Home Computer Opens Doors, Boosts Market : Publishing What You Will Is Now Within Your Grasp

There’s an aura of magic surrounding the term desktop publishing that has made it one of the fastest-growing segments of the personal computer revolution.

Stated simply, desktop publishing, or DTP as it is called in the trade, holds the promise of a revolutionary concept--the democratization of an industry by putting the power to publish in the hands of practically anyone with a computer.

With the right equipment and skills, a lone entrepreneur or small group can write, design, lay out and print everything from a newsletter to a novel--a business brochure to a slick magazine.

This capability to have control over the publishing process has spawned phenomenal growth in a DTP marketplace of hardware, software and peripherals that has grown from $300 million in 1976 to what is predicted to be about $4 billion in 1990.

In a crowded and volatile computer industry, DTP has triggered an avalanche of competitive products and services centered mostly on the Apple Macintosh, which started it all, and the IBM PC and compatible MS-DOS “clones.”

However, the fairy-tale story isn’t without its pitfalls. Even the most sophisticated system can’t guarantee well-written prose, or produce a page that looks good.

“Desktop publishing is laden in myth,” says Jim Felici, managing editor of Publish!, a magazine for the desktop publisher. “It sets up a lot of people for disappointment. It all comes back to expertise--machines won’t give you the skills you don’t have going in.”

Felici said his magazine is assembled with DTP equipment where staff responsibilities are divided along traditional lines--editorial, graphics, layout and so forth.

“The burden of the would-be desktop publisher is getting an integrated system that will work,” Felici said.

In contrast, Dan Farber, executive editor of MacWeek, a magazine for Macintosh users, believes DTP liberates a would-be publisher from past constraints by providing ready access to all the tools of the trade.

“Traditional roles just don’t apply,” Farber said. “One person can do the writing, pagination, layout and design on the computer, leave holes for the photographs or artwork, and send it to the art department.”

The final product usually is sent to a traditional print shop, but small projects can be completed in-house using a laser printer.

Using desktop technology, Farber said, a person can “plug and play” with the equipment until it comes out right. He said that MacWeek was started April 1, 1987, with an inexperienced staff. “We shipped the first issue 3 weeks later. It’s not a miracle; it can be done.”

Both Farber and Felici agreed that the Apple Macintosh got a big jump in the DTP field with a screen that looked like a printed page, a relatively inexpensive laser printer and a powerful makeup program called PageMaker by Aldus Corp. It is, they said, a user-friendly system that still sets the standards in DTP, especially with graphics.

However, IBM PC’s and compatibles using the Ventura Publisher program from Ventura Software Inc. are considered the best for heavy word-processing chores such as setting up a lengthy novel for printing.

PCs also are less expensive, can work with PageMaker’s PC version and do quality work with access to a huge library of 50,000 software programs. The drawback is that it takes some savvy on the part of the user to make everything work together.

Rick Young, assistant director of research for electronic publishing at Dataquest Inc., a San Jose market-research firm, said that DTP will continue to be a force in the computer industry, with growth particularly strong in areas of technology that enhance the ease and consistency of operations.

“One thing about DTP that’s not true about standard data processing is that publishing is still bringing a new crowd of users into the market. The standard data-processing operations sell to the same folks all the time.”