business forms, etc

[Carl Parrish]

Well the first thing that comes to mind would be to just use star / open
office set up a mozilla addressbook / database / xml file as the data
source and merge whatever you need to into the document. (by far the
easiest way if you ask me). However if you want to go the html form doc
way the mozilla patch to use postgreSQL as a data source is working
great and is now available on the main branch. If you're not scared of
compiling mozilla for yourself you can store all of your images and such
in postgreSQL then use xml / xmlt to format your documents however you
want. This is not exactly user friendly at the moment but can be done if
for some reason you don't like the openoffice approach. 

Carl P.  

On Fri, 2003-03-28 at 08:14, Mike Starke wrote:
> I am in the process of setting up a small company
> and trying to utilize Linux as the sole OS.
> 
> This company is no differant than most others; they
> need various types of business forms and documents. We have all of
> their customer/clients loaded into a MySQL db along with
> any associated customer info. What I am looking for is
> a way/type of system to manage all of the forms.
> 
> For instance, a business contract. Should a guy create
> a LyX template, and a perl script or two to pull
> customer data (name, address, etc) out of the db and
> automatically generate a lyx document/contract? Is there a better
> way? How about generating XML documents? I was thinking that
> one could create a few style_sheets and dtd's and just
> dynamically build them from the db and printed right
> from a browser. Then I remembered that placing images
> in xml documents (e.g company logo) is a nightmare
> and almost defeats the purpose of xml in the 1st place.
> Then again, is there anything wrong with good ole fashioned
> Perl/CGI to generate html output?
> 
> I know a slew of small businesses that have piles upon
> piles of excel & word docs....I do not want to follow
> the same type of logic using Linux equivalants.
> 
> I can see 3 main areas (for this application):
> * business contracts (1 per client)
> * customized various forms (5-10 per client)
> * invoices (hopefully many per client :)
> 
> Ideally, I would like ALL information (dynamic) stored within
> a (the) database.
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts on how to
> create/manage business documents/forms in Linux.
> 
> v/r
> -Mike
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-- 
Carl Parrish (cparrish@carlparrish.com)
http://www.carlparrish.com
---
Registered Linux User #295761 http://counter.li.org