Desktop Publishing: Softwares
Published by Emil Abraham,
Desktop Publishing (DTP) is the creation of electronic forms of information such as documents, presentations, brochures, books, or even website content using computer programs. DTP has evolved to be an important component of creating and disseminating information as it allows an amalgamation of various tasks that are generally performed independently at printing presses such as layouts, typesetting, graphic design, etc.
A computer program is used to assemble pages electronically and/or digitally, with all page elements capable of being viewed on a computer monitor in positions approximating their location on the final output page. Page elements can also be "cut" and "pasted" on the screen, a digital equivalent of earlier manual paste-up processes. Page makeup software—ranging from off-the-shelf programs such as QuarkXPress and InDesign (successor of PageMaker) —allows for the importation and generation of many types of images in a variety of file formats.
They commonly allow the assembly of text, line art, photographs, and halftones in a single file, with the capability of generating high-end output, such as that produced by an imagesetter. Page makeup software invented desktop publishing.
Earlier, DTP was specifically meant to cater to printed matter but modern DTP allows for even more forms of electronic content. A modern DTP software can be your word processor, graphic design tool and publishing tool, all rolled into one package. With the explosive growth of smartphones and mobile PCs, the way people consume information has changed dramatically over the last decade. Modern DTP software enables content output that caters dynamically to all screen sizes, without the need to republish the same for each device or form factor.
DTP software comes in all shapes and sizes. There are software to cater to every need right from free software to professional grade subscription based software. Although InDesign has now taken over the DTP market, in this section, we will take a look at some of the popular DTP software other than InDesign that are also quite popular with the publishers.
Adobe PageMaker
PageMaker was first originally developed by Aldus and was later acquired by Adobe in the 90s. PageMaker is one of the most popular DTP software even today but its development has been stopped after version 7 although it is still being marketed to a select set of users. PageMaker’s features are now integrated with InDesign, which Adobe actively promotes.
PageMaker has tools for almost all DTP applications except book publishing. It can import files from PDFs, HTML, and convert QuarkXpress and Microsoft Publisher formats. It has support for plugins and runs on both Mac and Windows.
QuarkXpress
QuarkXpress was the de facto publishing standard before the advent of InDesign. It is still under active development on both Mac and Windows and the latest version is more or less feature similar to InDesign.
QuarkXpress supports converting Illustrator, PDF, EPS or even InDesign files into native QuarkXpress objects and runs on a perpetual license instead of a subscription model. The latest update also includes the ability to export HTML5 interactive publications. It also supports plugins called, XTensions for additional capabilities.
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is the industry leading DTP software for designing and layout of professional documents for the web, print, as well as for mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones.
InDesign has evolved from being a successor to PageMaker in version 1.0 to becoming a powerhouse software, which can seamlessly work with other Adobe Creative Suite applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in the Creative Cloud suite.
The workflow in InDesign also comprises of word processing, which is usually done in a standalone word processing program such as Microsoft Word, although InDesign is also a capable word processor in itself. However, a lot of Microsoft Word styles are not carried into InDesign when the users switch between these programs. Adobe released a complimentary word processing program to InDesign called InCopy, which can read and export the various text formatting styles that InDesign uses.
InDesign uses the .indd file format for storing InDesign content. Newer versions have backward compatibility with files created in older versions of the program. Newer versions can save the InDesign document as a .idml file, which can be read by versions till CS4. For even more backward compatibility, the newer version can also export in the .inx format.
InDesign can either be purchased individually or as a part of the Creative Suite under a Creative Cloud subscription. The subscription enables the user to receive ongoing product updates without purchasing new versions every time a major version number update is released.