0

I want to produce hundreds of related documents (product manuals).

Goals:

  • follow a similar structure
  • subject to a common style (logo, font, etc).
  • Share common components
  • pull fragments from databases
  • flexible image placement
  • produce PDF output
  • build system that can identify which documents need to be compiled as components change
  • accessible to people who are not familar with TeX
  • accessible via web browser (optional)

Given these goals, TeX (with wrapping scripting) is the first possible solution that came to my mind.

This system must to be comfortable for people who are not familiar with LaTeX. All are capable scientists or designers, but I guess not many would feel comfortable formatting and composing documents in LaTeX directly.

Is there a nice wrapper that could allow users to choose from existing components, create new components, place images, and get a visual preview? Lyx seems somewhat close - but I don't think it has any facility for composing a document from fragments or information in a database.

Is there a non-TeX solution that I should consider?

Can anyone point me to a successful project with similar goals?

Community
  • 1
Brad Langhorst
  • 1
  • 1
    Check http://wiki.contextgarden.net/What_is_ConTeXt and specifically the link for What is Context? This was designed around TeX for the situation you are describing. – R. Schumacher Mar 28 '15 at 17:28
  • 2
    The trickiest bit seems "flexible image placement" for people not already familiar with *TeX. If that means, "tell TeX where to put images on a select page at an arbitrary position", it can be difficult already. If people expect to do this without dealing with the .tex file directly, it might well be a deal-breaker. – jon Mar 28 '15 at 18:29
  • 3
    You typed your question in a system that can do pretty much all those things, the only one it doesn't do natively being pdf generation which depends on the print to pdf capability of the client browser. Not to say don't use TeX, but there are alternatives. – David Carlisle Mar 28 '15 at 20:59

0 Answers0