What is Desktop Publishing?

Desktop publishing is the use of the computer and software to create visual
displays of ideas and information.OLD / TRADITIONAL DEFINITION: Desktop
publishing is the use of the computer and specialized software to create documents
for desktop or commercial printing. Desktop publishing refers to the process of
using the computer to produce documents such as newsletters, brochures, books,
and other publications that were once created manually using a variety of non-
computer techniques along with large complex phototypesetting machines. Today
desktop publishing software does it all - almost. But before PageMaker and other
desktop publishing software there were e-scales, paste-up, and other non-desktop
computer ways of putting together a design for printing.

3 Desktop Publishing Documents

Documents may be for:Desktop or commercial printingElectronic
distributionIncluding:PDFslide showsNewslettersthe Web.

4 Comparison Between Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design

Desktop Publishing - Is the process of using the computer and specific types of
software to combine text and graphics to produce documents such as newsletters,
brochures, books, etc.Graphic Design - Is the process and art of combining text and
graphics and communicating an effective message in the design of logos, graphics,
brochures, newsletters, posters, signs, and any other type of visual communication.

5 What is DTP SoftwareDesktop publishing software is a tool for graphic

designers and non-designers to create visual communications
A paperback, also known as a softcover or softback, is a type
of book characterized by a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together
with glue rather than stitches or staples. Paperback editions of books are issued
when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Cheaper, lower
quality paper; glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings;

What is DTP?

