The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Desktop Publishing: Quality tool, 
or an aid to mediocrity?
Stephen Davey

Given the promotional impetus of advertising copywriters, the term "desktop publishing" has assumed an almost mystical force in the minds of the uninitiated. The suggestion, it seems, is that you simply plug it in, hit the keyboard and "Hey Presto", out comes anything from a newsletter to the latest bestseller.

The good news is that, given a little talent and experience you can use the technology to produce printed material of a very high standard - a computer magazine for instance, or a camera-ready copy of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The bad news is that first, one must master the basics of both the program and of typography.

Desktop publishing, which we'll abbreviate from now on to DTP, generally refers to the use of word-processing and page-layout programs to drive laser printers to produce finished documents. The object should be to produce better documents at lesser cost. Regrettably, the results often fail to meet these criteria.

Before I outline some of the advantages and disadvantages of DTP I'll try to list the basic steps that are involved in 'traditional' publishing.

Regardless of size, most jobs involve:
  • Writing and editing (by the author and/or a sub-editor).
  • Lay-out of job (by either the author or a designer).
  • Typesetting (by the printer).
  • Proof reading and correcting (by a proof-reader or the author).
  • Typesetting corrections (by the printer).
  • Paste-up, or in the case of metal type, composition (possibly by the author, but normally by the designer or printer).
  • Checking final proofs (by the author).
  • Corrections (by the printer).
  • Plate-making (by the printer) or photocopying, depending on quantity.
  • Printing.
Whatever the advertising copywriters might suggest, DTP does not reduce this complex process to one easy operation. It may, however, in many areas, greatly reduce both cost and time. Nor does it always produce a higher-quality product. The sad truth is that without very careful control, many documents produced on laser printers have very poor type resolution, and produce inferior results in such arcane areas as character spacing, kerning, and word and line spacing. But of that, more later.

At each step, consideration should be given to the comparative advantages or disadvantages of each technology. It may be that for your particular requirements, a complete DTP system is the best answer. In the majority of "small", high-quality publishing exercises, it will be more economical to use a blend of the two processes.

Writing and editing

This area requires a word-processing program rather than a DTP program. For authors publishing more than the occasional item, the cost of simple computer equipment and a word-processing program will almost certainly be less than the cost of professional typing or typesetting services over a period of time. (Ed: Here we assume, of course, that the writer can navigate the keyboard. For those suffering from paralysis of the fingers, a typist may be the only practical answer. Which leads us to the question of the growing need for typing classes as an accepted part of school curricula. - C.W)

Many printing companies now have facilities to accept word-processing formats from different computer systems. This means that you can often negotiate for a reduced printing rate if you can find a printer who will accept your floppy disks or tapes.

Design of job

Unfortunately DTP programs do not advise you on the finer points of aesthetics and good design. These are not mere matters of taste. In fact the choice of type style and size, selection of column width, and the positioning of text and graphics can influence whether your material is actually read. If you get it badly wrong you can actually antagonise the reader, which would have to be regarded as a fatal error, whether you're producing a school newsletter or an advertising brochure.

It seems sheer madness that even large companies happily allow people with absolutely no design skills to produce expensive and even vital documents! DTP will allow operators who do have some design skills to produce pleasing, effective material - at precisely the same cost and in exactly the same time as it takes to produce garbage. You do have to know what you're doing.

So, if an author needed the help of a designer when using the traditional processes, then the same author will still need design help when using DTP. On the other hand any author who has design skills will find DTP a joy to use.

Typesetting

Typesetting services supplied by either a specialised typesetter or a printer can be expensive, and DTP systems can offer some substantial savings. If the typesetter/printer you are dealing with can accept your word-processing files you could save money. The advantages of commercial typesetting are generally a larger range of typefaces, and a corresponding improvement in impact, and extremely high resolution. The resulting material is sharper, and easier on the eye, and these may offset any disadvantages of cost, and inconvenience.

DTP programs, notably Ventura and Pagemaker, connected to a laser printer allow you to "typeset" your own word-processing files. The advantages of this do-it-yourself typesetting are quick delivery (assuming you can do it straight away), low operator cost (unless you value your own time more highly than the typesetter's), and low individual page cost. The downside is the high initial cost of a suitable laser printer with sufficient typefaces to cater for your needs. With laser printers costing between $6000 and $20,000 you will need to save more than 400 hours of typesetting to justify the cost outlay. [Ed: But depending on your needs, if you shop around you might find a suitable laser printer for a good deal less than that. - C.W.)

The other disadvantage of using laser printers for producing finished "artwork" is the low resolution. While some more expensive printers produce a resolution of 600 lines per inch (lpi), most printers only have a 300 lpi output. This compares poorly with even the lowest quality commercial typesetting machines, which produce 2000 lpi output.

There are many applications of course where 300 lpi is more than adequate (eg internal memos, reports, etc.). But for more important applications, such as colour brochures, newsletters and books, then anything less than 1000 lpi will produce inelegant results.

Proof reading and checking

Despite some of the fantastic features of large typesetting machines, many of them do not have any spelling checking facilities. If you tend to spell 'cat' with more than one 't', a good-quality word-processing program with a spelling checker might preserve your public reputation. [Ed: But beware: It won't help at all if you can't distinguish between "there", "their" or "they're". So there! - C.W.)

Pasteup and artwork

This is the area where DTP, properly used, can make big savings in time and money. While some typesetting systems produce fully made-up pages, many only produce long "galley" strips that then have to be pasted up into the final page layout. This manual operation is not only slow and expensive but also subject to inaccuracies.

