Journal of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, Inc.

Volume 24, Number 1, June 2021

Book Review
History of Desktop Publishing
by Frank Romano with Miranda Mitrano
Hardcover ISBN9781584563808 ($75.00), Softcover ISBN9781584563815 ($37.50)
Oak Knoll Press, 2019

Review written by Tobin Tanaka1

In the era from the 1970s when the microcom- when DTP grew from pre-infancy to what might
puter started to have its first appearance, the ap- be termed adolescence. Frank Romano had not
plication of microcomputers to desktop publish- only a front row seat to all these changes, but
ing (DTP) was a long way off and not in the sights also knew many of those who were instrumental
of those working with such systems. Most use of in the changes. As he describes in the introduc-
computers remained in the domain of time-shar- tion, he began his career with the Mergenthaler
ing systems such as mainframes and mini-com- Linotype Company at the time of the transition
puters. Furthermore, these systems were almost from hot metal type to photo typesetting. Later
the exclusive use of governments, larger corpora- in his career at other companies he saw the emer-
tions and universities owning to their high cost gence of computer systems being used for photo
not only in initial investment, but ongoing costs typesetting. Towards the 1980s he published in
associated with maintenance and very special- magazines and newsletters on the emerging DTP
ised personnel required for operation. In short, industry.
computing power was expensive and was only At the outset, Mr Romano states that the book
used where it was absolutely necessary and of- has a focus on the period of 1984 to 1995. This
fered a significant economic savings. is arguably during the period of the most signifi-
Even into the 1980s, I recall a summer job in cant shifts in desktop computers and affiliated
1986 where I had the opportunity to use an IBM software/hardware that would enable what be-
compatible PC with a 10 MB hard disk using the came to be recognised as DTP. Several key points
word processing software Volkswriter. It was also in this development are discussed including the
the first opportunity that I had to use a desktop launch of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 and Aldus
laser printer on a few select occasions,though PageMaker in 1985. A large portion of the book
most output was done on a dot-matrix printer. focusses on the professional printing industry
Such was the state of the typical office of the day. rather than the commercial office or home office.
A few years prior to this in high school there was Some sections of the book repeat topics as needed
some exposure to early versions of the Apple II to improve clarity and context.
and Commodore PET microcomputers, this was Early chapters provide some context as to how
not so much for word processing but for learning professional publishing was done, from type-
programming. setting, compilation of graphics including pho-
For the document examiner, a historical re- tos, paste up and proofing, all the very manual
view of the development of DTP is appropriate pre-press work. He provides a particularly good
and needed for documents that date from that era summary of many of the publishing and printing
1
All comments within this book review are solely those of the author and do not represent any official
position of the Government of Canada and/or the Canada Border Services Agency. Further, this review does not
constitute endorsement of the book by the Government of Canada and/or the Canada Border Services Agency.
No financial relationship exists between the author of this book review and anyof the entities and/or persons
mentioned.

© 2021 The American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, Inc. 29

