It’s been said for years: “Print is Dead!” No one knows this more than large publishing organizations that are desperately looking into other publishing options. Besides loss in readership for the physically printed word, everyone knows that the world is reading online and getting all materials off line from books, articles, news and more. Not only is online publishing convenient for anyone who owns a computer with internet access, printing online is also environmentally friendly and cost effective too. Companies who publish online eliminate thousands of dollars spent on paper, ink, mailing and more. What’s more, online publishers are saving money as well as the environment. Therefore, businesses are looking for profitable ways to print online. In order for large publishing houses to print online, a substantial investment in publishing software is often the next step.

Large content heavy businesses and companies are using a new XML technology to move all of their existing content into a format that is reusable and adaptable to either create new products or reuse and redistribute existing products. Publishing companies are finding that they too can use this technology to create new products, renew content they already had, save money on paper printing and reach new audiences. The process begins with an XML content server.

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 The tedium of manual typesetting has been replaced by a creative and exciting alternative which has boosted productivity to unimaginable levels.