There was much camaraderie and show-and-tell as computer users from 20 newspapers enlisted for a weeklong mission to automate their pagination systems. The lively group was made up of news, advertising and systems staffers from newspapers using or about to install Digital Technology International’s pagination software. Held Nov. 9-13, the AppleScript Camp was sponsored by DT and CoxNet, and hosted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

DT uses AppleScript, Apple Computer Inc.’s program-level scripting language, along with FaceSpan, DT’s AppleScript interface builder, to automate tasks in applications. A script tells the computer exactly what to do and when to do it, and can replace clicks, keystrokes and dragging in everyday workflow. By automating mundane, time-consuming tasks, like formatting baseball box scores and other tabular material, advertising and editorial staffers can concentrate on content and creativity (see What Next?, November/ December 1998, p. 33).

	Walter Kelly of the Longview (Texas) News-Journal and Parker Lockhart of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald share tips with DT's Tim Clawson (at bottom).

“We jointly sponsored this camp with the intent of getting people together to talk about the practical aspects of sharing technology and tips,” says CoxNet Director John Reetz.

Organizers set a loose agenda with a strong emphasis on sharing ideas, scripting techniques and code. With very little formal AppleScript training available, most scripters learn by taking bits and pieces of code from previously written scripts. They compared AppleScript code to a holiday fruitcake that gets passed around until it eventually comes back to its original owner.

With one ground rule—“if you write it, share it”—show-and-tell sessions held during the week gave everyone a chance to see the code others were writing.

“The atmosphere was awesome,” says Kate Magandy of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. “Everyone was very supportive of one another, and folks were most willing to share knowledge.” Adds Stan Burkes of The Roanoke (Va.) Times, “That’s what it’s all about—a melding of ideas where the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts.”

While most “campers” came from Cox Newspapers Inc., Gannett Co. and Knight Ridder newspapers, several independent publishers also were represented. Others, like Burkes, whose paper is the only Landmark title using DT software, came from chains using a variety of systems.

Campers arrived with specific goals. Some wanted to improve their scripting skills, some hoped to gain ideas for new scripts, and others, like Chuck Mathews of the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, brought nearly completed scripts of their own. Mathews’ projects help his sports department process and flow agate copy from the wire onto a page in PageSpeed, and generate a form to enter local sports results into the DT news database. Script Camp afforded him a week of uninterrupted scripting to work on the projects, with the added benefit of having other scripters close by.

Rik O’Neal, newsroom-systems manager at the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, describes his newsroom’s need for automation. “The Press Herald began paginating on DT in June and until now none of its PageSpeed operations has been automated,” he says. “Needless to say, design editors and copy editors alike were frustrated by the labor-intensive nature of the software. The general feeling was that they were no longer news people but had been forced to become computer operators, which was not what they had in mind when they became journalists.”

O’Neal planned to introduce his first suite of automated scripts following his return from Script Camp—ools he anticipated would “make the job immeasurably easier.”