print

I mentioned when this group started that we had written a simple module called Tearsheet. Its purpose is to let editors search for content and export plain-text formatted for pasting into a front-end system.

The original module is 4.6 and relies on a custom module that is unreleasable. But I was talking to Tim from Maine this week and he's trying to do export using Views and having trouble.

As the introductions continue I'd like to start a substantive discussion: What roles can/should Drupal play as a content management system for print output?

Here's some context: I've been involved for the last couple of months in a background conversation in which one of the memes is the need for a single, unified system that can output to Web, print, audio, video and as-yet-to-be-defined channels.

I'm going to quote (without attribution) from a private email:

"It would be wonderful if a one-person weekly newspaper journalist could cover the news and write it up (with photos, video, audio clips) in a clever content management interface that would, in some wonderfully automated way, result in not only the production of a Web site, but also the creation of packaged files from which a low power FM broadcast can run, a community access cable TV program can air and, of course, a newspaper can be printed."