One of the responsibilities of TV Guide Magazine's Editorial Graphics department is to generate several pages of Pay-Per-View listings each week. These listings then appear in various editions of the printed magazine.
The process for building the Pay-Per-View pages consists of several steps. First, the proper listings information must be extracted from an Oracle database. Next, it must be brought into QuarkXPress, formatted according to predefined standards, and exported in the proper format.
The entire process of building these pages used to take 4-5 designers one full work week to complete. It now takes 1 designer around 20 minutes to build all of the pages. How is this possible? With AppleScript.
First, an AppleScript logs onto a UNIX machine through a telnet session and executes a series of commands to extract the weekly Pay-Per-View listings information from the database. The script then flows the information into QuarkXPress, formats it in the appropriate manner, and exports each page as an EPS file. Thanks to AppleScript, TV Guide's Editorial Graphics department is able to save a tremendous amount of resources.
Apple Computer was even impressed by this process. Click here to download an article written by Apple about this solution.
In addition to maintaining the Pay-Per-View listings system previously described, Benjamin S. Waldie, now president of Automated Workflows, LLC, developed several other systems for use by TV Guide's Editorial Graphics department. One such solution was an online job ticket system. This system was created using FileMaker Pro, and was designed to reduce internal paperwork and to increase productivity.
When designers need a graphic to be scanned, they simply log onto an Intranet site with a web browser and fill out a job ticket request form. Once this form is submitted, an AppleScript automatically notifies the Advertising Production Scanning department, letting the department know that a job has been submitted. Then, once the scanning is complete, an AppleScript sends out an email to Editorial Production, notifying the department that the scan is done, and indicates where the scan is located.
The use of AppleScript to automate these and other time consuming processes has allowed TV Guide Magazine's Editorial Graphics department to greatly increase its productivity and the quality of its work.
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