XSL/XML and XSLT and/or Docbook

[Craig White]

Been struggling for a while with this and am in a quandry.

What I have is a manual of several hundred Microsoft Word documents
linked together only by subdirectories or a 3 ring binder. These
documents must be converted no matter what because their formatting
falls apart, even if moved to Macintosh OSX and Microsoft Word.

What I have identified so far is that we would like to be able to have
these documents available in various forms...
- html (xhtml is probably more likely)
- pdf as a complete set that we could print with a single command.
- pdf subsections since some of the sections are used 'stand alone'

Thus the little knowledge that I posses told me that I could convert
these documents into Docbook format and then use either dsssl or xslt to
process the xml into the various formats that I might want to use.

My experimentation with this leaves something to be desired though
because the maintainable data structures in XML don't seem to be very
friendly for administrative staff to edit/maintain.

I also have hear from Joeseph that docbook format is clunky and
uncooperative and thus far, my experiences with using docbook2html /
docbook2pdf vs. xsltproc haven't been too dissimilar to convince me that
either is a better way but I was hoping to hang on to docbook just in
the hopes that I could have administrative staff use something like OOo
as their editor so as not to completely scare them off.

I am almost thinking that I might have to simply eschew the common word
processor as the data tool and end up coding a complete application in
something like ruby on rails to output the xml bits to ultimately be
assembled into final form by xsltproc or other and am wondering...my
question for the list...

Am I missing something or are my only choices to get something like this
done is through a web based application that takes the user supplied
data, writes out xml and then post processes via xsltproc or simply 
use 'master pages' and assemble books from linking all the various OOo
documents together? - which of course is gonna leave me in a world of
hurt for html.

-- 
Craig White <craig at tobyhouse.com>