I have a problem.  It's MS Word.  It sucks.  It's the most horrible  
tool ever devised for writing documentation, especially when dealing  
with reusable content and multiple authors.  The theory behind LaTeX  
is that you can create a stylesheet that dictates the formatting of  
the final document, and authors can focus on the content rather than  
the layout.  I can spend hours formatting a document and fighting with  
MS Word to get things looking just right, it sucks.  Plus, it produces  
horrendous looking output.

Here's what I'm looking for in a documentation solution:
- Version control for multiple authors, maybe even on a per section  
basis so multiple people can work on a document at one time.  A single  
LaTeX document can be split up into multiple files, so it has that  
going for it
- The ability to create a standard outline for different types of  
documents that is dynamically prepopulated with reusable content from  
a version control system or database
- The ability to *FORCE* styles for different parts of the document  
(e.g. Text in a paragraph is ALWAYS a certain font and size and cannot  
be changed unless the author changes the stylesheet)
- The author focuses on his content that he needs to add to the  
prepopulated document, saves it, and generates a final PDF which  
applies all of the styles/headers/footers from the stylesheet
- Offline editing.  I can check out a document or section of a  
document, edit it, and then check it back in once I get connected back  
to the net.

DITAWorks seems to do this.  But it's $800 a seat.  That's fine, but I  
don't know if I have enough time to complete a demo of it by the time  
they'll want a decision.  Can I do all of this with LaTeX and LyX?   
Are there any good DocBook or DITA editors/suites out there that are  
free and can do this?

I don't want people to have to edit raw LaTeX or XML.  The editor must  
hide this stuff.  And it should also be cross platform.  I thought  
about using Eclipse with OrangeVolt, the DITA schema, and the version  
control plugins, but I'm not sure where to start with it.

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jay austad  |  612.423.1433  |  austad at signal15.com