The self-publishing revolution

IDEA No 16

DESKTOP PUBLISHING

For 1,500 years, paper and ink dominated written communication. The printing press ruled for another 500 years. In the mid-80s, Adobe, Apple and Aldus created a new paradigm – desktop publishing (DTP).

Aldus PageMaker was the first desktop publishing software, introduced in 1985 for the Apple Macintosh.

The home-publishing revolution began at Xerox PARC. Like many other PARC employees, John Warnock became frustrated at Xerox’s refusal to market his innovation, so he left to form his own company. The product he had created was PostScript, a programming language to control the laser printer. ...

Get 100 Ideas that Changed the Web now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.