Talk:Desktop publishing

More work needed

Woah. This needs much more work... Intrigue 18:34, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Right on, Intrigue! --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:26, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Infography

Infography is not only Desktop Publishing, for example 3d Maya or Autocad, both brains are parts of infography but not specified related with Desktop Publishing. Even more Ascii arts is also infography.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.112.11.38 (talk • contribs) 2006-03-21 21:07:32.

suggestions for improvement

This page should note that among graphic designer and other profesionals who use page layout software, "desktop publishing" is used as in a pejorative sense. Page layout is the prefered nomenclature, and denotes the more profesional software packages of InDesign and QuarkXpress. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.129.121.79 (talk • contribs) 2006-06-01 07:35:15.

Expansion

It would be nice to see a "List of DTP software" page, and a "Comparison of DTP software" page, in line with other software genres. Unfortunately, I know very little about the subject, so I can't do it. 213.94.244.209 10:24, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

• List of desktop publishing software is done, but it probably needs attention from an expert. Rwxrwxrwx 14:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah it would be nice to see a list of softwares for desktop publishing this website is stupid and not needed theres no point —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.251.54.164 (talk) 14:39, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Attitude regarding non-WYSIWYG tools

To me, this article seems borderline antagonistic towards non-WYSWIYG tools despite the potential benefits gained from them. For example, the inability of current WYSIWYG tools to generate HTML which properly follows the box model and separates all presentation into external CSS files.

Another such example would be LyX which employs what they refer to as a WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) interface, providing a graphical interface to LaTeX so that the user can focus on composition without the vagarities of typesetting getting in the way. (Though it's graphical, variations in text styling in WYSIWYM indicates semantic differences (eg. chapter heading) rather than presentational ones)

Ssokolow (talk) 07:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

What statements in the article sound antagonistic to you? Oicumayberight (talk) 21:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Not the original author but the following statements may have been what he meant: "...occupies a substantial but shrinking niche in technical writing and textbook publication...", which - although possibly true - is uncited and looks like personal opinion. "since much software in this genre is freely available, it can be more cost-effective than the professionally-oriented DTP systems", may imply that they are still around only because they are free and if someone needs "professional" results they should go for the "professionally-oriented DTP systems". In fact, none of the advantages of TeX or other systems are mentioned (I won't repeat them here, they are mentioned on the respective pages). The entire comparison could be summed up to "DTP is WYSIWYG and interactive, the others are not but they are free".

Moreover, there are interactive, WYSIWYG LaTeX front-ends like Bakoma or maybe Gummi (haven't used them) and other TeX editors have facilities to automate some work (e.g. entering tables, figures, cross-references, citations) so the statement "requiring the user to enter the processing program's markup language manually without a direct visualization of the finished product" looks like an exaggeration to scare people away. In fact, the users of TeX and other layout tools would say that editing the markup language is an advantage, since they are not distracted by the presentation. Xdalai (talk) 08:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Distinctions between books and single page publishing

This page makes no distinction between true book creating software, like FrameMaker, and layout software. In my (biased) opinion, the phrase "Desktop Publishing" more closely describes what FrameMaker does than the function of graphic and text layout software. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.174.188 (talk) 03:31, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

What kind of distinctions are you expecting? Are there any single page layout programs that can't be used to create books? It seems that you are talking about software features rather than software categories or skill classifications. There is no fine line here. If you are talking about database publishing, that's a separate article and a separate subject matter altogether. Oicumayberight (talk) 19:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

This is a good point. I have written books in EMACS, ED, WordPerfect, PageMaker, Ventura Publisher, Microsoft Word, and FrameMaker, among other programs. While it can be done in any of them, there are features in some that are more useful for composing one-off pages, and there are others that have less emphasis on page layout features and more emphasis on indexing, footnoting, and crossreferencing. I'm not sure where or how to draw the line. Msml (talk) 06:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If the professionals who use InDesign and QuarkXpress for page design, and FrameMaker for book design, agree that their respective software tools are related but distinct enough to be treated separately, what other authority need be consulted? You could write a book(let) or create a page design in PowerPoint, but it doesn't have specialized tools for those purposes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.202.178 (talk) 05:51, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The distinction is in software features, not software type. Granted, I wouldn't use FrameMaker to do a single page layout. But the main distinction between a program like FrameMaker and InDesign is the ease at which you can publish larger books with multiple simultaneous content developers vs smaller books with fewer sequential content developers. That's based on individual features that may eventually be merged in to one software or the other. There really is no "book publishing" software classification for this reason. Even Adobe Systems is positioning it as a specialized software to "publish technical documentation." This has much more to do with the type of content being published than the format in which it's published. Oicumayberight (talk) 06:20, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Colour management

I feel this article has missed the point about desktop publishing. Especially with quotes such as this: "While desktop publishing software still provides extensive features necessary for print publishing, modern word processors now have publishing capabilities beyond those of many older DTP applications, blurring the line between word processing and desktop publishing."

Although I cannot put the words in myself, my understanding is that Desktop Publishing applications are all about publishing, and hence this means management of bleeds, colors and the print process.

for example the main reason I have to use something like scribus is that it provides colour management so that colours are accurately transferred from the electronic to the printed version.

can someone with more expertise add this type of information, and if other people agree remove the comment above which I believe is false. Rimmeraj (talk) 01:34, 16 January 2010 (UTC)