Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator. This is in contrast to the batch processing or time-sharing models which allowed large expensive mainframe and WYSIWYG WYSIWYG , is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, web page, slide presentation or even the lighting for a theatrical event.[clarification needed] page layout software Computer software, or just software, is the collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions telling a computer what to do. The term was coined to contrast to the old term hardware . In contrast to hardware, software is intangible, meaning it "cannot be touched". Software is also sometimes used in a more to create publication To publish is to make content available to the public . While specific use of the term may vary between country, it is usually applied to text, images, or other audio-visual content on any medium, including paper or Electronic publishing forms such as websites, E-books, Compact Discs and MP3s. The word publication means the act of publishing, and documents A document , is a bounded physical or digital representation of a body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information. To document (verb) is to produce a document artifact by collecting and representing information. In on a computer for either large scale publishing Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases authors may be their own publishers, meaning: originators and developers of content also provide media to deliver and display the content or small scale local multifunction peripheral An MFP , multifunctional, all-in-one (AIO), or Multifunction Device (MFD), is an office machine which incorporates the functionality of multiple devices in one, so as to have a smaller footprint in a home or small business setting (the SOHO market segment), or to provide centralized document management/distribution/production in a large-office output and distribution.
The term "desktop publishing" is commonly used to describe page layout Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalog layouts, proper page design has long been a consideration in printed material. With print media, elements usually consist of type , images (pictures), and occasionally place-holder graphics for elements that skills. However, the skills and software are not limited to paper and book publishing. The same skills and software are often used to create graphics for point of sale displays, promotional items Promotional merchandise, promotional items, promotional products, promotional gifts, or advertising gifts are articles of merchandise that are branded with a logo and used in marketing and communication programs. They are given away to promote a company, corporate image, brand, or event. These items are usually imprinted with a company's name,, trade show exhibits A trade fair is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products, service, study activities of rivals and examine recent trends and opportunities. Some trade fairs are open to the public, while others can only be attended by company representatives (members of the trade) and, retail package designs Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of design, evaluation, and production of packages. Packaging can be described as a coordinated system of preparing goods for transport, warehousing, logistics, sale, and end use. Packaging and outdoor signs Out-of-home advertising is made up of more than 100 different formats, totaling $6.99 billion in annual revenues in 2008 in the USA. Outdoor advertising is essentially any type of advertising that reaches the consumer while he or she is outside the home. This is in contrast with broadcast, print, and internet advertising.
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History
Desktop publishing began in 1985 with the introduction of MacPublisher, the first WYSIWYG WYSIWYG , is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, web page, slide presentation or even the lighting for a theatrical event.[clarification needed] layout program, which ran on the original 128K Macintosh The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a command-line interface computer. (Desktop typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text material by means of types, with only limited page makeup facilities, had arrived in 1978–9 with the introduction of TeX, and was extended in the early 1980s by LaTeX Latex as found in nature is a milky sap-like fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants . It is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins, and gums that coagulates on exposure to air. It is usually exuded after tissue injury. In most plants, latex is white, but some have yellow, orange, or.) The DTP market exploded in 1985 with the introduction in January of the Apple Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite LaserWriter The LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker, that operated on top of the graphical user interface of Macintosh computers, the LaserWriter was a key component printer, and later in July with the introduction of PageMaker PageMaker was the first desktop publishing program, introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the then new Apple Macintosh and soon after for PCs running the then new Microsoft Windows. PageMaker was awarded an SPA Excellence in Software Award for Best New Use of a Computer in 1986 software from Aldus which rapidly became the DTP industry standard software.
Before the advent of desktop publishing, the only option available to most persons for producing typed (as opposed to handwritten) documents was a typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with a set of keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. From their invention before 1870 through much of the 20th century, typewriters were indispensable tools for many professional writers and in business offices. By the end of the 1980s, word, which offered only a handful of typefaces (usually fixed-width) and one or two font sizes. The ability to create WYSIWYG WYSIWYG , is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, web page, slide presentation or even the lighting for a theatrical event.[clarification needed] page layouts on screen and then print Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing pages at crisp 300 dpi Dots per inch is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed within the span of one linear inch (2.54 cm.) The DPI value tends to correlate with image resolution, but is related only indirectly resolution was revolutionary for both the typesetting industry and the personal computer industry. Newspapers and other print publications made the move to DTP-based programs from older layout systems like Atex and other such programs in the early 1980s.
