business forms, etc

[Derek Neighbors]

Mike Starke said:
> 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 use GNUe Forms and GNUe Reports and it works great, but that is a biased
opinion.  Basically make a document say in open office or abiword. 
Anywhere you want "data" you put in a little tag.  Save the file.  Now you
can run that report with "parameters" and viola it uses your mysql data to
populate the form.  I would be willing to take time to show you how to do
this personally free of charge if you are interested.

-Derek