[texhax] Newbie Question: (La)TeX Good Choice for Data Collection Forms in PDF?
Axel E. Retif
axel.retif at mac.com
Wed Sep 9 07:10:16 CEST 2009
On 8 Sep, 2009, at 10:37, Jack Ort wrote:
> Hello! I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask this question
This is definitely the right place ---or a right place at least.
Also, in
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex
you can find good help.
> but I have been frantically searching for information on TeX and
> LaTex, and whether or not it would be a good choice for designing
> data collection forms. Specifically these would be clinical Case
> Report Forms (CRFs), where patient data such as vital signs,
> laboratory results, etc. would need to be collected across multiple
> clinic visits. Typically these forms will have groups of empty
> boxes (with labels) for manual entry, questions with Yes/No
> checkboxes, lines for capturing free-text comments, and often
> tabular data entry sections as well.
>
> Ideally, forms could be stored in a "library" for reuse and
> modification as needed.
If I understand correctly, LaTeX would be, I think, an ideal tool for
this. Other responses have stressed that LaTeX has indeed a steep
learning curve, but it's really worth to take the plunge.
The modular approach LaTeX has with its thousands of packages makes it
ideal for building a system to suit your needs. And again, if I
understand correctly, the amazing datatool package, by Dr. Nicola
Talbot might be a good building-block for your system. Take a look at
the datatool.pdf at
http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/datatool/
(I must confess, though, that I haven't use it yet, but as soon as I
get a chance, I will.)
I'm sure a MiKTeX ( http://www.miktex.org/ ) distribution would
already have the package, and also the soon to be released TeXLive
2009 ( http://www.tug.org/ ).
Best,
Axel
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