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I wouldn't read too much into the MadCap statement. I was asking for a custom automated solution that wasn't built into the product and they didn't have. They were unable to point me to an external source. Not a problem they run into often, at least at that scale. And remember it turned out not to be a problem.
"A minute or two" is an exaggeration. More realistically, 5 minutes, possibly even ten but no more. Graphics-heavy. No clue what the secret is.
Could be a million variations. Beyond that I'm unable to comment. Thanks.
Steve
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 6:02 PM, Shawn Connelly wrote:
Hello Steven,
Sorry I am late to this conversation, though I am pleased that you found a solution.
I am a MadCap Flare v11 user (switched from FM to Flare v9 with mixed results - meaning, I both "love" and "hate" Flare - LOL)
Two points, I would love to ask you about:
Earlier, you said,
"and Support indicated (today) that the solution we're looking for is outside their scope, and they have no easy solution within Flare."
I am curious, could you elaborate on what MadCap support claimed was out of their scope. It just doesn't seem like MadCap support.
Later, you said,
"The 2,000+-pagers come out in a minute or two, as a single PDF. No problem."
Seriously?
I found that jumping from v10 to v11 resulted in a slight drop in publishing speed (to both HTML5 and PDF). Still, my Flare publishes at an average rate of 1.8 seconds per page. In other words, 2000 pages would take approximately 1 hour. That is when I process a job on my workstation. I also have a python script which sends new documents to a build server and uses madbuild.exe for remote document building. But even the dedicated server takes a long time to complete (~ 1.4 seconds per page).
My documents are quite graphic rich plus since [vector] PDF image support was added, one of the greatest bottlenecks is the processing of PDF images. In fact, about 40% of the publishing time is spent on those images, so that definitely skews the time per page value.
I am guessing your documents are mostly text? If not, what might be your secret?
Best regards,
Shawn
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 4:52 PM, Janoff, Steven <Steven -dot- Janoff -at- hologic -dot- com> wrote:
> Is it that difficult and requires such kid gloves? ...
No and no.
The 2,000+-pagers come out in a minute or two, as a single PDF. No problem.
15 minutes is a long time, even for 4,000 pages.
Flare has improved its PDF tools, but Frame has always been PDF-centric.
Speed of the build seems to have more to do with resources than the app. E.g., local desktop vs. network server, processing speed, how full the drive is. Splitting and merging PDFs seems like a difficult workflow but if it buys speed, it's a good idea.
Steve
On Thursday, August 13, 2015 9:07 AM, John Posada wrote:
Is it that difficult and requires such kid gloves? I have 8 books over 2000 pages each, with 2 of them over 4000 in FM and FM doesnt bat an eye on PDF output and takes less than 15 minutes from TOC to print que. I was considering running a beta project in Flare but this conversation has made me rethink it.
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Shawn Connelly
Technical writer
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