'Bushwhacked'
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I wonder if any of you can help me talk to my operations people, because I'm afraid I'm not using the right words to describe what I want. My dream is to have a database (?) that is full of paragraphs of information, each of which is tagged (?) in various ways. Then someone can choose different tags and a word document will be automagically created with the relevant paragraphs.
Does that sound like a thing that could exist?
I am wondering if words like "content modules" might be useful. You basically want to build a text document using different chunks of text (paragraphs) selected from a pool, right?
I've done this for web pages for library resources - you have a box that explains how to use the VPN, a box that gives the subject librarian's profile, a box that has library hours, and then blank boxes you can customize for whatever you need. The boxes were called "content modules" in the setup.
Sounds like DITA.
Yes, that is DITA. It might be a buzzword that helps evoke what you're looking for. In DITA, information is broken down into standalone chunks and put into a content management system, and then a map is created to pull those chunks and assemble them into your end result.
In the database I use (Slate) they are called snippets.
OMG, why is our database so janky? That looks amazing.
Sounds like a tool that be an excellent candidate for basing on MongoDB. A bit of Java Spring to manage a REST interface used by a Vue js frontend. Generating the result in Word format would be a PITA though. Maybe there's a library that does the heavy lifting though. At least it would be docx, doc is a nightmare. I mean, it made sense in the day, but OMG it was a mess. There's a reason that formatting could go all wonky in old versions of Word.
I mean seriously. When you get SPRMs scattered all over the place in non-linear order, trying to translate doc files into other files was hard AF.
It doesn't really have to come out as a Word doc, just something that looks nice.