Programs such as Ventura and Pagemaker are so deft at page layout that even some of the largest printing and publishing companies have them connected to their typesetting machines.

With this sort of program you can do your own 'pasteup' on the screen, but not, unfortunately, without an initial investment of time taken to learn the commands. The salesmen usually gloss over the sheer complexity of the software. It can take days to develop a basic proficiency, and months for comfortable expertise.

Checking and corrections

Documents and layouts produced on DTP systems still need to be carefully checked and corrected prior to final production, but they can be handled quickly and easily without frequent trips to the printer.

Printing, photocopying, laser printing

The particular printing process you choose will depend on the equipment available to you, the number of copies required and the colours required.

Commercial offset printing is economical and flexible for documents requiring multiple copies in different colours. For quantities less than 50 to 100, photocopying will almost certainly be cheaper.

Laser printers are generally slow, are limited to A4/A3 paper size, and should be used to produce either mono-colour originals for further photocopying or printing or just a few copies. To print several hundred copies of an eight-page newsletter on a laser printer, one page at a time, would be poor economics. An offset printer would print the same item in one pass on a large sheet which would then be automatically folded and trimmed to size - much faster, much cheaper, much more professional.

Money, money, money

Question: Is there an inexpensive entry to DTP? Answer: Well yes ... perhaps. It depends a bit on your perception of 'inexpensive'. You may already have enough equipment and software to make use of the most fundamental and cost-saving element, that is, word-processing.

The initial keystroking and correction of text, particularly in medium to large jobs, is the most time-consuming and therefore expensive operation in the production of most documents. So if an author can produce the text on a word-processor, he or she will have saved a considerable part of the overall cost of production.

All that is required to produce files that most printers can accept is an MS-DOS/PC-DOS machine. You don't need a whopping great wizzbang unit with five acres of memory etc. I use a small IBM laptop with two floppy drives, and it has more than adequate speed and power for text-processing operations (and it cost only $1600!)

For software it is hard to go past MS-Word, although MultiMate, WordStar, Word Perfect, XyWrite etc, are also good. Steer clear of some of the less-common programs, as the printing company may not be able to convert them. If you are buying a word-processing package now and considering purchasing a DTP program in the future, you should make sure that the word-processing package will be accepted by the DTP program. Ventura, for instance accepts more word-processing files than Pagemaker.

The next step up

You can have your raw word-processing files converted to typesetting by a suitable company. All they will need to do is format your text with regard to the size, typeface, indents and tabs required. You can cut this conversion time by learning the formatting codes and inserting them yourself. 

The Laity and Layouts

If you want to purchase and use a page layout program, then the machine you will need will have to have at least 20 MB of hard disk, a graphics card and probably a high-resolution monitor. Suitable units can be purchased for $4000 upwards. (I use a Wyse unit that operates at good speed and resolution and costs about $6000). The DTP software will cost from $1100 to $1500.

Many printing companies can accept direct DTP file input, thus eliminating any need for a laser printer - Compugraphic typesetters, for instance, can handle Ventura files. This means that you could input your text with your favourite word-processing program, lay out the document using Ventura and finally provide a print file on disk to the typesetter for high-resolution output. Because the typesetting or printing company is not spending time actually typing your job, the cost associated with this procedure is not great and you will have access to their full range of typefaces and sizes.

Going all the way

For a complete DTP system you need: software for word-processing and page layout (about $2000); an MS-DOS, 20 MB hard disk, 1 MB RAM, 12-20 MHz computer (say $6000); a laser printer (300 lpi $7000 or 600 lpi $20,000). These prices obviously are very approximate.

The capabilities (and price) of laser printers vary greatly, but none of them is cheap. If you do plan to buy one, make sure it can do everything you want it to. Some units have a very limited range of typefaces and sizes, and others operate at slow speeds (10 minutes for an A4 page!). The cost of extra typefaces can be as much as $300 each.

What the printers/typesetters think!

Obviously the advance of DTP systems is likely to be greeted with less than great enthusiasm by those who stand to lose work. As a result some printers and typesetters will do everything to discourage the practice. Others, however, will welcome the technology, and assist with its professional use to the advantage of all.

As someone who has been professionally involved in this industry for some time, I have seen this technology create more work for traditional printers. Previously authors, with their next best-seller ready for print, may not have been able to afford the total cost of both re-keystroking the manuscript and then printing the job. Now, because the author can do part of the work, items that would perhaps never have been published are getting into print.

Printers and typesetters who offer authors a simple and economic means to typeset or print word-processing or page layout files, will continue to experience a growth in work in this area.

Quality Pitfalls

Apart from the actual resolution quality of the printed output, the other area where quality can suffer is in typography. The complexities of typography, type design, letter spacing (kerning) etc are too great to go into detail here. (Perhaps this may be the subject of another article.)

Briefly though, page layout programs such as Ventura and Pagemaker do have facilities to carefully adjust typographic features. Sadly, because some of these features are very subtle, some operators do not bother with them. As a result some pieces of type are produced with either individual letters crashing into each other, or the reverse - more than acceptable spacing.

Good typography is not just something to keep designers in a job! There is ample evidence to show that correctly designed and typeset text will be more easily read and comprehended. While it may be initially cheaper not to use designers (or a typesetter who understands typography), without them your publication may not be read and understood as you intended.

Printers and typesetters who are able to convert your page lay-out files will be able to provide you with both advice on correct typographical techniques and also important details (font width tables) of their typefaces, so that you can make use of them in your files.

Reprinted from the September 1988 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

 

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