/noteicon.png');
mc-auto-number-format: '{b}{color #9EB515 }Note: {/color}{/b}';
mc-dita-type: quicktest;
}

After building the DITA output, that mc-dita-type attribute becomes a quicktest element tag in the topic file.

Conditions, however, do not work seem to in DITA output. Any text in the topic is included, regardless of condition tags used.

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: Re: Can we use MadCap Flare with semantic markup? My team uses MadCap Flare to produce a large body of documentation (thousands of topics). The source is "Flare HTML", HTML with some Flare additions

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: Are there any well-known fiction author-publisher fights about royalty and copyright retention? I read an earlier question on the same/similar topic with interest. I also read author's guild of

: How do I know when my work is ready for critique? I run a critiquing group once a month and I've had several of my members say they aren't sure how to tell when their work is ready for

: Are there any successful precedents of "gentle" fourth-wall-breaking? The following is a paraphrased snippet of something I wrote, it is a conversation between the protagonist--a nihilist teenage

: Are idioms in query letters a bad idea? I am writing a logline sentence of a query letter for my novel and used the idiom 'cat and mouse' as follows: A military bioweapons collector

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