Desktop publishing

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Electronic publishing.

Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated

content comparable to the simpler forms of traditional typography and printing. This technology allows individuals, businesses, and other organizations to self-publish a wide variety of content, from menus to magazines to books, without the expense of commercial printing.[2]

Desktop publishing often requires the use of a personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout software to create documents for either large-scale publishing or small-scale local printing and distribution – although non-WYSIWYG systems such as TeX and LaTeX are also used, especially in scientific publishing. Originally, desktop publishing methods provided more control over design, layout, and typography than word processing software but the latter has evolved to include most, if not all, capabilities previously available only with dedicated desktop publishing software.[3]

The same DTP skills and software used for common paper and book publishing are sometimes used to create graphics for

retail package designs and outdoor signs
.

History

Desktop publishing was first developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s.[4][5] A contradictory claim states that desktop publishing began in 1983 with a program developed by James Davise at a community newspaper in Philadelphia.[6] The program Type Processor One ran on a PC using a graphics card for a WYSIWYG display and was offered commercially by Best Info in 1984.[7] Desktop typesetting with only limited page makeup facilities[citation needed] arrived in 1978–1979 with the introduction of TeX, and was extended in 1985 with the introduction of LaTeX.

The desktop publishing market took off in 1985 with the introduction in January of the Apple LaserWriter laser printer for the year-old Apple Macintosh personal computer.[8][9] This momentum was kept up with the release that July of PageMaker software from Aldus, which rapidly became the standard software application for desktop publishing.[10] With its advanced layout features, PageMaker immediately relegated word processors like Microsoft Word to the composition and editing of purely textual documents. The term "desktop publishing" is attributed to Aldus founder Paul Brainerd, who sought a marketing catchphrase to describe the small size and relative affordability of this suite of products, in contrast to the expensive commercial phototypesetting equipment of the day.[11]

Before the advent of desktop publishing, the only option available to most people for producing typed documents (as opposed to handwritten documents) was a typewriter, which offered only a handful of typefaces (usually fixed-width) and one or two font sizes. Indeed, one popular desktop publishing book was titled The Mac is Not a Typewriter, and it had to actually explain how a Mac could do so much more than a typewriter.[12] The ability to create WYSIWYG page layouts on screen and then print pages containing text and graphical elements at crisp 300 dpi resolution was revolutionary for the personal computer industry. The ability to do all this with industry standards like PostScript also revolutionized the traditional publishing industry, which at the time was accustomed to buying end-to-end turnkey solutions for digital typesetting which came with their own proprietary hardware workstations.[13] Newspapers and other print publications began to transition to DTP-based programs from older layout systems such as Atex and other programs in the early 1980s.

Desktop publishing was still in its embryonic stage in the early 1980s. Users of the PageMaker-LaserWriter-Macintosh 512K system endured frequent software crashes,[14] cramped display on the Mac's tiny 512 x 342 1-bit monochrome screen, the inability to control letter spacing, kerning, and other typographic features, and the discrepancies between screen display and printed output. However, it was a revolutionary combination at the time, and was received with considerable acclaim.[10]

Behind the scenes, technologies developed by

Adobe Systems set the foundation for professional desktop publishing applications. The LaserWriter and LaserWriter Plus printers included scalable Adobe PostScript fonts built into their ROM memory. The LaserWriter's PostScript capability allowed publication designers to proof files on a local printer, then print the same file at DTP service bureaus using optical resolution 600+ ppi PostScript printers such as those from Linotronic
.

Later, the Macintosh II was released, which was considerably more suitable for desktop publishing due to its greater expandability, support for large color multi-monitor displays, and its SCSI storage interface (which allowed hard drives to be attached to the system). Macintosh-based systems continued to dominate the market into 1986, when the GEM-based Ventura Publisher was introduced for MS-DOS computers. PageMaker's pasteboard metaphor closely simulated the process of creating layouts manually, but Ventura Publisher automated the layout process through its use of tags and style sheets and automatically generated indices and other body matter. This made it particularly suitable for the creation of manuals and other long-format documents.

Desktop publishing moved into the home market in 1986 with Professional Page for the

Apple II and Commodore 64: Home Publisher, The Newsroom, and geoPublish
.

During its early years, desktop publishing acquired a bad reputation as a result of untrained users who created poorly organized, unprofessional-looking "

graphic image development
.

As of 2014[update], Apple computers remain dominant in publishing, even as the most popular software has changed from QuarkXPress – an estimated 95% market share in the 1990s – to Adobe InDesign. As an Ars Technica writer puts: "I've heard about Windows-based publishing environments, but I've never actually seen one in my 20+ years in design and publishing".[16]

Terminology

There are two types of pages in desktop publishing:

content to scale in size with the page or the content to re-flow
.

