The term 'desktop publishing' is attributed to Aldus Corporation founder Paul Brainerd, who sought a marketing catch-phrase to describe the small size and relative affordability of this software in contrast to the expensive commercial phototypesetting equipment of the day.īehind-the-scenes technologies developed by Adobe Systems set the foundation for professional desktop publishing applications. Newspapers and other print publications made the move to DTP-based programs from older layout systems in the 1980s. 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. Indeed, one popular desktop publishing book was actually titled The Mac is not a typewriter.

The DTP market exploded in 1985 with the introduction in January of the Apple LaserWriter printer, and later in July with the introduction of PageMaker software from Aldus which rapidly became the DTP industry standard software.īefore the advent of desktop publishing, the only option available to most persons for producing typed (as opposed to handwritten) documents was a typewriter, which offered only a handful of typefaces (usually fixed-width) and one or two font sizes. 3.2 With other electronic layout softwareĭesktop publishing began in 1985 with the introduction of MacPublisher, the first WYSIWYG layout program, which ran on the original 128K Macintosh computer.

Dtp open source