Apologies for random post - ergates was asking in #alug earlier today about various latex stuff - i suggested using smarty as a template engine to generate different looking systems for generating the latex code as opposed to hardcoding the latex code into the php engine (the idea is that you hve a set of data stored in a database, pull out into a latex document that you then compile).
I've just written the sort of thing that I was trying to explain and wondered if anyone else had any ideas on how to improve such a system - mine is now sitting at:
http://cornflakes.imen.org.uk/~jt/smartytex/
Issues atm... 1) I was having trouble with auto loading the pdf in the right pane on compile - I couldnt seem to get an onload() function to call the myload javascript call - but javascript is not my strong point... 2) You can select between an Article (with the content in sections) or a Book (with the content in chapters). 3) It dosnt remember on the frame=left the values you put in for last time - partially this is because I am very tired and its only a demo atm... 4) You can only use it one person at a time - i could tie the file it writes and works with in as being tied to a random number attached to a session to allow more then one person work on it at once, but again, that takes it beyond the scope for this current session. 5) Some people may have security concerns over certain files on the server having to be written to by root in the public directory, but I think these files are tied down enough. However ... I am a little concerned about runing the latex command because i *THINK* there may be a shell execute command inside of latex, - because of that, I am passing through a simple clean function which screws up any attempts at latex commands... of course better regex should be put in place to clean latex to allow latex commands but not any dangerous ones
Thanks JT