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About Single-Source Publishing

"Single-sourcing" is a fancy term that means something very simple—to produce multiple results from one source. In Flare, you can make use of single-sourcing in many different ways.

Global Project Linking You can import content and project files contained in another Flare project, thus allowing you to maintain the information in one location but reuse it in any other project. When you use this feature to import files, you can include or exclude particular types of files (e.g., topics, snippets, style sheets), specific individual files, or files that have certain condition tags applied. Simply use the include/exclude methods that work best for you.

This is different than a simple import process, because in this case, the imported files remain linked to the source project. This allows you to make future updates to those files in just one place—in the source project file. When you perform ongoing imports using your previous settings, Flare recognizes changes to the source files. Therefore, the new files can be brought over, replacing the outdated files.

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Let's say you are working on three different Flare projects. Within those projects, you might have 35 topics and 50 images that are identical in the three projects. In addition, you might use the same style sheet in each project. Rather than maintaining three different sets of identical files, you can store one set of those files and import them into the individual projects when needed. Here are a couple of options: (1) One option is that you could consider one of your three Flare projects as the "global parent" for those shared files. (2) Another option is that you could create a new Flare project (perhaps naming it "global"); this project could have no other purpose than to serve as a repository for the shared files across your projects. In other words, you would not necessarily generate any output from this parent project, but simply use it as a place to hold your shared information.

When you want to use any of the shared topic, image, or style sheet files from the global project, you would import them into the child project. This creates a link between the imported files and those in the global project. Therefore, when you edit those files in the future, you would do so from the global project and then re-import the changes (either manually or automatically) to the other child projects.

See Global Project Linking—Importing Files from Other Projects.

For more, see the video tutorial "Single-Sourcing in Flare."
Multiple outputs from one project Flare allows you to generate output in a variety of online and print-based formats, creating as many different targets as you want from the same Flare project. See Determining the Output Type.
Condition tags at all levels You can apply condition tags at all levels in Flare—character, paragraph, file, and more. See Applying Condition Tags to Content.
Snippets In Flare, there are multiple ways to reuse content in different places. One method is to create a snippet. Snippets are pre-set chunks of content that you can use in your project over and over. Snippets are used for longer pieces of content that you can format just as you would any other content in a topic. In snippets, you can also insert tables, pictures, and whatever else can be included in a normal topic. See About Snippets.
Snippet conditions Snippet conditions are condition tags that you can apply to content within snippets. With snippet conditions, you can separate certain snippet content so that it displays in some topics or master pages but not in others. This allows you to use one snippet for many purposes, rather than having to create multiple snippets. Whereas regular conditions are included or excluded at the target level, snippet conditions are included or excluded at the topic or master page level. See Using Snippet Conditions.
Variables Another way to reuse content is to create variables. Variables are pre-set terms that you can use in your project over and over. They are stored in "variable sets," which can hold multiple variables. Flare provides you with an initial variable set, but you can add as many additional variable sets as you like. Variables are used for brief, non-formatted pieces of content (such as the name of your company's product or your company's phone number). There are different kinds of variables: (1) those you create, (2) system variables (e.g., date and time; Chapter, Section, and Volume numbers), (3) Heading variables, and (4) Running Head variables. Some of these are especially useful for page headers and footers in print-based output. See About Variables.
Style sheets You can take advantage of cascading style sheets (CSS files) to control the look of your output in one place. You can apply style sheets to individual topics, or you can use a "master" style sheet, applying it to all files at the target level or project level. In addition to using style sheets for topics, you can use separate style sheets in Flare specifically for tables inserted into topics. See About Styles and Style Sheets.
Mediums for topic styles Let's say you want one style setting (e.g., underline font) to be used for online output and another setting (e.g., do not underline font) to be used for printed output. You can use a medium in your style sheet to create different settings for the same style. When you apply a particular medium to a target, it will be used for that output. See About Style Sheet Mediums and Creating Topic Styles for Print Output.
Table print styles A table style sheet allows you to single-source your formatting by setting the properties in one place and reusing them wherever you insert tables in your project. But what if you want the tables in online output to look one way and the tables in your printed output to look another way? One solution is to insert two different tables (one for online output and another for print) throughout your project and then use condition tags on them. A better solution is to insert a single table at each location, using a special version of the table style for print-based output. See Creating Table Styles for Print Output.
Single-source images Capture is MadCap's screen capture and graphics editing application. From within Flare, you can launch Capture, add or insert a new screen capture, and edit images. Capture contains many unique features that are especially useful for online documentation authors, including the ability to single-source images in Flare projects. For a single image, you can provide one group of settings for online output, and another group of settings for printed output. See Creating Single-Source Images.
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You might want to use a resolution of 72 DPI for the image in online output, and a resolution of 300 DPI for the image in printed output. Rather than creating two separate images and using condition tags, you can use this feature.
You can also single-source images when resizing them in Flare. This can be done through the use of styles (applying the settings to many images at once) or local formatting (applying the settings to one image). When you generate online output, the image will be displayed in one size, and when you generate print-based output, the image will be displayed in another size. See Resizing Pictures.
Note: If you use the "Print Format" feature in MadCap Capture to single-source your images, you may need to take into account the DPI (dots per inch) setting that you set for the image in the Capture application. If you specify a large DPI that is recommended for print output (e.g., 300 DPI), the image is likely to shrink when you generate print output. This simply means that you should also resize the width and/or height of the image in Flare to enlarge the image as necessary for the generated output. Usually the best way to do this is to generate the print output, adjust the size settings for the style or image in Flare, generate again, and continue this process until you get the results that you want. The DPI that you specified will be retained, and you will end up with the image dimensions that you need.