Advice for a document management system

[Aaron Vegh]

Good day!
I'm a web developer. One of my former clients called me this morning  
asking about a problem they would like solved, that I feel is a tad  
over my head. I'm hoping that the combined wisdom of this list can  
help solve it!

The client currently has a system whereby one group produces original  
documents using MS Word. Those documents are then fed to a variety of  
sources, ultimately becoming PDFs and Web pages. They currently use a  
product called Transit which handles the conversion. However, there's  
a great deal of signal loss during the translation -- these are fairly  
complicated documents, with each page containing both English and  
French versions of the text. Ultimately, the people responsible for  
posting these documents in their respective formats, especially the  
web version, have to do a lot of post-processing. And the final  
published results contain errors.

My advice to the client was that, if they moved away from Word, they  
would be taking a great deal of uncertainty out of the equation. I  
mentioned either LaTeX or some other kind of customized XML-based  
solution as a way to circumvent these format transition issues. The  
goal being to work with plain text rather than an opaque file format.

The situation is complicated by the fact that we've got a current  
workflow that is run by many people, any of whom may not be  
comfortable with a change in technology. However, it appears the  
organization is more willing to run that gauntlet than they have in  
the past.

My vision looks like this:

1. Content authors produce LaTeX using some undisclosed tool on  
Windows. These folks would need to be trained to work against a  
template.
2. A transformation turns that latex doc into a PDF and a nicely- 
formatted HTML/CSS document.
3. Profit!!!

This strikes me as a non-trivial project. I've worked with LaTeX a  
little bit, but not enough to handle this project. I think this client  
needs someone for whom LaTeX is their bitch, to put it bluntly. That  
person would create the templates and recommend the tools to be used.  
I'm not this person. :-)

Anyone who feels they could accomplish this, I'd love to hear from.  
I've asked the client if they would like to meet such a person, and he  
enthusiastically agreed. This could turn into a nice consulting gig,  
who knows?

Any suggestions or alternative approaches are welcome.

Cheers!
Aaron.
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