The short question: Is there a way for someone with extremely limited TeX knowledge to build and edit a table with some formatting (certain cells colored, double line borders, standard column/table widths, etc.)?
The long question: I'm at a company now that has a long product line with some parts dating back 30 years. The manuals for these parts are currently written in Microsoft Word, and as you can imagine, there are about as many different formats as there are manuals. The solution is obviously to switch to a program like TeX. I'm perfectly comfortable working in this sort of environment, but I'm not the decider. I need to convince my boss, and to do that I need to make the list of required learning as short as is humanly possible.
After a few days of research into LaTeX and three different editing environments (TeXstudio, TeXmaker, and MiKTeX [TeXworks]), it's clear that tables are going to be the biggest stumbling block for us. I've already found a few tools for building tables automatically, though none of them offer easy editing of an existing table. TeXstudio showed the most promise, with features to align columns, add/delete rows, etc, but these features do not work when you use anything remotely exotic (like \hhline or \rowcolor).
So anyway, what ways are there to build and edit tables for the utterly inept? Below are a couple example tables cause pictures are always fun.
Best Answer
I guess this kind of document have some consistent layout that could be defined in a custom template and the informations are stored in some kind of database?
In the company where I work (small company that makes instruments for veterinary diagnostics) the people in production, lab technicians and sales&marketing use LaTeX without knowing for CoAs, labels, QC reports, etc. We have a custom frontend with a friendly GUI where information can be filled in using forms or loaded from our pdm. The resulting pdfs can then be printed or sent electronically. This system works great even for users who are uncomftable working with a PC.