Re: LaTeX templates, was Docmentation/FAQs

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

It seems that the general agreement on the list is to move away from
the current template system.  I guess my concerns are that I think it
will be absolutely necessary that we continue to make it easy for
people to switch from SQL-Ledger to LedgerSMB, so I think that one of
the requirements is that we provide scripts to migrate them, so the
changes ought to be ones which can be migrated.  It seems we are
moving in that direction so as long as those scripts are available and
maintained, then I have no problem with it.

I also have a couple of othet thougths here for community review--

1)  Short-term, I think we should move away from <% %> tags in the
templates and move to <?ledgersmb ?>.  Such a tag is more XML friendly
and can be used to preprocess XML files  without screwing up their
structure.  In addition to making the LaTeX templates friendly to
editors like LyX, this would also be a step towards XML invoices.

This would also allow for the easy addition of an XSLT template system
without requiring that people switch immediately.  One could
preprocess LaTeX files directly or create XML files as intermediaries.
And a simple configuration file option could allow one to choose.

Any thoughts?  Objections, considerations, before I begin (that is my
task after the current task I am doing for a customer).