Working With Desk Top Publishing Software Innovation

Working With Desk Top Publishing Software Innovation

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Wikipedia

Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal (“desktop”) computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online content. Desktop publishing software can generate layouts and produce typographic-quality text and images comparable to traditional typography and printing. Desktop publishing is also the main reference for digital typography. 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.

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 multi function peripheral output and distribution – although a non-WYSIWYG system such as LaTeX could also be used for the creation of highly structured and technically demanding documents as well. Desktop publishing methods provide more control over design, layout, and typography than word processing. However, word processing software has evolved to include most, if not all, capabilities previously available only with professional printing or desktop publishing.

The same DTP skills and software used for common paper and book publishing are sometimes used to create graphics for point of sale displays, presentations, info graphics, brochures, business cards, promotional items, trade show exhibits, retail package designs and outdoor signs.

Desktop publishing was first developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s. A contradictory claim states that desktop publishing began in 1983 with a program developed by James Davise at a community newspaper in Philadelphia. 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. (Desktop typesetting with only limited page makeup facilities had arrived in 1978–1979 with the introduction of TeX, and was extended in 1985 with the introduction of LaTeX.)

The Macintosh computer platform was introduced by Apple with much fanfare in 1984, but at the beginning, the Mac initially lacked DTP capabilities. The desktop publishing market took off in 1985 with the introduction in January of the Apple Laser Writer printer. This momentum was kept up by with the addition of Page Maker software from Aldus, which rapidly became the standard software application for desktop publishing. With its advanced layout features, Page Maker 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.

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. 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 both the typesetting industry and the personal computer industry at the time; newspapers and other print publications made the move 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 Page Maker-Laser Writer-Macintosh 512K system endured frequent software crashes, 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.

Behind-the-scenes, technologies developed by Adobe Systems set the foundation for professional desktop publishing applications. The Laser Writer and Laser Writer Plus printers included high quality, scalable Adobe Post Script fonts built into their ROM memory. The Laser Writer’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 fast high-capacity 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. Page Maker’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 Amiga, Publishing Partner (now Page Stream) for the Atari ST, GST’s Time works Publisher on the PC and Atari ST, and Calamus for the Atari TT030. Software was published even for 8-bit computers like the Apple II and Commodore 64: Home Publisher, The Newsroom, and geo Publish. During its early years, desktop publishing acquired a bad reputation as a result of untrained users who created poorly organized, unprofessional-looking “ransom note effect” layouts; similar criticism was leveled again against early World Wide Web publishers a decade later. However, some desktop publishers who mastered the programs were able to achieve highly professional results. Desktop publishing skills were considered of primary importance in career advancement in the 1980s, but increased accessibility to more user-friendly DTP software has made DTP a secondary skill to art direction, graphic design, multimedia development, marketing communications, and administrative careers. DTP skill levels range from what may be learned in a couple of hours (e.g., learning how to put clip art in a word processor), to what’s typically required in a college education. The discipline of DTP skills range from technical skills such as prepress production and programming, to creative skills such as communication design and graphic image development.

As of 2014, Apple computers remain dominant in publishing, even as the most popular software has changed from Quark X Press – an estimated 95% market share in the 1990s — to Adobe In Design. 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”.

There are two types of pages in desktop publishing: digital pages and virtual paper pages to be printed on physical paper pages. All computerized documents are technically digital, which are limited in size only by computer memory or computer data storage space. Virtual paper pages will ultimately be printed, and will therefore require paper parameters coinciding with standard physical paper sizes such as A4, letter paper and legal paper. Alternatively, the virtual paper page may require a custom size for later 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 digital page that is not constrained by virtual paper parameters. Most digital pages may be dynamically re-sized, causing either the 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 multi page 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. Cascading Style Sheets can provide the same global formatting functions for web pages that master pages provide for virtual paper pages. 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 include border shapes, colors, transparency, filters, and a parameter designating the way text flows around the object (also known as “wraparound” or “runaround”).

Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.

At the lowest programming level, executable code consists of machine language instructions supported by an individual processor—typically a central processing unit (CPU) or a graphics processing unit (GPU). Machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also invoke one of many input or output operations, for example displaying some text on a computer screen; causing state changes which should be visible to the user. The processor executes the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to “jump” to a different instruction, or is interrupted by the operating system. As of 2015, most personal computers, smartphone devices and servers have processors with multiple execution units or multiple processors performing computation together, and computing has become a much more concurrent activity than in the past.

The majority of software is written in high-level programming languages. They are easier and more efficient for programmers because they are closer to natural languages than machine languages. High-level languages are translated into machine language using a compiler or an interpreter or a combination of the two. Software may also be written in a low-level assembly language, which has a strong correspondence to the computer’s machine language instructions and is translated into machine language using an assembler.

