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Bob Gale wrote:
> 
> Steve,
> 
> Would you mind sharing a brief synopsis of the software you used for the
> voter's guide? Which database did you use, and what tools, if any, did you
> use to automate dumping it into print?
> 
> - Bob

Sure, to the best of my ability ...

The newsroom is using Microsoft Access on PCs to manage the
information-gathering process. It's powerful, easy to configure, and has
a decent user interface. I don't know details of how they get the info
into Quark, but I believe they're creating X-tagged reports one way or
another. The data also goes into Atex as plain text for reportorial
reference purposes.

For Online, we're dumping the table data from Access into a format that
can be read by our Unix-based Sybase tools and then combining it with
other information, such as the "precinct finder" database from the
Secretary of State's office, a separate table of polling places, and
(tonight, if all goes well) vote totals from the newsroom and from the
AP election wire. The query mechanism and user interface were developed
by Jerry Moore, who does database work and Perl scripting for Online
special projects.


--
Steve Yelvington 
Editor/Manager, Star Tribune Online, Minneapolis-St. Paul
http://www.startribune.com/

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