General ⇒ Compiling technical engineering reports using LaTeX

[Sgertz]

Hi, first time LaTeX user here.

This may be a bit of an intense project for a first time user, but here goes...

I work for a geotechnical engineering firm where we write technical reports several times per project. These reports are very similar, since we will usually rewrite a report from a previous project with the necessary information for the current project. Depending on the nature of the project, the reports will include different sections (ie retaining wall design, foundation design, roadway design, etc).

I would like to write a program that will compile the necessary sections using a check-box system to input what sections are necessary, and then add the pertinent technical data using a tabular input. The users of this program are not coding-savvy, so the user interface would have to be fairly simple.

A friend suggested using LaTeX for this task, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm just not really sure where to start. Any direction would be super helpful.

Thanks,
Sean

[Johannes_B]

Hi and welcome,

i am not sure LaTeX is the right tool here. To typeset the documents, sure it is. But you need an interface for users, checkboxes and stuff like that. Maybe you even have data in a database. With the amount of information, hard to say.
But you should read Paulo Ceredas blog entry Generating LaTeX code with a template engine. I think this should pretty much do the stuff you want (once you set everything up).

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Sean,

welcome to the forum!

LaTeX is a great tool for the backend. Given that you write your program in a language offering a GUI to the user, your program could generate the necessary LaTeX code. That means, it gives a default LaTeX document as the output, and depending on the check boxes, inserts some LaTeX macros or lines or it does not if unchecked.

LaTeX is a good choice because it's plain text which can be generated, and you can use macros. And of course you benefit from all LaTeX capabilities. Independent of the generating program, you can design the appearance of the final LaTeX document within LaTeX.

Stefan