migrating from MadCap Flare to Oxygen XML

[IsleofGough]

I've used Flare over the past several years and while it is a great HAT program, it falls short for me with pdf and ePub outputs.

I have several books that I would like to convert from XHTML in Flare to Docbook format. These books were originally created in InDesign or Framemaker, but I needed more complex formatting that was possible in either program. The books have a lot of figures, tables, mathematical formulas, cross references, and external references. I could never get the TOC in pdf outputs to format the way I wanted in Flare. I've also had a lot of cleanup and error fixing to do with ePubs generated from Flare. In the end, I've migrated some books to LaTeX - which solved most of my needs for pdf output. However, I still need a better solution for ePubs.

Have any of you migrated from MadCap Flare to Oxygen XML, specifically with converting documents to Docbook standard? What issues did you encounter? Did you use this for ePub outputs? I am specifically looking for both better structure and cleaner code with a different approach.

[Cosmin Duna]

Hi,
You can use one of the following methods to convert XHTML to DocBook:

• The Batch Documents Converter add-on can be installed in Oxygen and this allows conversion of multiple HTML documents to DocBook4/5. See the readme section from this link for more information: https://github.com/oxygenxml/oxygen-resources-converter

• The smart paste feature. Open the HTML file in any Web browser, select all of its content, and copy it. Then open Oxygen, create a new DocBook document in the Author visual editing mode, and paste the selected content. See more information here: https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/ ... te-support

If you want other users' opinion you can make a post on the oXygen-user list: https://www.oxygenxml.com/mailman/listinfo/oxygen-user. They are not notified about this forum post.

I also recommend you to send a mail on the Docbook users list: https://docbook.org/help.

Best regards,
Cosmin

[IsleofGough]

Thank you for the tips on converting XHTML to DocBook format. I had used a LaTeX converter to generate DocBook, but I ended up having to do extensive cleanup in Oxygen XML editor. That being said, the ePub output from Oxygen XML is beautiful. I don't get the errors that I get in Flare generated ePubs and specifically MathML in equations comes over correctly in Oxygen but not in Flare. I'm still learning Oxygen XML, but it looks very promising for my needs.