Re: Open Source document merging? -- with DOC? Did you miss the

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 18:04 -0600, Michael Stephens wrote:
> OK, I'll try this again.
> I work for a non-profit organization that requires various other
> organizations from around the state to download documents from our web site,
> fill them out, and then submit them back to us electronically for funding
> purposes.
> One of the documents that sites fill out every quarter is for any changes in
> their programming or fiscal information. The document is fifteen pages but
> not every page is needed every quarter.
> I would like to set up something on our web page that allows the sites to
> select only the pages they need and then have the completed document created
> for them from only those pages. Currently all the forms are created in Word
> because that's how they've been for the past eight years. Since this is the
> first year I've been with the organization I'm working with the tools I have
> available to me and looking for alternatives that will do what I want.

First off, it's virtually impossible to do this with the _originals_ in
MS Word.  You could, however, use a typeset or other documentation
language to generate the forms, and then convert to DOC after the
generation.  Most major typeset and other documentation languages have
some RTF or even DOC export capability.

OpenOffice/OpenDocument XML would be the most likely candidate because
it is very feature-rich in its DOC export and can be driven from an
automated process.

Alternatively, you _could_ use some re-combinational PS/PDF logic.  But
that's a bit more involved to get Acrobat Reader to allow forms to be
filled out that way -- at least with binding boxes, etc...

If you need to re-create the forms, I'd really urge you to go the PDF
route, using LaTeX w/PDFLaTeX or some other documentation language that
has _complete_ support for PDF export.

> I don't care what format the documents start out in as long as the finished
> document is locked, password protected, has form fields for user data and
> can then be viewed by State of Illinois employees and is acceptable
> according to specifications laid down by the State of Illinois for publicly
> funded non-profit organizations for electronically maintained documents.
> Is there anything that can do this?

Yes.  LaTeX w/PDFLaTeX and various TeX macros/external scripts is
commonly used to generate this stuff with open source.

Otherwise, there are various commercial suites out there to do the same
with PDF.

PDF is always best because the Adobe Acrobat Reader is free and has a
very, very rich documentation language set including protections.  And
it's very, very well documented, with many patent use being granted on
public access, open source, etc...


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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