What is desktop publishing? This question was put to me a while back and it took me some time to find an easy answer. The closest I can come to it is this: publishing using computer software is desktop publishing. Why a desktop? Because a personal computer is a desktop, isn’t it? Work like page layout, margins, typesetting etc. which was done manually was being handed over to the computer. Desktop publishing does all those things right on the Desktop as in a printing press. Computers had been introduced to the printing technology way back in the early nineties. But it was a costly affair. Macintosh computers working on exorbitantly priced software were deployed. Obviously only the very big and moneyed publishers and printers could afford the technology. Slowly things started changing. Flash forward to the present and there is an assortment of desktop publishing software available at reasonable and affordable price.
Desktop publishing has revolutionized the print technology. The tedium of manual typesetting has been replaced by a creative and exciting alternative which has boosted productivity to unimaginable levels.