I am trying to create different versions of a software manual from a single source which is in MS Word format. Is it possible to do this algorithmically or must it be done manually for every version?
Specifically, our software has three different types of licenses and each one corresponds to a specific subset of the built-in functionality. Details of the omitted functionality should not be present in the manual.
You are probably better off splitting the core document into several files and then compiling a specific manual by selecting the required sections.
Word documents can be manipulated progmatically, but its tricky to get the formatting exactly right, so keeping the code to splicing together large chunks rather than adding/removing sections from a single doc reduces the complexity of the task.
eg.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5124
