...It is just now that the general public is becoming aware of it, in the form of XML. Just visit any IBM documentation shop. They've done all their documentation in SGML for years; in this problem space, there is no difference between SGML and XML.
Four years ago, I faced exactly the same problem as you: several thousand pages of product documentation formatted in Word. In our case, we had just lost five tech writers, leaving me holding the bag. So, I cobbled together an SGML publishing system with a colleague, for about $1000, including an on-line collaborative editing system, full on-line browsing of all docs, and semi-automatic translation of the SGML into LaTeX, thence into postscript or PDF. These days, all you need is a copy of WordPerfect 9 for the writer, a Linux box running the Xalan XSL formatter and a copy of PDFLaTeX, and you can single-source web and print versions of all your docs. The cost would be the cost of WP9, but of course you could just use a text editor.
This is not new technology. It's quite mature, as institutions like IBM and the U.S. military will attest.
As to myself, I create new DTDs as I need them for writing projects. One language per project, often.
By the way, you do not want to standardize on one "word processor" language for XML--that would be to miss the whole point of XML/SGML.
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...It is just now that the general public is becoming aware of it, in the form of XML. Just visit any IBM documentation shop. They've done all their documentation in SGML for years; in this problem space, there is no difference between SGML and XML.
Four years ago, I faced exactly the same problem as you: several thousand pages of product documentation formatted in Word. In our case, we had just lost five tech writers, leaving me holding the bag. So, I cobbled together an SGML publishing system with a colleague, for about $1000, including an on-line collaborative editing system, full on-line browsing of all docs, and semi-automatic translation of the SGML into LaTeX, thence into postscript or PDF. These days, all you need is a copy of WordPerfect 9 for the writer, a Linux box running the Xalan XSL formatter and a copy of PDFLaTeX, and you can single-source web and print versions of all your docs. The cost would be the cost of WP9, but of course you could just use a text editor.
This is not new technology. It's quite mature, as institutions like IBM and the U.S. military will attest.
As to myself, I create new DTDs as I need them for writing projects. One language per project, often.
By the way, you do not want to standardize on one "word processor" language for XML--that would be to miss the whole point of XML/SGML.