Once again, several new editorial systems, including two from Scandinavian vendors Scoop Wilkenson AS and SAXoTECH AS, came from abroad. Budgeting tools allow editors to assign stories and photos to staffers, track their progress and automatically flow them into assigned spaces. That person builds a database, and then the system can make intelligent decisions. Many systems integrate editing, pagination and image-handling functions in one package. In addition, publishers couple Web-browsing software with intranets to bring archives and other tools to every workstation.
Some systems also move away from such desktop standards as QuarkXPress.
Take Software Consulting Services, one of the first vendors to encourage integration with Quark. Changes in other departments also move editorial workers forward. While incremental improvement abounds, the call continues for revolutionary change. We're trying to share more information about where stories are and give more people access to that information. By freeing content from design specifications, databases can play perhaps their largest role.