Advice for a document management system

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 01:13:14PM -0500, David J Patrick wrote:
> This one seems like a no-brainer; openoffice.org.
> M$Word users switching to OpenOffice may not even notice, and PDF output 
> is built-in. M$Word user switching to LaTeX will moan and howl and gnash 
> their teeth, cursing whoever made them use this *^%%$*%^ thing. (yes, 
> LeTeX or Lyx is a superior publishing solution, but it demands a new 
> metaphor; WYSIWYM vs. WYSIWYG) OO.o will also happily spit out .html. As 
> a bonus, Word <---> OO.o conversions are 95% seamless (although your 
> complicated documents may get somewhat mangled.

Many word users will also hate openoffice, because of its many flaws and
bugs.  Openoffice is not word.  Far from it.

The PDF and html output from openoffice are also not always that great.

For large systems and scalability and consistency, latex or docbook xml
or similar is really the only way to go.  Where I work we are moving to
a docbook system which I believe will have a web interface as well at
some point.  We were using openoffice and word (different between
products.  The ones done by developers running windows were done in
word, while those of us doing linux development used openoffice).  Going
to docbook with stylesheets is much more scalable than using a word
processor.

A word processor's job is to let an amateur create pretty documents.  It
is not a tool for creating real documents and publishing them.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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