Re: Flare questions

[Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>]

This is coming from my perspective of having experience with RH, D2H,
WWP, Flare, and quite a few other authoring and production tools under
my belt. Your results may vary.

> 1- If I have never used Flare, but have used Robohelp and Help and Manual and feel pretty comfortable with my expertise in both of those tools, how long do you think I will need to get the hang of Flare? I am trying to budget training time into my project plan. I know there is a learning curve to Flare, but if I was able to quickly pick up H&M and RoboHelp..should I also be able to quickly pick up Flare?

If you're comfortable with RH and H&M, I think you could be fairly
solidly up and running with Flare within a day.

> 2- What types of training did you use to learn Flare? Any experience with the training that MadCap offers?

I jumped right in, no training. I red a bit of the Getting Started
type sections in the Help and then went to town, posting questions I
couldn't answer with a look in the Help to various forums.

> 2- Does anyone have experience with the MadCap support and their maintenance plans? Is it worth paying the extra money for the unlimited inquiries feature? It is an extra $449 to get the unlimited inquiries? Both plans have unlimited email support..how are they at answering emails?

I don't have any direct experience with Madcap Support.

> 3- How would you rate Flare's ability to convert Word Docs into Online Help as compared to RoboHelp and H&M?

I never went that route. I author in Flare and export to Word.

-- 
Bill Swallow

Twitter: @techcommdood
Blog: http://techcommdood.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/techcommdood
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