LyX ⇒ Generating Documents with a fixed Template

[ComputingFroggy]

Hi,

I am looking a solution (preferably Open Source) to a problem to generate document according to a fixed template. Here are the details.

We want to generate documents to print them (could be PDF or LaTeX), and they must be formatted according to a template.

The users should be able to type in the documents text and chose a style, from the template, to apply to it (for instance title, title2, bodyText, bodyTextBold, bodyTextItalic).

It's not possible to use office and/or publishing software because after opening a template, the users are able to change whatever they want (character properties, document layout ...).

I have been advised to use LyX. But for I want to do, it seems to operate in the same way as an Office software (like Libre Office). Once a document is opened, the user may perform any actions he wants on the document.

Am I wrong? Is there way to lock some parts of the documents? Have you got some other software/system to recommend?


Thanks in advance,
L@u

[tom]

PDF supports certain form elements and pdflatex knows how to create them (see the discussion here). However, when I last tried probably about 2 years ago, the result was different with different PDF readers. Acrobat reader supported these elements, whereas Apple's Preview did not. This might have changed in the meantime. Just give it a try!

Tom