I’ll admit freely, I dig Flare…and the newest release of Flare has me all atwitter. I saw the new stuff as a beta tester and I could NOT WAIT for the release. The folks at MadCap have added some really incredible features that take Flare even further beyond Word and Robo. Here are some of the new things I’m most excited about:

• Tight integration with Subversion (At last!)
• Table enhancements
• Increased support for Section 508 compliance

I’ll talk about the 2nd and 3rd items in another post. For now I want to talk about the beauty that is Flare/Subversion Integration. There are other neato-rific features like an equation editor – but, seriously, I don’t do equations or any math-related documentation (and folks seem to know that keeping me away from math is a good thing) so I can’t speak to functionality of the equation editor without sounding like a complete idiot.

But, let me tell you, I am over the moon now that Flare is integrated tightly with Subversion! I use Subversion two different ways – one way with my 9 to5 and another with my consulting clients. Source control is a big deal….I learned this the hard way. I accidentally deleted a virtual Windows machine on my Mac…and it took a help project or two with it. GULP. That night, after installing a new virtual machine, I got Subversion (it’s free AND good). I use TamTam, a 3rd party extension, to get the integration I need. It was adequate….no choir singing, no angels appearing.

At my 9 to 5, I’ve used Flare with Subversion for about two years now and it’s been fine. But I could never tell which files were checked in or checked out and couldn’t check files in from Flare. I would have to close Flare and open Windows Explorer and commit files from there. Not a major problem – but not exactly the picture of convenience either. There was no integration at all between Flare and SVN…again, no choir, no angels.

But now….

<angels><choir>Flare works directly with Subversion!</choir></angels>.

No third party add-ons, just smooth, Im-so-happy-I-could-cry integration.

How easy is it? So easy that you simply select Subversion as your source control tool of choice from the drop-down menu when you go to bind a project . The only tricky part is knowing your server path. At work, I have a handy-dandy IT Admin to ask. At home….I am the IT Admin. After a bit of trial and error, I figured it out. The integration is lovely. I’m a happy camper now that I get the padlock and add icons…and I can check in my work from Flare. No more going to Explorer to do it.

This is a major step forward for Flare users. We now get easy integration with an excellent source control tool.

Truth be told, I’ve used PCs and Windows since what seems like the dawn of time. I wrote papers in college using WordStar in DOS, took my Master’s degree Comps in Word for DOS…and then finally moved in to Windows. For the past twenty years, I’ve used Windows machines and products – and have dealt with crashes, BSODs, etc, for just as long.

As a tech writer, I was never in an environment to use FrameMaker so it was Word all the way. And Word meant Windows. I was growing tired of the things that come with Windows. So, as a birthday surprise, my husband bought me a MacBook a little over 2 years ago. It was a thing of beauty. Sure, adjusting to a Mac environment took some time…but it was like going home again even though I’d never been there before. Gone were the crashes, the BSODs (the repetition is intentional – I’ve been traumatized), the viruses despite the scans.

But I was faced with a problem – my bread and butter, MadCap products, were only made for Windows.

I knew about Boot Camp but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of booting up either one OS or the other. So, I talked with a friend who knew Macs well, disliked Windows as much (if not more) than me, and had an idea: A virtual Windows machine on my Mac. Hmmm….intriguing. I’d heard of virtual servers and virtual reality – but never a virtual machine, a different OS altogether, on a computer.

So, said Mac friend recommended that I try VirtualBox, a free product that would partition my Mac harddrive and create a virtual Windows computer on my Mac. I wouldn’t have to boot one or the other – I could have both running at the same time. While ‘free’ carries its own set of risks, it’s also an excellent price for a test-drive. So I installed VirtualBox, a licensed copy of Windows, my MadCap products, and MS Office (only because most of my clients use it exclusively) and tested it out. It was wonderful…to a point. It did everything I needed except that I could never get it to reliably read a jump drive or a CD. To solve this, I had to finagle things, google answers…activities that took time away from working on my clients’ projects.

Then the nightmare happened – I pushed a button (take a snapshot, I believe) and then something else – and VB wiped everything back to the original install. All my Flare files were gone, Office was gone, everything. Luckily, I had backed up stuff (discussed in another post). But I was pretty much burned off of VirtualBox. I blame myself for the error – but the damage had been done.

I talked again with my Mac Friend, and he too was researching alternatives to VirtualBox. He suggested Parallels, a paid virtualization tool. At $79 for a license and use of a fully-functional ten day trial, I was in. Mac Friend had spoken highly of Parallels explaining that switching from one to the other was easy – Parallels simply read and transferred over the info upon installation. It was really was that easy.

• I was concerned that it wouldn’t bring the Windows OS license info over so I was prepared to invest in another license of that. No problem there.
• I was worried that switching from the Windows side to the Mac side would be clunky…again, no problem. Parallels has something called a Coherence Mode where your Windows box, including all open apps, shows in your Dock on the Mac side.
• Would I be able to view files on one side in the other? Again, no problem.

After the 10 day trial, I gladly handed over the license fee (I got it discounted to $65 through an email offer) and I’ve been a happy camper ever since. I can run MadCap products on my Mac and get the best of both worlds.