Madcap Flare and Docbook

[Sean Wheller <sean@inwords.co.za>]

Hello Mike,

I have listened to the posdcast interview with you that is available from 
http://techwritervoices.com/

This has provided me with some great insight into Flare. In addition to the 
technical aspects you have prsented in the Podcastabout, I think what struck 
me as most encouraging is your apparent willingness to embrace and commit to 
open and standards-based formats.

Of particular interest to myself and I think also the community of Docbook 
users, is just what level of support Flare will provide for Docbook.

As you know, Docbook is a large schema with powerful options for 
single-sourcing, mutli-channel publishing and customization of 
transformations for multiple target presentational output formats.

While there have been many attempts to produce a Docbook Editor that can mange 
all the features and capabilities of Docbook, not many have provided a simple 
solution that virtually anybody can use.

In addition to hearing your views on the editing or workflow environment, I 
think many people would also be interested in understanding how Madcap will 
address issues such as tool-chain, portability, olinking, bibliographies, 
indexing and so forth.

The list of questions is long. Already I have one question from a Docbook 
users who is asking, "What major formats this Flare thing can turn into 
DocBook XML?"

The same person would like to learn, which versions of DocBook you intend to 
support, technologies involved in the conversion, etc...

It would be great if you could subscribe to the Docbook mailing lists, if you 
have not already done so, and perhaps partake in discussion around Flare and 
Docbook. If not, feel free to reply direct to me and I will forward your 
response to the list.

Hope you can help shed some light on the subject.

Many thanks,

-- 
Ask me about the Monkey.

Sean Wheller
Technical Author
sean@inwords.co.za
+27-84-854-9408
http://www.inwords.co.za