MadCap Flare is a single-sourced, XML topic-based, multi-channel output authoring, publishing and content management platform. It offers a number of unique features and advantages concerning productivity, usability and ROI when adopting a structured XML documentation environment. MadCap XML is basically standard XHTML, enhanced by additional elements (tags) and attributes (classes and properties) that support visual menu-driven output styling and conditional publishing, among other features.

• Flare's features & advantages for authors include:
  
• » HTML5 Webhelp output, supported by a flexible skin editor
• » Separate master page and page layout editor for both online and print publishing
• » Visual CSS class/property editor that transparently supports styling PDF output (built-in XSL:FO generation)
• » Flexible TOC editor for arbitrarily combining XHTML topics
• » MadCap XML elements and CSS classes to support conditional publishing at source
• » MadCap XML elements and CSS classes to support building glossary and index at source

• Flare's features & advantages for businesses include:
  
• » MS Word import capability facilitates migration to structured documentation or coupling business documents to same
• » Full support to Right-To-Left (RTL) languages
• » Publishing to close to a dozen output formats, including those for integration with software IDEs
• » Responsive HTML5 output for display on various online and portable devices
• » Advanced print publishing capabilities, including CMYK & vector graphics support
• » Integration with MS SharePoint CMS, Apache web server, subversion control, and more

MadCap XML compared to DITA for structured documentation:

While MadCap XML doesn't offer the strong semantic information typing of DITA, it offers unmatched support to multi-lingual content authoring and styling. It is as well capable of importing from and exporting to DITA topics; as well as a number of widely used formats such as MS Word and FrameMaker. The benefit of controlled vocabulary is most valuable to large documentation teams and can be matched by implementing authoring practices and guidelines.