Desktop Publishing characterizes the fabrication of camera-ready page layouts

with the help of a personal computer as well as specific software and periphery
(scanners to import templates, printers/ phototypesetters for high quality editions
from page layouts).
 * DTP is word processing as well as graphics and layout.
 DTP enables the creation of high quality technical printed matter such as artwork
from the comfort of each computer users desk
 DTP or more precisely the essential (content) components typography and layout,
this serves for an improved legibility for the reader as well as a higher acceptance
of texts.
 The initial scepticism from the pioneer years, dating back to the first 5-10 years
since the introduction on the market of the first DTP systems in 1984, reached its
current professionalism of software and hardware through a broad acceptance, it
also yielded the highly professional printing and type setting industry
* A good composition by now is an important factor for all types of texts and is of
great important for all professions that produce texts based on the effective
technical possibilities.
Advantages
 Simplification of work flows
One person at one workstation can complete the single steps from text production
up to its fabrication of printable standard texts. This leads to drastic cost reductions
because the complete number of people taking part is reduced.
 Speed and Flexibility
gives one the possibility to make last minute changes. This advantage is currently
being strengthened by the current trend of “Printing on Demand”; here printing
high quality final versions are also transferred to electronically supported “End-
User” systems.
 Controllability of the Printing Process:
when it comes to foreign-languages goods, which translators have a lot to do with,
typing errors and other errors can be avoided that could arise due to language and
cultural barriers.
Disadvantages
 DTP provides for intensive training
this affects typographic basic knowledge and a higher necessity for regulation for a
professional and uniform configuration “corporate identity.”
 An individual person needs to combine special knowledge
 from earlier specialised occupations and carryout the orthography, punctuation,
and hyphenation having sole responsibility. The available aids, especially for
German, for professional use are in most cases insufficiently suited.
DTP Components
DTP- System: Scanner
Computer and Laser printer
Computer
Hardware
 A high-capacity PC with at least 32 MB RAM, 1 GB Hard drive (or even
removable disks/CD-ROM-Drive as a mass storage of templates), 17 ” Screen
(Display of 2 A4 pages, high resolution graphics)
Software
 Word processing: in addition to the new entry in the layout programme, as well as
the completion of texts and exports from effective word-processing programmes.
The most important products are: Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, Lotus AmiPro,
for Apple Macintosh: Claris MacWrite Pro.
 Graphic
o Creation of vector drawings from objects e.g. CorelDraw, Micrografx Designer,
Visio, MacDraw and numerous others
o Diverse: Pixel photos (Bitmaps) from individual points, generated from MS Word
Graphic Editor, MS Paintbrush, Aldus Freehand et.al… Some programmes
(Canvas) have the ability to process both vector graphics and Bitmaps.
o Special form: Clipart, that is to say a collection of iconised graphics that are for
example treated as specific file types (catalogued with keywords) in Microsoft. All
types of graphics can be administered with CorelMosaic
 Layout
o Combination of text (parts) and graphics whereas the presentation does not comply
with individual pages but modelled on mounting surfaces of a graphic artist,
independent of a specific page or paper format a larger working surface is
presented.
o Most well known programmes are:
 Adobe (previously known as Aldus) PageMaker (Mac, Windows), mainly
applicable for the composition of time consuming printing matters, e.g.
notifications, brochures, magazines
 Ventura Publisher (Windows), mainly for larger quantities (books)
 Quarkexpress (specifically for Mac)
 Conclusion: increasing approximation and integration of all three programme
categories to all-round-talents – MS Word currently consists of a graphic editor
and to some extent a layout functionality (WordArt) – as well as CorelDraw that
just like PageMaker has orthography and hyphenation functions.
However: all three-programme categories act as professional specialists in their
traditional area
 Other Software (besides competition): presentation programmes (Ms PowerPoint,
HarvardGraphics) as specialists for both electronic and printed final products:
presentation materials (transparencies, slides)
Printer
Printing technique
“A laser printer is a machine that projects dirt onto paper.”
 Laser printer functions like a photocopier or even a fax machine; the print image is
put together with the electrostatic charging of individual dots.
 The decisive factor is the resolution, the fineness of individual points. Today’s
standard is 300 dpi (dots per inch, approx 120 dpi per cm), which equals to almost
8 million dots per A4 page. Today the doubled number of an affordable resolution
of 600 dpi corresponds to a fourfold figure of dots – 64 million.
The procedure in detail:
 The electrostatic charging is generated through an electronically controlled laser
beam (that’s the difference from a photocopier, where the laser or rather a quartz
light ray scans the template.)
 Before exposure the page needs to be calculated by a Raster Image Processor (RIP)
or rather it needs to be built up in its dots 300 dpi and leading to 8 million per A4
page provided that the main memory requirement is at least 1 megabyte in the laser
printer.
 During the actual printing process a laser beam is aimed on the dots of a selenium
drum that eventually are to bare colours. This ruins the positive charge of the drum
so that the toner with the negative charges can attach itself to the drum.
Subsequently the toner is transfused on the positively charged paper and fixated
with the help of momentary heating of 200 C.
Other printing procedures:
 Ink jet printers from a cost perspective can be classed among matrix printers, a
smaller printing volume. This improves the resolution because while spraying the
ink it blends with the paper so that no individual dots appear. The high-end-
products however, especially in the colour printing area for the compilation of
 fewer print runs, are also interesting for “professional” purposes. Postcript and the
network compatible HP DeskJet 1200C/PS that also has a resolution of 300dpi
belong to this category.
 Phototypesetters reach an even higher resolution and are used in professional areas.
The norm is 1270dpi, there are however image setters that have up to 2540 dpi.
