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                             Posted on
                      Tuesday, June 16, 2009
     ________________________________________________________

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In this posting, look for the following ...

   SURVEY: Recession Impact on High-Tech Doc Departments
   Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0 Enhance Editing Project Linking
   MadCap Now Supports DITA Publishing Directly, No Other Tools
   Are you a Technical Writer involved in Business Analysis?

and at the end you'll find the concluding administrivia with
information about these ads and how to place your own.

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SURVEY: Recession Impact on High-Tech Doc Departments

The high-tech industry is taking a beating in this recession.
Inside technology companies, one department almost never escapes
a cutback: Documentation.
Just how good or bad is your situation compared to your
industry peers? Is your competitive position being compromised?
You can find out -- and share the results with your
management -- by taking nSight's straight-to-the-point survey,
The Recession Impact on High-Tech Doc Departments.

Survey: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229AMT4RRZE

Whether you're a documentation manager, technical writer, or
other functional specialist responsible for documentation, you
can take this survey and gain access to relevant aggregated
insights that will help you make better business decisions
moving forward.

We estimate that it will take you less than 10 minutes to take
the survey.

All individual information and responses will remain completely
confidential -- and you have the option of taking the survey
anonymously.


Survey takers can enter nSight's drawing and be eligible for
a chance to win a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate!

Founded in 1982, nSight (www.nSightWorks.com) is a professional
services firm that helps organizations gain clarity, precision,
and distinction in their technical documentation and interactive
learning materials. nSight is a Massachusetts state-certified,
woman-owned business.

Please note: This survey closes June 30, 2009; we expect to
furnish results to participants within a few weeks after that
date. We encourage you to invite colleagues and peers to take
our survey.

Survey: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229AMT4RRZE


ANN: MadCap Supports DITA Publishing with No Additional Tools

MadCaps Newest Versions of Flare and Blaze Products Facilitate
DITA Adoption and Integration With Traditional Content Formats

La Jolla, CA, USA  June 9, 2009  MadCap Software, the leader in
multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft XPS,
today announced the availability of MadCap Flare 5.0 and MadCap
Blaze 2.0, featuring robust DITA support. Flare is a powerful
native XML multi-channel publishing software for print and online
content, and MadCap Blaze is the native XML alternative to Adobe
FrameMaker for long print documents. The newest versions of Flare
and Blaze are the first authoring software products to support
transformation and publishing from the Darwin Information Typing
Architecture (DITA) standardwithout requiring Java development
or third-party toolkits, such as Open Toolkit.

MadCap Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0 join MadCap Lingo 2.0 in providing
DITA support, which will be extended across MadCaps family of
content authoring and publishing software in 2009. Through
direct, seamless integration of Flare and Blaze with MadCap
Lingo, X-Edit, Capture and Mimic, MadCap offers the most powerful
integrated authoring and localization workflow available.

DITA is rapidly being adopted by enterprises as a standard
XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering
technical information. However, many initiatives are being
hampered by the complexity of publishing DITA content and
integrating it with existing content, said Anthony Olivier,
MadCap co-founder and CEO. With MadCap Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0,
enterprises now have two powerful publishing solutions that
provide unprecedented ease-of-use to facilitate DITA
standardization, as well as collaborate with business groups
relying on more traditional content formats.

Flare and Blaze Let Users Mix and Match DITA and Traditional
Content Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0 can import DITA maps and
associated DITA topic files at the same time and transform and
publish the content in other traditional outputs, such as
Microsoft XPS and Word, Adobe PDF and FrameMaker, and plain
XHTML, to name a few. At the same time, both products can also
import content in traditional formats and publish or export it as
DITA content. Most significantly, Flare and Blaze allow users to
easily mix and match DITA content with other existing content
into a single project. Both products can, for example, import a
DITA map, three Word documents and a FrameMaker file, and then
publish the content without changing any of the formatting.

Other key features of the DITA support in Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0
include:
* Support for DITA maps, which correspond to the
tables of content in Flare and Blaze projects; related DITA maps
simply become additional linked TOCs.
* Support for DITA relationship tables, which hyperlink abstract
concepts; relationship tables can also be used for all other content i
n Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0.
* Conversion styles wizard provides
full import mapping, including tag, mark-up, and style sheet
selection.
* Preservation of DITA formatting includes image
maps, chapter breaks in book maps, index keywords, tables and
lists, and more.

Like DITA, Flare and Blaze are based on XML and take a
topic-based approach, which has made the addition of DITA support
a natural extension to our authoring software, said Mike
Hamilton, MadCap vice president of product management. Not only
have we been able to incorporate the key concepts required to
support the DITA standard, weve also been able to extend
powerful DITA functions, such as relationship tables, to our core Flar
e and Blaze softwareproviding a state-of-the-art authoring
environment for all of our customers.

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/

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Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0 Enhance Editing Project Linking

The newest versions of MadCap Software Flare and Blaze offer
several other new features and enhancements to facilitate editing,
single-sourcing, and publishing.
* Advanced global project
linking now includes condition tag support. Multiple projects can
attain a consistent look and feel through links to a master Flare
or Blaze project and the use of conditional markers. For example,
If condition A exists, then use style sheet A from the master.
Whenever there is a change in the master project, for example an
updated logo or style sheet, the change is automatically
propagated to the child projects.
* Text redaction helps
legal groups and government organizations to conceal sensitive
information from a document so that it may be distributed to a
broader audience. Flare and Blaze meet the legal requirements for
redacted text to exist under the black bar. The use of condition
tags makes it easy for authors to specify that when a document is
published internally, it appears as normal text, and when it is
published for a broader audience, the text is blacked out.
* A new text editor supports line numbering and color-coding for
authors who want to view or work within the XML code.
* Enhanced cross-product integration is enabled by support by
Flare and Blaze for condition tags in MadCap Capture for image
capture and graphics editing. Flare also supports condition tags
in MadCap Mimic for creating software simulation movies.

Also new to Flare 5.0 is the ability to generate automated
thumbnails. Instead of going through a seven- or eight-step
manual process, authors simply drop in an image, apply a single
image style, and Flare automatically makes a
thumbnailpotentially saving authors hundreds of hours.
Additionally, the newest version of Flare features a topic
toolbar function that lets authors insert a customized WebHelp
toolbar anywhere inside any topic in any Web-based output. New to
both Flare 5.0 and Blaze 2.0 is enhanced JPEG compression and PDF
support for higher quality print documents.

Ive been beta testing Flare 5.0, and it is a great enhancement
to the Flare product line, said Paul Pehrson, instructor for
DocGuy Training. If you are in the market for a help authoring
tool or if you are using DITA, check out Flare 5.0; it will knock
your socks off. If you already own Flare, upgrade when it is
available. Kudos to MadCap for coming up with a great product
with enhancements that really improve the technical authors
workflow, making producing great content faster and easier than
ever before.

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/

##################################################################
ANN: Are you a Technical Writer involved in Business Analysis?

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