Desktop Publishing, Desktop Publishing

While PageMaker's has a pasteboard metaphor closely simulated the process of creating layouts manually. Ventura Publisher automated the layout process through its use of tags/style sheets and automatically generated indices and other body matter. This made it suitable for manuals and other long-format documents. Desktop publishing moved into the home market in 1986 with Professional Page for the Amiga, Publishing Partner (now PageStream) for the Atari ST, GST's Timeworks Publisher on the PC and Atari ST, Calamus for the Atari TT030, and even Home Publisher, Newsroom, and GEOPublish for 8-bit computers like the Apple II and Commodore 64.

For example, .info magazine became the very first desktop-published, full-color, newsstand magazine in the last quarter of 1986, using a combination of Commodore Amiga computers, Professional Page desktop publishing software, and an Agfa Graphics typesetter Evidence for this can be found at Mark R. Brown's .info history page.

All computerized documents are technically electronic, which are limited in size only by computer memory or computer data storage space. Virtual paper pages will ultimately be printed, and therefore require paper parameters that coincide with international standard physical paper sizes such as "A4," "letter," etc, if not custom sizes for trimming. Some desktop publishing programs allow custom sizes designated for large format printing used in posters, billboards and trade show displays. A virtual page for printing has a predesignated size of virtual printing material and can be viewed on a monitor in WYSIWYG format. Each page for printing has trim sizes (edge of paper) and a printable area if bleed printing is not possible as is the case with most desktop printers. A web page is an example of an electronic page that is not constrained by virtual paper parameters. Most electronic pages may be dynamically re-sized, causing either the content to scale in size with the page or causing the content to re-flow.

Source: Wikipedia > Desktop Publishing