An algorithm for what would have been the first piece of software was written by Ada Lovelace in the 19th century, for the planned Analytical Engine. She created proofs to show how the engine would calculate Bernoulli numbers, Because of the proofs and the algorithm, she is considered the first computer programmer.

The first theory about software, prior to the creation of computers as we know them today, was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1936 essay, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entschei dungs problem (decision problem). This eventually led to the creation of the academic fields of computer science and software engineering; both fields study software and its creation. Computer science is the theoretical study of computer and software (Turing’s essay is an example of computer science), whereas software engineering is the application of engineering principles to development of software.

In 2000, Fred Shapiro, a librarian at the Yale Law School, published a letter revealing that John Wilder Tukey’s 1958 paper “The Teaching of Concrete Mathematics” contained the earliest known usage of the term “software” found in a search of JSTOR’s electronic archives, predating the OED’s citation by two years. This led many to credit Tukey with coining the term, particularly in obituaries published that same year, although Tukey never claimed credit for any such coinage. In 1995, Paul Niquette claimed he had originally coined the term in October 1953, although he could not find any documents supporting his claim. The earliest known publication of the term “software” in an engineering context was in August 1953 by Richard R. Car hart, in a Rand Corporation Research Memorandum.

On virtually all computer platforms, software can be grouped into a few broad categories.

Based on the goal, computer software can be divided into:

• Application software uses the computer system to perform special functions beyond the basic operation of the computer itself. There are many different types of application software because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large—see list of software.
• System software manages hardware behavior, as to provide basic functionalities that are required by users, or for other software to run properly, if at all. System software is also designed for providing a platform for running application software, and it includes the following:
  • Operating systems are essential collections of software that manage resources and provide common services for other software that runs “on top” of them. Supervisory programs, boot loaders, shells and window systems are core parts of operating systems. In practice, an operating system comes bundled with additional software (including application software) so that a user can potentially do some work with a computer that only has one operating system.
  • Device drivers operate or control a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. Each device needs at least one corresponding device driver; because a computer typically has at minimum at least one input device and at least one output device, a computer typically needs more than one device driver.
  • Utilities are computer programs designed to assist users in the maintenance and care of their computers.
• Malicious software, or malware, is software that is developed to harm or disrupt computers. Malware is closely associated with computer-related crimes, though some malicious programs may have been designed as practical jokes.
• Desktop applications such as web browsers and Microsoft Office and LibreOffice and Word Perfect, as well as smartphone and tablet applications (called “apps”).
• JavaScript scripts are pieces of software traditionally embedded in web pages that are run directly inside the web browser when a web page is loaded without the need for a web browser plugin. Software written in other programming languages can also be run within the web browser if the software is either translated into JavaScript, or if a web browser plugin that supports that language is installed; the most common example of the latter is Action Script scripts, which are supported by the Adobe Flash plugin.
• Server software, including:
  • Web applications, which usually run on the web server and output dynamically generated web pages to web browsers, using e.g. PHP, Java, ASP.NET, or even JavaScript that runs on the server. In modern times these commonly include some JavaScript to be run in the web browser as well, in which case they typically run partly on the server, partly in the web browser.
• Plugins and extensions are software that extends or modifies the functionality of another piece of software, and require that software be used in order to function.
• Embedded software resides as firmware within embedded systems, devices dedicated to a single use or a few uses such as cars and televisions (although some embedded devices such as wireless chip sets can themselves be part of an ordinary, non-embedded computer system such as a PC or smartphone). In the embedded system context there is sometimes no clear distinction between the system software and the application software. However, some embedded systems run embedded operating systems, and these systems do retain the distinction between system software and application software (although typically there will only be one, fixed application which is always run).
• Microcode is a special, relatively obscure type of embedded software which tells the processor itself how to execute machine code, so it is actually a lower level than machine code. It is typically proprietary to the processor manufacturer, and any necessary correctional microcode software updates are supplied by them to users (which is much cheaper than shipping replacement processor hardware). Thus an ordinary programmer would not expect to ever have to deal with it.

Programming tools are also software in the form of programs or applications that developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support software.

Software is written in one or more programming languages; there are many programming languages in existence, and each has at least one implementation, each of which consists of its own set of programming tools. These tools may be relatively self-contained programs such as compilers, debuggers, interpreters, linkers, and text editors, that can be combined to accomplish a task; or they may form an integrated development environment (IDE), which combines much or all of the functionality of such self-contained tools. IDEs may do this by either invoking the relevant individual tools or by re-implementing their functionality in a new way. An IDE can make it easier to do specific tasks, such as searching in files in a particular project. Many programming language implementations provide the option of using both individual tools or an IDE.