The term "desktop publishing" is attributed to Aldus Corporation founder Paul Brainerd[1], who sought a marketing catch-phrase to describe the small size and relative affordability of this suite of products in contrast to the expensive commercial phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. Typesetters used a machine called a phototypesetter, which would quickly project light through a film negative equipment of the day.
By the standards of today, early desktop publishing was a primitive affair. Users of the PageMaker-LaserWriter-Macintosh 512K system endured frequent software crashes, the Mac's tiny 512 x 342 1-bit black and white screen, the inability to control letter spacing In typography, letter-spacing, also called tracking, refers to the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in a line or block of text, kerning In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. In a well kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have similar area. The related term kern denotes a part of a type letter that overhangs the edge of the (the addition or removal of space between individual characters in a piece of typeset text to improve its appearance or alter its fit) and other typographic features Typography is the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the, and discrepancies between the screen display and printed output. However, it was a revolutionary combination at the time, and was received with considerable acclaim.
Behind-the-scenes technologies developed by Adobe Systems Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development set the foundation for professional desktop publishing applications. The LaserWriter and LaserWriter Plus printers included high quality, scalable Adobe PostScript PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. PostScript is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas-fonts built into their ROM Read-only memory is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified (at least not very quickly or easily), it is mainly used to distribute firmware (software that is very closely tied to specific hardware, and unlikely to require frequent updates) memory. The LaserWriter's PostScript PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. PostScript is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas capability allowed publication designers to proof files on a local printer then print the same file at DTP service bureaus A service bureau is a company which provides business services for a fee. The term has been extensively used to describe technology based services to financial services companies, particularly banks. Customers of service bureaus typically do not have the scale or expertise to incorporate these services in their internal operations and prefer to using optical resolution Optics is the branch of physics which studies the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation 600+ ppi PostScript-printers such as those from Linotronic. Later, the Macintosh II The Apple Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line was released which was much more suitable for desktop publishing because of its larger, color screen, support for multiple displays, greater RAM capacity and its SCSI Small Computer System Interface, or SCSI , is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it can connect a wide range of other devices, storage interface which allowed fast, high-capacity hard drives to be attached to the system.
Although Macintosh-based systems would continue to dominate the market, in 1986, the GEM GEM is a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. (DRI) for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors. Later versions ran over DOS as well-based Ventura Publisher was introduced for MS-DOS MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), computers. While PageMaker's pasteboard metaphor closely simulated the process of creating layouts manually, Ventura Publisher automated the layout process through its use of tags/style sheets and automatically generated indices and other body matter. This made it suitable for manuals and other long-format documents. Desktop publishing moved into the home market in 1986 with Professional Page for the Amiga The Amiga is a family of personal computers sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its impressive graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities. The Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers, such as the Commodore 64, and the platform quickly, Publishing Partner (now PageStream) for the Atari ST The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals, GST's Timeworks Publisher on the PC and Atari ST and Calamus for the Atari TT030. Even for 8-bit computers like the Apple II The Apple II was one of the first highly successful mass produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and introduced in 1977. In terms of ease of use, features and expandability the Apple II was a major technological advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited and Commodore 64 The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of memory with sound and graphics software was published: Home Publisher, The Newsroom and geoPublish.
During these early years, desktop publishing acquired a bad reputation from untrained users who created poorly-organized ransom note effect layouts — criticisms that would be levied again against early web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British publishers a decade later. However, some were able to realize truly professional results.