This however simply creates the page layouts (special coated plates). As an
affordable printing technique for average print runs (news papers, job printing) the
affordable offset printing is used, it works like the electrostatic laser printing
procedure with the difference being fat (=colour) and water.
Printer software: the principal of Postcript
How are pixels calculated?
The pixels of dot matrix printers as well as conventional laser and ink jet printers
are calculated with the help of the so-called printer driver that is specifically
tailored for the corresponding printer or the series or is geared to the company
standard: this is how the OKI and Brother-Drucker in FASK emulate the HP PCL
(Printer Command Language) from Hewlett-Packard; they are just like these
printers.
However, in the professional DTP area there are more elegant alternatives.
 Postcript from Adobe is a Page Definition Language (PDL), an adequate
procedural programmer language that describes the graphics and texts for each
printed side in mathematical formulas and the interface between the application
programme and the printer (a general output device).
 Characters and vector graphics are not transferred to the printer with Postcript as
dots (pixel or Bitmap characters) but defined as outlines (outline font). This results
in image enlargements without a loss in quality; they can be turned and modified in
diverse ways.
A similar, newer writing technique that is more suitable for the non-professional
area are “truetype” fonts that have a huge success in Windows but compared to
Postcript they are no longer being further developed.
 It is possible to not just print a file in the application programme but also to export
it to a Postcript file, save it and then (even from another computer) export the
Postcript file on to the previously installed printer. With this approach the selected
printer does not have to be connected to just one computer, the proper printer
driver is enough to generate a Postcript file with a high printing quality from home
and export it to the university later on. (In practice difficulties can arise!)
Characteristics of Postcript
 Integration of text and graphic
 Device independence: output on each Postcript-capable output device, a simple
(laser) printer costs1.500 DM and a high quality image setter can be bought for
150.000 DM.
A similar, newer writing technique that is more suitable for the non-professional
area are “truetype” fonts that have a huge success in Windows but compared to
Postcript they are no longer being further developed.
 Software and hardware independence: The source code of Postcript files only
consists of ASCII/ANSI-characters and is therefore in principle
o exchangeable between all PC/Workstation-operating systems (DOS/Windows,
Apple OS, Next, Solaris/Unix),
o it is also exchangeable or rather can be processed with every text editor when it
comes to the compliance of structure conventions concerning the EPS
(=Encapsulated Postcript) format.
* Postcript portrays itself through a higher level of flexibility and portability when
compared to other printing techniques. Postcript has therefore become a standard
in the DTP industry.
On the other hand, Postcript can be viewed as a “one way street with a dead end”
(DTP p.81) due to the fact that the already created file cannot be displayed on the
screen to make other changes. In the mean time corresponding works on a
“Display-Postcript” have led to Adobe PDF formats that is generated from
Postcript and is presented with a programme such as Acrobat Reader or as a Plugin
for example Netscape Navigator.
Scanner
= “page reader” (literal translation), a device to load graphics and texts
Technique
 In other respects the scanning process is also similar to that of a photocopier: the
template is scanned by a light beam and is digitalised and changed into electronic
binary files (dot/no dot).
All the loaded templates are only available as so-called Bitmaps, graphics created
from single dots, however they can be reworked in various different techniques
(vectorization or character recognition).
Quality Criteria
 In this case quality depends greatly on the scanners resolution; the templates type,
brightness, and contrast also play a role when it comes to quality.
 Resolution: in the DTP area it ranges from 72 dpi (adequate for screen display),
150dpi (normal fax quality), 300 dpi (normal printing resolution) and can reach up
 to 1200 dpi (however this requires the use of mathematical interpolation
procedures).
 Types of templates:
o Line drawings are by nature best suited for scanning because they are made up of
only black and white dots.
o Continuous tone templates (photos) contain shades of grey that are approximated
when scanned through an alignment of black dots: close-set and heavy dots create
a blacker area, thinner dots that are further apart create a lighter image region.
Normally there are 16 shades of grey, that is to say 4 Bit per pixel. The maximum
printing resolution of 300 dpi however, lowers the effective output quality to 75
dpi or technically contingent (approximation of curves) it can be even lower. This
process is characterised as rasterization (a relatively bad quality) and is for
example used for the production of newspapers in offset printing. In contrast high-
quality printing (colour pages from Geo) are created in gravure and letterpress
printing, where a continuous tuning of colour strengths is possible due to the
different levels of template space.
o Colourful templates are more difficult to scan because the storage capacity is
greatly increased: one bit must not be spent per pixel but 4 bits per 16 colours or 1
byte per 256 colours – scanning an A4 page with a 300 dpi resolution in other
words 8 million pixels which results to a file size (uncompressed) of 4-8MB.
 Finishing: Essentially, templates that are more interesting to scan are those that can
be vectorised (reviewed) because the quality can be increased and optimised.
o Photos: with programmes such as Aldus Photostyler or Corel PhotoPaint the
contrasts for example can be strengthened and therefore the output quality
(camera-readiness) can be improved during offset printing.
o Graphics can often be vectorised that is to say transformed into objects. CorelTrace
is used for this procedure.
Text recognition
 OCR (optical character recognition) is the (broad) area of transforming scanned
Bitmaps to ASCII-characters, an editable text.
 The stated recall ratio in advertisements of 95%-98% can only be reached with
good templates that are free of “flaws” such as incomplete letters or “spatters” (due
to photocopying).
A similar, newer writing technique that is more suitable for the non-professional
area are “truetype” fonts that have a huge success in Windows but compared to
Postcript they are no longer being further developed.
