Desktop publishing, or DTP, is the process of editing and layout of printed material intended for publication, such as books, magazines, brochures, and the like using a personal computer. Desktop publishing software, such as QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign, is software specifically designed for such tasks. Such programs do not generally replace word processors and graphics applications, but are used to aggregate content created in these programs: text, raster graphics (such as images edited with Adobe Photoshop) and vector graphics (such as drawings/illustrations made with Adobe Illustrator). When the material is ready for publication the DTP software can output PostScript or Adobe PDF which can be used by the commercial printers to produce printing plates.
Desktop publishing started in 1985, with the conjunction of Aldus Pagemaker (later acquired by Adobe), the Apple Macintosh, and the $7000 Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to use Adobe Systems' PostScript page description language, including its scalable fonts in Type 1 format. The phrase desktop publishing is attributed to Paul Brainerd, the founder of Aldus Corporation, as a marketing term that referred to the use of a computer on top of a desk for publishing and also alluded the desktop metaphor that Apple used to mimic a real desktop.
In 1986 Ventura Publisher was introduced on the PC moving infant DTP into the mainstream, this allowed DTP to be moved into the home market via GST's Timeworks Publisher on the PC and Atari ST but these systems were initially used mainly for small-distribution publications such as club newsletters. While this allowed many more people access to publishing their own work it also gave DTP a bad reputation for a while as amateurs made typographical mistakes that professional typesetters would never make.
