Text 2 Desk-top publishing

Personal computers became available in the early 80s and the Apple Macintosh was the first to be able to produce layouts and typefaces which got close to photocomposition standards. The term desk-top publishing (DTP) was originally used to describe the design and layout of newsletters, price lists and other information output on ink-jet or laser printers, usually in limited quantities.

Subsequently laser printers with a higher resolution enabled the output to be used as originals for offset printing, although still not having as sharp an image as photocomposition.

The breakthrough came in the early 90s with the introduction of PostScript which allowed work produced on Macintoshes or PCs to be converted into high resolution output on imagesetters. This has meant that desk-top publishing has replaced photocomposition, except in a few areas such as reference and academic books and directories, where the software of dedicated systems is better able to cope with long and complex manuscripts.

More recent developments have enabled desk-top publishing to scan black and white line halftone pictures and then cope with colour as well as black and white, The only element of a printed item which cannot be reproduced by DTP without outside help is high resolution scanning of colour pictures and these are scanned by bureaux and supplied as files to be incorporated into the document, However, cheap scanners are beginning to be available which can give professional quality and this will mean that soon, all design, typesetting and origination operations will be able to be carried out within DTP, often by the client rather than outside suppliers.

These developments have completely changed the structure of the publishing and printing industries, causing the closure or scaling down of typesetters and repro houses and changing the nature of the work done by editors and designers.

Exercises :