[External Email] Re: creating a pdf version of a complicated form, populated with data from a database

[William F Hammond]

Christopher Ryan writes:

> We are a small government agency and do not have a decent,
> full-fledged electronic medical record. We are about to
> resume (hopefully large-scale) blood lead testing for
> children. We were doing it pre-pandemic, and I remember the
> workflow, data management, and preparations for billing
> .. . I've created a REDCap project to manage
> most of the operation. R has a nice capability to interface
> with REDCap via an API. R is the only programming language I
> have any facility with. As the saying goes, "If all you have
> is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

The thing is that auto-generating TeX source can be tricky.

I have only a slight passing acquaintance with 'R'.  That
said, what I've gleaned about your needs has me thinking
that GNU's gawk may be a good choice.  Perl or Python
would be larger hammers but still probably better in my view
than 'R'.  (I don't know enough about Lua to say, but I'm
wondering if it might be too small a hammer)

                              -- Bill


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