Sorry for answering to the reply, but I don't have the original message...
>As for me, perl + LaTeX + gs is the best combination.
Chris, this is probably the best solution for your problem, but if you don't want to elarn Perl, you can still use sed and awk instead of it.
LaTeX as typesetting package is a _very_ good idea (in general not only for automatisation)
But when it comes to Systemadministration, speaking a bit of Perl is always of advantage.
regards,
Stefan