Often considered a primary skill, increased accessibility to more user-friendly DTP software has made DTP a secondary skill to art direction The term art director is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games, graphic design Graphic design is a creative process — most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form — undertaken in order to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that, multimedia development Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only use traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio,, marketing communications Marketing Communications are messages and related media used to communicate with a market. Those who practice advertising, branding, direct marketing, graphic design, marketing, packaging, promotion, publicity, sponsorship, public relations, sales, sales promotion and online marketing are termed marketing communicators, marketing communication, administrative careers In business, administration consists of the performance or management of business operations and thus the making or implementing of major decisions. Administration can be defined as the universal process of organizing people and resources efficiently so as to direct activities toward common goals and objectives and advanced high school literacy in thriving economies. DTP skill levels range from what may be learned in a few hours (e.g. learning how to put clip art in a word processor) to what requires a college education and years of experience (e.g. advertising agency An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and positions). The discipline of DTP skills range from technical skills such as prepress production Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress procedure includes the manufacture of a printing plate, image carrier or form, ready for mounting on a printing press, as well as the adjustment of images and and programming Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging / troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language. The code may be a modification of an existing source or something completely new. The purpose of programming is to create a program that to creative skills such as communication design and graphic image development.
Terminology
There are two types of pages in desktop publishing, electronic pages and virtual paper pages to be printed on physical paper pages. All computerized documents are technically electronic, which are limited in size only by computer memory or computer data storage space.
Virtual paper pages will ultimately be printed, and therefore require paper parameters that coincide with international standard physical paper sizes such as "A4," "letter," etc., if not custom sizes for trimming. Some desktop publishing programs allow custom sizes designated for large format printing used in posters, billboards and trade show displays. A virtual page for printing has a predesignated size of virtual printing material and can be viewed on a monitor in WYSIWYG format. Each page for printing has trim sizes (edge of paper) and a printable area if bleed printing is not possible as is the case with most desktop printers.
A web page is an example of an electronic page that is not constrained by virtual paper parameters. Most electronic pages may be dynamically re-sized, causing either the content to scale in size with the page or causing 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.
Page layout is the process by which the elements are laid on the page orderly, aesthetically, and precisely. Main types of components to be laid out on a page include text, linked images that can only be modified as an external source, and embedded images that may be modified with the layout application software. Some embedded images are 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 be border shapes, colors, transparency, filters, and a parameter designating the way text flows around the object called "wraparound" or "runaround."
Comparisons
With word processing
While 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 days of graphical user interfaces, DTP software was in a class of its own when compared to the fairly spartan 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 have become more powerful, vendors have sought to provide users with a single application platform that can meet all needs.
With other electronic layout software
In modern usage, DTP is not generally said to include tools such as TeX or troff, though both can easily be used on a modern desktop system and are standard with many Unix-like operating systems and readily available for other systems. The key difference between electronic typesetting software and DTP software is that DTP software is generally interactive and WYSIWYG in design, while older electronic typesetting software tends to operate in batch mode, requiring the user to enter the processing program's markup language manually without a direct visualization of the finished product. The older style of typesetting software occupies a substantial but shrinking[citation needed] niche in technical writing and textbook publication; however, since much software in this genre is freely available, it can be more cost-effective than the professionally-oriented DTP systems. It is also particularly suitable for corporate newsletters or other applications where consistent, automated layout is important.
One of the early and comprehensive reference books on the art of Desktop Publishing is Desktop Publishing For Everyone by K.S.V. Menon. This publication deals with virtually every facet of publishing and nearly all tools available as at the time of the publishing of this book in the year 2000. It is currently out of print.
There is some overlap between desktop publishing and what is known as Hypermedia publishing (i.e. Web design, Kiosk, CD-ROM). Many graphical HTML editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver use a layout engine similar to a DTP program. However, some Web designers still prefer to write HTML without the assistance of a WYSIWYG editor, for greater control and because these editors often result in code bloat.
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Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:07:42 GMT+00:00
Arcata Eye ... Hart then did the layout manually in her apartment at the Colony Inn. With desktop publishing still a few years off, Hart hired Pioneer Graphics to do ...
Q. I am looking for software to create an company enews letter. I would like to find desktop publishing software to do this and contact management software. I don't want to use services like Constant Contact. Are there good, easy to use programs for this. I tried Publisher, and Adobe Indesign, but haven't been real happy with these programs.
Asked by Bill - Thu Jun 3 14:18:29 2010 - - 1 Answers - 0 Comments
