In recent years, the nature of the printing industry has been radically transformed by computer technology. This report will provide an overview of how evolving computer technology is affecting all aspects of printing and publishing. Computers are not new to the printing industry. Newspapers have been using computer typesetting for nearly 30 years. In that era, IBM mainframe computers created punched tape that controlled typesetting machines. And type was cast from molten lead (Cole, 1991, p. 57). Since then, technology has become more sophisticated and less expensive.
Traditionally, completed text and graphics were sent to a printer to be typeset and composed into finished pages for printing. The finished pages, called galleys, were proofread and corrected. The galleys were then cut and pasted onto boards to be photographed. The galleys included blanks for any graphics which were added when the final pages were assembled. The corrected text and graphics were then ready to be photographed. This process applied to small pamphlets as well as books and newspapers (Gabriel, 1989, pp. 115-16).
In the early 1970's, Xerox developed the Alto, a prototype computer workstation that could edit and format text and produce illustrations. This was the beginning of what came to be known as desktop publishing. The major breakthrough in desktop publishing came with the release of the Macintosh computer by Apple in 1984. With the appropriate software and a laser printer, the Macintosh could produce camera-ready copy, with integrated text and graphics. It could also produce text for direct input to professional typesetting machinery. Desktop publishing was less costly and significantly faster than traditional typesetting. Fewer people were needed to produce documents, and they required less specialized training. Documents could go through major revisions easily without repeating the entire typesetting process from scratch (Gabri...