I fully agree with the first reply, and want to add the following: Your idea of "automation" is a good idea, but your priorities are wrong. For docs, the most important thing is: writing it and maintaining it. Your process should be all around making it quick and easy to write, to keep it current, and to find. This should determine what tools you use - not the publishing process that connects these three. The "publishing process" of course should be automatic and fast, but if someone makes a chance and thinks "firing up the doc editor takes too long - I'll change that later", you have lost. 15 seconds can be "too long" already. Further, I yet have to find the tool chain that allows what you describe: a comfortable editor that outputs XML, for which you can download XSLT's to transform it into PDF. Maybe that tool is out there somewhere, for that's what the angle bracket fetishists XML guys say is the future.
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