Don't Have IrfanView? Get it!

Not all of tech writing is writing, of course. You probably have to handle figures, illustrations, logos, symbols, and other graphical elements in your documents. You may have to do screen captures, resize graphics, change formats, crop, or do any of a myriad of other tasks. Do yourself a favor and get IrfanView now.

IrfanView is free. No, really, it's free. Not free for some dumbed-down version. Not free for the first 10 minutes, after which the annoying pop-up ads start. Free.

Besides the price, IrfanView has an amazing array of tools in a small, easy-to-use package. I often use it for screen captures: you can control what part of the screen to capture, whether to include the cursor or not, which hot key to start the capture, and a timer delay to get things set up. You can resize any graphic, crop it, and save it in any of 20 formats (each with many options). You can copy and paste images onto other images. You can remove red eye from photos. You can brighten or darken pictures. There are all kinds of fancy special art effects that I don't use except for fun. And, of course, you can simply use it to look at graphics.

Using IrfanView is very simple. You can get at any command through menus. Most commands have single-letter shortcuts, so you don't have to do the Ctrl-Alt shuffle. The Help is clear, even though apparently written by a non-English speaker.

While I mentioned that IrfanView is free, you, like me, will probably want to make a little donation to the author. You'll feel that grateful for this little gem. There really is a real Irfan, originally from Bosnia, now residing in Austria. And he's produced a graphics toolkit no tech writer should do without.

Spell-checking FrameMaker Files, Part 1

Let's face it: spell-checking FrameMaker files is a chore, for several reasons.

First, FrameMaker does not follow text insets when doing a spell-check. If your document has text insets, and you run the standard FrameMaker Spelling Checker on it, it won't open and check any text insets for errors. Not good! Presumably, you're supposed to find and open and check every text inset manually. How's that for convenience?

Next, the options in Spelling Checker leave a lot to be desired. For example, you can't change just the current occurrence of a misspelled word. If you choose "Correct", it corrects every occurrence of the word, even if you only want to do one. Similarly, you can't ignore just a single occurrence: you have to ignore all of them or check all of them. No Undo, either.

Finally, its suggestions for the correct word are often wildly inaccurate. Does anyone really think that the right way to spell "acronms" is "acorns"? Am I really likely to be creating documentation that involves acorns? Does anyone consider the proper substitute for "entrace" to be entrees, interlace, Antares, or entrails? Talk about ruining an entrance!

For these and many other reasons, I rarely use FrameMaker's spell-checker. Instead, I use Microsoft Word's. Yes, I know, you can't import FrameMaker files into Word. Here's one way to get around that: create a PDF of your document, then save that PDF as a Word document. When you open this new Word document, you should have all the text in the original FrameMaker document. Admittedly, the formatting may be messed up, and some words stuck together that really shouldn't be (especially in headers and footers). But it's probably over 99 percent right.

The important thing is that you can now use Word's spell checker to check your document. I'm not claiming that Word's spell checker is the best in the business. But, it has the twin advantages of being more useful than FrameMaker's and sitting on the desks of practically every computer user.

When you find an error (say, "acronms") in the Word document, first find the corresponding error in the PDF. Acrobat will usually show you every occurrence of the word you're searching for, so you can be sure you have them all. Next, use the PDF to find the error in the original document. The advantage of using the PDF is that even errors in text insets will show up in your search – which is where we started in this discussion.

The Reference Update Always Rings Twice

I spent a good bit of time revising a shared text file that several of my documents use as a text inset, saved the file, and closed it. Then I opened one of the documents that imports the shared file, and proceeded to update the references. After selecting Edit --> Update References, I chose all the options and clicked Update. The document updated – almost.

The problem was that not everything updated. Automatic figure numbers appeared as question marks. Several cross references to other sections weren't correct. And other minor inconsistencies were apparent.

I wasn't sure what to do next, so I simply tried updating the references again. Everything became correct. The figure numbers reappeared. The cross references were right. There were no other problems.

As near as I can tell, the first pass of updating references only does the preliminary changes. For example, it might update the conditional text in a cross-referenced section heading, but not the cross reference itself. It requires a second reference update to get everything straight.

I learned my lesson. When doing an Update Reference, always do it twice. At least.

MadCap's Flare 2.0 Imports/Exports FrameMaker and Word

MadCap Software Announces the Arrival of Flare 2.0

Only 8 months after the introduction of its flagship product, Flare 1.0, MadCap Software today announced the release of Flare 2.0. Several new features in the latest release of Flare continue the strong momentum created by Flare 1.0. The result is the first true single-sourcing tool with the ability to import and export both Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker formats...