I wonder if perhaps scripting Open Office could be doable? I have looked (briefly) into the Open Document standard (I think that was the name), but it seemed too painful to me. I have some faint hope that creating word documents via the Open Office scripting API could be easier.

That is, rather than trying to create valid XML, just call a method on an empty open office doc that say 'creteHeading("abc")'

And so on... Of course probably it won't work, but it is the only hope I see on the horizon. (My problem is actually going from LaTex to Word).