What would be the correct approach for this problem?:

we have shared documents on a samba server. Win, Lin and Mac users all edit the documents from time to time. They are currently odt files. However, the formatting is never right when different users access it.
There are a lot of boxes in frames, some tables, etc. Quite complex, and it always has to remain that way for when the docs are printed.

So I thought it would be nice to somehow separate content and format, but I don't even know where to start. The output should be a pdf with the precise layout of the current documents. The input could be anything, but existing content must be editable.

What would you recommend?

thanks

I've heard on the past about web frontends to LaTeX, never used them personally though.

By providing access only via a web frontend you can limit what people can or can't do with the documents. I have no idea if such a thing do exist for odt, though...

Hello nglbrkr,

well, I think that it is necessary that all computers run the same (latest) version of OpenOffice.

To prevent users from changing the documents look at this: http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&source...RwYJauVcAqsBpQ and http://openmrs.org/wiki/Creating_Forms_in_OpenOffice

Markus

The document contains protected frames with overlaid text boxes for typing. However, even between identical versions of OOo on Lin and Win, with identical settings and with the same fonts installed, the formatting is different, eg. the number of lines that can be typed is not the same, text from the bottom frame that can be seen on Lin is obscured on Win, and so on. I have discussed these issues on OOo forums in the past and it seems to be an accepted fact that a document will not diplay the same on Lin and Win.

That's why I was hoping to move away from users interacting with the format.

However, thanks for the form info. I will take a look and see how I get on with it. I have struggled to understand forms in the past, but this looks better than the previous howtos I could find.

nigel