Three thoughts:
1) Yes, your idea of using something like Plone with some custom
scripts and workflows would probably allow you to create what you
want. There are plugins for stuff like PDF rendering, and for
headers and footers you could play games with different style sheets
- out of the box, Plone's "printable" view is just another stylesheet
applied to the same content. But this solution is going to require
some learning of the platform and likely some custom programming, you
won't have your solution out of the box.
2) How about a Wiki? It's perfect for content that is linked and
frequently edited, and you get version control wrapped right in. I'd
recommend TWiki (http://twiki.org) because it is mature, and aimed at
more complex document management tasks like you describe. It has a
built in system for creating forms and defining workflows, and beyond
that has a plug-in architecture to make easily extendable with Perl.
It has a rich text editor that works in your favorite browsers,
eliminating the need for Word.
3) Look at KnowledgeTree, a mature and full-featured DMS (http://
www.ktdms.com/products/). It may be more than what you need, but
since it's free and open source it's worth a try. The commercial
editions of it have integration with MS Office, so it may be able to
complement the system you already have.
--
Joshua Penix http://www.binarytribe.com
Binary Tribe Linux Integration Services & Network Consulting
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