Master pages are templates used to automatically copy or link elements and graphic design styles to some or all the pages of a multipage document. Linked elements can be modified without having to change each instance of an element on pages that use the same element. Master pages can also be used to apply graphic design styles to automatic page numbering.

rendered in the application software, while others can be placed from an external source image file. Text may be keyed into the layout, placed, or – with database publishing
applications – linked to an external source of text which allows multiple editors to develop a document at the same time. Graphic design styles such as color, transparency and filters may also be applied to layout elements. Typography styles may be applied to text automatically with style sheets. Some layout programs include style sheets for images in addition to text. Graphic styles for images may include border shapes, colors, transparency, filters, and a parameter designating the way text flows around the object (also known as "wraparound" or "runaround").

Comparisons

With word processing

As desktop publishing software still provides extensive features necessary for print publishing, modern word processors now have publishing capabilities beyond those of many older DTP applications, blurring the line between word processing and desktop publishing.

In the early 1980s, the graphical user interface was still in its embryonic stage and DTP software was in a class of its own when compared to the leading word processing applications of the time. Programs such as WordPerfect and WordStar were still mainly text-based and offered little in the way of page layout, other than perhaps margins and line spacing. On the other hand, word processing software was necessary for features like indexing and spell checking – features that are common in many applications today. As computers and operating systems became more powerful, versatile, and user-friendly in the 2010s, vendors have sought to provide users with a single application that can meet almost all their publication needs.

With other digital layout software

In earlier modern-day usage, DTP usually did not include digital tools such as

batch mode", requiring the user to enter the processing program's markup language (e.g. HTML
) without immediate visualization of the finished product. This kind of workflow is less user-friendly than WYSIWYG, but more suitable for conference proceedings and scholarly articles as well as corporate newsletters or other applications where consistent, automated layout is important.

In the 2010s, interactive front-end components of TeX, such as TeXworks and LyX, have produced "what you see is what you mean" (WYSIWYM) hybrids of DTP and batch processing.[17] These hybrids are focused more on the semantics than the traditional DTP. Furthermore, with the advent of TeX editors the line between desktop publishing and markup-based typesetting is becoming increasingly narrow as well; a software which separates itself from the TeX world and develops itself in the direction of WYSIWYG markup-based typesetting is GNU TeXmacs.

On a different note, there is a slight overlap between desktop publishing and what is known as

troubleshoot
.

With web design

Desktop publishing produces primarily static print or

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide format control for web display. Web HTML font families map website font usage to the fonts available on the user's web browser
or display device.

Software

For a more comprehensive list, see List of desktop publishing software.

A wide variety of DTP applications and websites are available and are listed separately.

File formats

For a more comprehensive list, see
List of desktop publishing file formats
.

The design industry standard is PDF. The older EPS format is also used and supported by most applications.

See also

  • Comparison of desktop publishing software
  • List of desktop publishing software
  • Document processor
     – Device or computer program used for writing and editing documents
  • Camera-ready – Document technically ready to print
  • Desktop video – Pre-digital video editing on PC
  • DTP artist – Desktop publishing worker
  • E-book
     – Book-length publication in digital form
  • Digital publishing
     – Publishing and disseminating documents via electronic means
  • Web design – Creation and maintenance of websites
  • WYSIWYG – Acronym for "what you see is what you get" in computing

References

  1. ^ Bear, Jacci Howard. "What's Involved in Desktop Publishing?". Lifewire. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  2. ISBN 9783540187882
    .
  3. ^ Amanda Presley (2010-01-28). "What Distinguishes Desktop Publishing From Word Processing?". Bright Hub. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  4. ISBN 978-0201854916
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0761923824
    .
  6. ^ "What You See Is Pretty Close to What You Get: New h&j, pagination program for IBM PC, " Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, 13(10), February 13, 1984, pp. 21-2.
  7. ^ "Type-X '85: Fulfilling the Promise of the PC, " Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, 15(2) pp. 4-5.
  8. ^ Casselman, Grace (November 2, 1992). "Desktop Publishing". Computer Dealer News. Vol. 8, no. 22 – via Gale Cengage Computer Database.
  9. ^ Pfiffner (2003), p. 45.
  10. ^ a b Pfiffner (2003), p. 54.
  11. ^ Pfiffner (2003), p. 49.
  12. ISBN 9780938151319
    .
  13. ^ Pfiffner (2003), p. 55.
  14. ^ Thompson, Keith (8 June 1987). "Macintosh Layout Package Remarkably Fast, Powerful". InfoWorld. 9 (23): 51. Retrieved 2011-04-15.
  15. ISBN 9780764555732
    . Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  16. ^ Girard, Dave (2014-01-13). "How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing". Ars Technica.
  17. ^ For more editors in the genre, see Comparison of TeX editors under the WYSIWYM / (partial) WYSIWYG editing style.

Sources

  • Pfiffner, Pamela (2003). Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story. Berkeley: Peachpit Press.
    ISBN 0-321-11564-3
    .
Library resources about
Desktop publishing
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Desktop_publishing&oldid=1220534928"