Advice for a document management system

[Dave Cramer]

I'm not sure if you are looking for a document management system, or a
document editing system. I found this very interesting though.

http://www.alfresco.com/

Allows for collaborative editing, and management.

Dave

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Aaron Vegh <aaronvegh-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> Thanks so far for your answers, both off- and on-list. I've been reviewing
> these responses and trying to wrap my head around this problem. Ultimately,
> I'm not looking to have a role in this project; ideally I'd like to find
> someone who I could feel comfortable introducing to my client, that can run
> with this problem.  I have some concerns, however, with what I've read so
> far.
>
> 1. Substituting OO.o for MS Office doesn't strike me as a winning
> proposition. In my (albeit limited) use of the application, I've come away
> with the impression that while it may solve some issues, it will create
> others. In the end, the client will end up with different headaches
> altogether.
>
> 2. LaTeX or DocBook XML, while clearly a respected choice by this group, is
> also to be approached with great caution. The assumption being that
> non-technical users will balk at it. I get that, for sure. But I still
> wonder if, with the right template design, a LaTeX or DocBook expert
> couldn't put together a sample document, and arrange for training of the
> staff who will use this. I think once people saw this text-based file on the
> one hand, then saw a single command given and boom! instant, perfect HTML
> and PDF versions -- they would find that very persuasive. Perhaps persuasive
> enough to actually learn and use this thing.
>
> Let me be a bit more specific now. The client is the Ontario Legislature.
> They are required to produce "Hansards", verbatim transcripts of the
> proceedings of the legislature. These documents are published on their web
> site. Here's an example of a PDF of a recent legislative session:
>
>
> http://www.ontla.on.ca/house-proceedings/transcripts/files_pdf/29-JAN-2009_L108.pdf
>
> You'll note that the document is both quite long and features a fairly
> complicated layout, not to mention a large number of individual paragraph
> and character styles. There are also errors in the rendering of this
> document (for example, several blank pages). The original documents produced
> in Word are done with very specific Word styles, so I would say that the
> users are slightly above your average "non-technical".
>
> My thinking is that, any solution that requires post-processing is not
> adequate. They already have a system that has several idiosyncrasies, and
> exchanging that for another one (OO-based) is probably not going to be
> accepted.
>
> If there are any serious, knowledgeable advocates of a clean document
> creation pipeline, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. If you feel this
> can be done with OO without compromising the translation between formats,
> show me some examples using documents as complex as the kind at issue here!
> :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Aaron.
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