What's the best software for a complex table?

["Sue Gier, JMU Office of Info. Tech. (703)568-6301" <OIT_SUE -at- JMUVAX -dot- BITNET>]

We have a document that we produce once a year that is somewhat
of nightmare. I'm hoping that someone might be able to suggest a
good software solution.

It's a diskette-shaped brochure printed in two color on gloss
stock that is a quick reference to computing services for
students at JMU. The brochure folds out to a rather complex
table of computing labs on campus vs. what hardware and
software they have. Complex, yes, but hard to read, no, because we
have rules between all of the rows and columns...dang, I wish I
could just include a picture. Since I can't, please bear with my
description a minute here.

The rows are the names of the labs and the top-level columns are
Hardware and Software. The Hardware column is broken down into
DOS, Macintosh, and VAX which are then broken down into machine
class (i.e. 286 computers, 386 computers, 486 computer, laser
printers, etc.). So we have three column heading levels. The
Software column is the same except it has a fourth
level--category of software.

Now that you're all confused, let me explain how the reader uses
this table. Suppose you want to know what computing labs have
WordPerfect for Macintosh. Under the column head of "Software"
you find "Word Processing." Then you choose "MAC" for Macintosh
and then "WordPerfect." Looking down this column you will see a
check mark for all of the labs that have the software.

To aid the eye, all the MAC columns are screened 10% black while
the DOS columns are white; and every other row (computer labs) is
filled with color (this past year it was orange). This makes it
readable--I'll gladly mail anyone a copy that would like to
see it.

Now for the problem. Each year we have a different number of
labs, machines, and software packages. So rows and columns need
to be deleted, added or reordered. In the past, we've used Adobe
Illustrator and it has taken alot of work. The plusses for using
Illustrator are that after the number of rows and columns are
changed, we can resize, stretch, or shrink the table to use the
maximum amount of space available. And Illustrator does color
separations. Also, for the rest of the brochure, we use alot of
line drawing to cram as much info as possible into a tiny
space--but that could be done with different software if needed.
OOps, almost forgot, the column heading for software types are on
a 45 degree angle.

We're ready to try new software--any suggestions? It would be
really cool if we could just plug the data into a spreedsheet,
database, table, or whatever and have the table drawn from that.
Right now, it's so hard keeping all the columns the same width,
and all the lines straight and connected at the right points,
and the check marks uniformly spaced within the boxes, etc. Is
there a package out there that would do all this automatically?
If not, would we be better off using a desktop publishing
package such as PageMaker or Ventura (those are two that I have
handy)? And if we did, how would we shrink or enlarge the image?

Thanks for reading. I look forward to your creative suggestions!

Sue Gier
James Madison University