Are there any other markup languages which do not have a tough learning curve (I managed to get speed in Latex after about 2 mnths and still make mistakes) and can be easy to program. I am looking at Apache FOP, but it seems a bit daunting right now. And Latex is just out of question.
What I want is to provide plain text input and/or images to predefined sections of my document and have a program (Java or C#) go ahead and format that text as per templates I have defined and then compile the document, into PostScript or PDF. I am not writing another version of the Mahabharata or Odyssey and do not require complex formatting options. The documents are intended to be pretty simple and 15-20 pages at max.
An application of this idea, for example would be a resume builder. I define my output format in the program. Then whenever I want a copy of my resume, I just select which of my skills, projects etc. should appear and voila, the program will give me a PDF exactly as I want, customised to my needs.
Best Answer
I personally use LaTeX for these sorts of tasks, but if LaTeX really is not an option, you might want to consider a lightweight markup language like reStructuredText (which has converters to HTML, LaTeX, and PDF), Markdown, or Textile.