LyX ⇒ WYSIWIG Editor for SQL

[purit]

Hello,

im a systemengineer, and my skills at programming are not that good. (my english either) Im looking for a Latex WYSIWIG editor for an SQL Database.

I want to implement it to SQL. So that i can write directly with and sql in the background.

The frontend is a normal browser... based on html code.

Is there any posibility to do that ?

[Johannes_B]

Hi and welcome,

i am sorry, but i have a little trouble understanding what you want/looking for/trying to achieve.

I am sure we can find something or lead you on the right path, but please make your request a bit more understandable.

[purit]

Sorry,

im looking for an WYSIWYG Editor for LaTeX based Letters.
I wan't to include it to a SQL based database.
This is a database for accounting, with customer data and addresses. And therefore i want a Plugin to write a letter to a customer, with a include of the adresse.

So why a WYSIWYG whit Latex?

This SQL Database works with LaTeX generated invoices.
It must be very simple programm, because our customers will work with this programm. We just support it and develop.

I hope that helps more, sorry for the unintelligibility.

[Johannes_B]

I am not sure if i got this right.

The user is going to write a letter, possibly using a standardized output.
TeX will be used to typeset the letter.
The user can access a SQL database to get customer information.
All this user interaction happens in the browser.

You can design a simple interface (using php) taking all the required information (customerID, userID, textbody etc), generating the LaTeX-code later, let it compile in the background and output the result (a nice pdf).

[purit]

Something like that yeah.

But is it posibble to make a button to change fonts, and make it bolt or italic, Flush Right,left?

Thanks for help Johannes_B

[Johannes_B]

Since you are the one developing the script, you can implement any button you like. But what kind of document are going to be written?

Up to now i was thinking of letters in a company. A company most likely has it's own corporate design, so any design choices should not be made by the user of the script.

[purit]

It will be a normal Letter from a company to customers, with Templates.

Are there any help for this Project? I mean tutorials or something.

The best i saw is Bakoma... thats what i want. I need it as a Plugin for my website that would be the best option.

[Johannes_B]

I am not quite sure what you are trying to achieve, still.
Bakoma claims to be a WYSIWYG editor, LyX on the other hand says it is a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) editor. The pdf will be generated by clicking a button. The implementation of TeX makes it impossible to have a real WYSIWYG system.

I think what you need is the following, some kind of form that takes the input data of the user. That can be easlily done using HTML. You need some kind of interface to access the database. A php-script (or any other programming language you like) that takes the user data (and database data) and outputs a tex-file. This file has to be compiled by TeX (running on a server?). The generated pdf can be send to the user by email or previewed in the browser for checking. You also need some sort of failsafe script that skims the LaTeX-log file for errors informing the user about them.

The only thing on topic on this site is the letter itself. All the rest should be done with different tools than (La)TeX.

As you can see what you are trying to achieve is not possible by design, but you can get good results with the above mentioned approach.

Writing the html, the php-parser and the log-skimmer shouldn't be that hard with some basic knowledge of programming conventions.
Running TeX on a server? No idea how it works, but you can have a look at WriteLaTeX. There are other online compilers. They might even be helpful with the log skimmer.
Databases, sorry, no knowledge there.


Another keyword to take into account would be template engines. Please have a look at our chat transcript for some starting directions.