tlug: (La)TeX, SGML, or ... ?

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

I need to pick a Linux/Unix-based tool to develop a site procedures
manual.  My criteria are that it should be easily editable (mostly by me,
but at some point by other members of the engineering department as well),
that it should be viewable and editable graphically, and if the format is
one for which a (good) convert-to-HTML tool exists, that's a plus.  At
this point, it seems that it will not need to be put into Japanese, so I'm
not concerned with language issues here.  I also don't care if the files
can be read by people using non-*ix machines or not.

The choices appear to be Tex or LaTeX, SGML, or create Postscript files.
None of the three are anything I really know anything about, so I'd like
to get some advice from those who have used any of these.  Which do you
think would be the way to go, and why?  Are there any other solutions that
would be better?  I know I could just do it in Applix, but I'm the only
person in the department who has it, so portability would be zero.  That
scratches Applix.

A constraint is that I don't have time to learn to write markup language
files or anything just now, so I have to regard graphical editing of the
files as pretty important.  I would also like to use RCS for version
control if possible.

Has anyone used LyX to make LaTeX files?  Do you think this would meet my
needs fairly well?

Also, I may eventually want to put screenshots into the manual, but these
will probably not be present in the first version (s).

TIA,

Jonathan Byrne                                   Engineering Division
Global Online Japan                              http://www.gol.com/
Tel:  +81 03-5334-1700   Fax: +81-03-5334-1701   Direct: +81-03-5334-1756

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