New Members ⇒ Is Latex for me?

[JamesGlitzernes]

Every once a while, I have to work on really big Word documents, +300 pages. There'll be 3 or 4 Word templates, based on numbered lists, that get sent out to 30 or so people. Then the documents come back, often with the styles and numbered lists formats mangled, jammed to the brim with images, tables (in portrait format) and text. Then I have to proofread them as best I can, fix the formatting, compile it all into one document, generate an index and print to pdf. It is a nightmare, primarily because I feel like I have so little control over the formatting styles and the page layout.

I've been considering whether maybe it's smarter to just copy each document when finalized into a program that offers more control. Like Latex?

Firstly, I know lots of html and CSS etc, so I'm comfortable in a non-WSIWYG environment. I figure if more changes have to be made to a doc after Latex import, I can always export to Word and then send the doc to the author? Or maybe get them to mark-up a pdf?

I'm looking for better control over image placement, headers, index and multilevel numbered lists. Also, umlauts have to work - I see a lot of umlauts.

The question is whether copying 300 pages of content and formatting everything in Latex (under a tight deadline) will be quicker than tearing my hair out trying to straighten out the Word docs people send me. Anyone been there, done that?

Thanks

[Johannes_B]

Hi and welcome,

it seems your biggest issue is user import, i would start there

pandoc is a very flexible converter, Word to LaTeX is possible as well. But as everything auto-generated, it needs polishing.

I would suggest to change the user input to mark-down, a very simple and intuitive approach. Depending on what the users produce, the conversion to valid LaTeX is easily doable.

What kind of templates are you providing for the users?