 Text recognition is rewarding for equally large text quantities with an optimal
(printing) quality, such as old magazine volumes or corpora juris.
 The recognition of (national) special characters (accents etc) is extremely
problematic in the foreign-language department because the programme has to
differentiate between these character (combinations) and spatters.
 There is however, a gleam of hope: the entry of automatic spellcheckers is very
profitable because so many reoccurring recognition errors can be automatically
corrected: e.g. when the letter l is recognised as a one 1. This affects the
spellcheckers that do not work with a fixed dictionary but rather with linguistic or
rather statistic procedures to review word forms.
Basics of Typography
Font
 Font- is a complete character set (capital and lower case letters, figures, sentence
characters and special characters) with a standard character.
 Styles are (characterised as style in Word, look at table for examples)
o Basic effects of typography, light, plain, oblique or italic, bold and the combination
of bold italics.
o Other effects are generated through a different tracking of letters. As a result a
longer text can be shortened or a shorter text can be lengthened in a more elegant
fashion.
Small caps such as outlines and shadows are closely linked to fonts when it comes
to application; they are also different style effects.
 Font families
o All font styles of a font create a font family
 In principle you can distinguish between serif and sanserif fonts
o Serif or antiqua-script e.g. Times New Roman, have a classic and literary effect
and are suitable for current texts.
o Sanserif or grotesque lettering e.g. Helvetica, have a modern and factual effect and
are used in titles or user manuals.
 Besides the “real” italic fonts or font families, tilted letters are often used in DTP
(so-called “oblique” letters)
 Font size (type size) is measured in typographical dots, although nowadays the
Pica-system from America (1pt = 0.351mm, 12pt =1 pica) has become an
international ISO-norm.
Font families and their uses
Paragraph configuration:
 Leading and feed:
o Leading is the space between two text lines; it’s a deciding factor for the legibility
of texts. It’s the space between the bottom edge and the upper edge of a line.
 A negative leading can be useful when drawing up logos that are intertwined into
one another or letter heads.
o The feed or line spacing one the other hand is the space from one baseline to the
next.
 Line spacing in most cases is set automatically at 120% of the font size and the
leading at 20
Example: if the font size is 10 the feed is set at 12 points and the leading at 2
points, a line spacing of 1.5 lines carries a leading of 0.5 lines.
 Spacing and kerning
o Spacing originates from the typewriting era where each letter had a fixed width.
In the modern proportional fonts (almost all besides Courier or Courier related
fonts) the spacing are omitted e.g. the i in contrast to M.
Kerning removes the drawbacks of proportional fonts so that the space between
letter pairs is always the same. Just like ligatures (fused letters) where kerning
letters are pushed closer together.
Configuration tips for the typography of technical and business texts
 Chose font size that matches text type and print space with 9-12 pts, where the text
in pictures and captions should be as big as the body text font.
 The best body text font is Times New Roman; Helvetica (sanserif) is used for
headings (like most newspapers and magazines).
 Line spacing of at least 1.5 lines, and an extra space between paragraphs.
 Headlines (header or footer) should be clearly separated from the text, precise and
short
Basic Knowledge Layout
Print Space
 One page (dimensions for A4) can either be printed in print space.
Page set up and margins
 The difference here between one-page printouts and double sided printouts can be
observed. Double sided printouts have a necessary addition of a normal margin
called binding margin, it’s extra space for binding or even hole punching, on even
pages the margin is on the right and on uneven pages the margin is on the left.
 The following margins are different:.
Configuration tips for the layout of technical texts
 Pay attention to a balanced and calm overall impression of the pages.
 Keep the arrangement of texts and pictures coherent and conclusive and take into
account the reading flow: the picture as the key medium on the left or on the upper
half of the explanatory text (and reversed).
 Single-column sentences, per line a maximum of 60 characters, multiple-column
sentences should be 35-45 characters per gap, whereas the gutter should be bigger
than the average word spacing.
 The binding margins needs to be large enough for the binding so that no letters go
missing
Graphics
Vector graphics
 Vector graphics are the best computer compatible form of graphics that can be
changed without a loss of quality (analogue to Postcript font)
 Such characters are not saved in their concrete forms but rather as mathematical
formulas (vectors) for each output with the given measurements
 Reoccurring application fields are technical documentations that resort to the
illustration of facts of engineering drawings and part drawings. Due to their high
reproduction quality from the computer they are also used for all types of high-
quality graphic outputs (provided the outlines are determined).
Pixel photos
 Pixel graphics if anything correlate to the “artistic” colouring with pencils and
erasers.
 Due to the storage as raster, one is greatly appointed to a specific output device
(the corresponding size and resolution of the output) if the aim is to reach an
optimal quality. For a screen display the images need to be edited on a
considerably low resolution than for a (laser) printed version.
 In many cases the pixel format cannot be avoided, especially when it comes to
photos, there is no other choice (especially if you disregard the complex and
professional finishing).
 However, the Bitmap format with a suitable resolution is enough for domestic
purposes, where by the file size increases greatly.
Clipart
 Clipart images are prefabricated and catalogued commercial art in which a cadre is
delivered together with many graphic programmes (e.g. Microsoft Office Packet).
 It has to do with illustrations, symbols, pictograms or even very simple but useful
elements of design such as arrows, dots, margins, waves and shadow lines.
Often the images are thematically organised; CorelDraw even sends a printed
catalogue.
 The file format is different; it can be linked to vector graphics as well as Bitmap
graphics. The clipart files often only use up a few kilobytes because the images
have been compressed.
Graphic formats:
Current graphic formats and their file extensions should be noted in this overview,
DOS/Windows are only allowed 3 characters.