Funnily enough, the best software to generate this kind of document would be WordPerfect. It ain't dead yet...
Some years ago I specified a system for the human resources (HR) department for a group of hospitals which used standard documents which were stored on a server. Instead of using Merge techniques to populate them, we used Styles. The fantastic thing about WordPerfect Styles (as opposed to Styles found in other word processors) is that you can have text in them, so for example you would embed a Style called "CustomerName" wherever you needed it in the document, so that the Customer Name is typed in just the once. With HR, many of their documents are large, and legally binding, with Styles you are ensuring that people do not tinker with wording that might invalidate what amounts to a contractual document. For instance, you can automatically calculate dates, and amounts, and embed them in the document. With Merge fields this is not so easy to enforce.
To create a document a Macro would be needed (this can be done "by example" - no coding required). Another thing is that, suppose you have a 20 page contract, the macro can be used to produce a "backing sheet" which summarises all the Styles used in the document. So to speed up perusal time of someone's Personnel file, you have a printout of the Contract, with the backing sheet - in many cases the summary is all that is needed for someone looking quickly for information.
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by: ericpetePosted on 2008-06-02 at 12:13:23ID: 21694700
Is there any reason you can't just use Word and mailmerge it with data stored in something like an Access database? Or for that matter, just have a standard document and change what needs changing?