methods that have existed or still exist. For ex- of content but the use of codes to specify proper
ample, stencil duplication and ditto are defunct typeset format. This includes pagination, line
processes, whereas lithography and electropho- breaks, hyphenation, justification, and headers
tography and still going strong. among other codes.
He dedicates an entire chapter to typewriters Early mainframe computers were one of the
from their invention to their evolution as elec- early steps in automation although this was not
tric machines, single element devices to the IBM widely available due to high costs. When desk-
Composer in 1966 which could produce camera top systems with greater computational power
ready typeset materials. This chapter provides and graphics became available the emergence of
a very solid overview of what typewriters could WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) be-
produce and how the added capabilities of data came possible. The typesetting systems that are
storage were the precursors to dedicated word reviewed were those used in the professional in-
processors. dustry. At the close of the chapter, he summarises
The early word processors from the 1970s are how DTP had the greatest impact on the typeset-
discussed, these include several from Xerox and ting industry with many typesetters going out of
Wang, among others. Such systems were propri- business due to a significant decline in business.
etary which meant that data from one system In the following chapter, Printing from Com-
could not be read on another. These were the ear- puters, Mr Romano reviews the progression from
ly systems with a screen and output done with Morse Code to typewriters used for computer
compatible IBM Selectric, Diablo or Xerox type- printers to the familiar printers of today. Along
writers/daisy wheel printers, alternatively, draft the way he provides a well written description
quality output on early Epson dot-matrix ma- of what became standards for computer printing
chines was possible. All of this for the eye water- and commercial printing; Page Description Lan-
ing price of about $10,000 which is about $40,000 guages (PDL) and Raster Image Processor (RIP).
in 2021 dollars! While the history of Apple and the influence of
The emergence of microcomputers from main- Steve Jobs is well known on many aspects of the
frames and other time-sharing computers re- micro computer,what may not be so well known
ceives a dedicated chapter. While the focus of is the impact of calligraphy on Steve Jobs.
the chapter is on Apple and IBM microcomput- Steve Jobs is quoted from the 2005 Stanford
ers, there are sections that summarise some of University commencement speech, “If I had nev-
the other microcomputers of the time such as er dropped in on that single calligraphy course in
Atari, Commodore, Sinclair, Radio Shack TRS- college, the Mac would have never had multiple
80, among others. The common computers of typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.” While
the period from the 80s to the mid-90s includ- that alone is not responsible for the position that
ing some that were in the high-end market such Apple was to take in leading the microcomputer
as those from Digital Equipment Corporation, deployment of DTP it was certainly a significant
Silicon Graphics and Sun are provided. In doing contribution. Apple released several different
so Mr Romano includes these high-end systems computers in that period of 1983 to 1996 besides
that were the foundation to what was to become the Macintosh, some readers may be aware of the
DTP. The chapter closes with some information Apple Lisa which was one of the earliest desk-
about the rise in computer sales from the 1970s top computers to have a graphical user interface
to the 2000s, for example, in 2001 about 125 mil- which became well known during the introduc-
lion personal computers were sold compared to tion of the Macintosh. At its introduction in Jan-
48,000 in 1977. uary 1983 the Lisa was listed at a price of $9,995.
A brief overview of typesetting follows, al- Computers are one part that make DTP, one
though the chapter title is Typesetting—From other part is software. Several sections of the
Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, the chapter focusses book describe how many software programs in
on the progressive steps in typesetting automa- DTP came to be. Descriptions of the capabilities
tion. Historical stages in this from typewriter of these early programs are provided from the
typesetters such as the Varityper, to phototype- ringside seat that the author had. Some but not
setters, to interactive displays, and to those with all these programs have faded to history while
storage capability. More fundamentally, Mr Ro- others set the benchmark and became common-
mano explains how the process of typesetting is place. Perhaps of the greatest interest will be the
actually many steps, it is not simply the input section that describes how Adobe with Postscript

30 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENT EXAMINERS

and Portable Document Format (PDF) became ers have been critical of DTP in lowering stan-
popular. Included is an excellent non-technical dards. This may be the case as anyone who has
introduction to PDF as well as Postscript. the desktop software and hardware can produce
As is well known, the flexibility given by DTP materials without having the appropriate knowl-
opened up more font creation. However, the road edge of what constitutes good design. A valuable
to the standard of Open Type which is in com- section within this chapter provides a photo gal-
mon use now was not immediate. During the lery of the traditional steps in design and pasteup
time of the late 1980s to the late 1990s there were to create a plate. It shows the labour-intensive
several different ways that fonts were handled. process and the special skills that were required
This may be of significance if dealing with doc- to perform such work prior to the DTP era.
uments of that period. For example,did a particu- The development of scanners for the input of
lar font existed during the purported time of the graphics is provided in a timeline with the im-
document’s creation? provements in technology. Within this review
A review of data storage devices is given a short there are listings of the resolutions, file format
chapter. In this, several of the storage disks of the types and how this was brought together in DTP.
1980s and 1990s can be seen, many of them are At the end of the chapter there is a listing of some
not in use today. Another chapter describes how of the scanners that were available for the dif-
the computer screens changed from single colour ferent markets 1996, as well as a chart of early
screens with pre-defined columns to graphical charge-coupled device (CCD) scanners that were
user interfaces. Along the way Mr Romano pro- compatible with the Macintosh.
vides an interesting recap of the common types The last section of the book provides informa-
of displays available at different times and their tion on the variety of the DTP publications and
cost. In 1994 the prices for cathode ray tube (CRT) events that took place over the decades. The pub-
17”displays were listed a $900, and the 22”Apple lications of years past may prove to be very valu-
Cinema Display cost $3,999 when introduced in able when researching the capabilities of DTP
1999. This has bearing on the capability of DTP systems of that era. For example, the trade publi-
as during that period there was an increasing ex- cations Byte, PC World and TypeWorld were pub-
pectation to have screens display the document lished for many years. Older issues have articles
as it was going to appear. and advertisements describing the types of prod-
Within the commercial printing industry, the ucts that were available at that time.
shift to “Direct To” and “Computer To” became Within the book, a comprehensive listing of
the normal practice. This included the plates the TypeWorld articles with key descriptions is
used in offset lithography and the industrial provided from 1983 to 1995 giving the reader a
printing processes such as those used in large for- kind of “time machine” to see what was avail-
mat inkjet printing for posters. Even with this, able back then.
plateless printing has not taken over the entire In addition to providing a valuable description
market share of commercial printing, its market of DTP over the course of the time from 1984 to
share in the US grew from 8% in 1997 to about 1995 the book provides several useful references
20% in 2012. for matters related to DTP. The book should be
Graphic design is given its own chapter. With- within the library of every document examiner.
in it there is some discussion that graphic design-

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENT EXAMINERS 31