Timeworks Publisher was a

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...

(DTP) program produced by GST Software in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. It is notable as the first affordable DTP program for the IBM PC. In appearance and operation, it was a

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clone, but it was possible to run it on a computer without a hard disk.

Versions

Timeworks Desktop Publisher

Timeworks Publisher 1 for Atari TOS relied on the GDOS software components, which were available from Atari but were often distributed with applications that required them. GDOS provided TOS/

GEM A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, a ...

with a standardized method for installing printer drivers and additional fonts, although these were limited to bitmapped fonts in all but the later releases. GDOS had a reputation for being difficult to configure, used a lot of system resources and was fairly buggy, meaning that Timeworks could struggle to run on systems without a hard disk and less than 2 MB of memory - but it was possible, and for many users Timeworks was an inexpensive introduction to desktop publishing. For the IBM PC, Timeworks ran on

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Desktop (supplied with the program) as a

runtime system In computer programming, a runtime system or runtime environment is a sub-system that exists both in the computer where a program is created, as well as in the computers where the program is intended to be run. The name comes from the compile t ...

. Later versions ran on Microsoft Windows. Timeworks Publisher 2 included full

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

, paragraph tagging, manual control of kerning, text and graphics imports and more fonts. Timeworks Publisher 2.1 with GEM/5 is known to have supported Bézier curves already.

Acorn Desktop Publisher

In mid-1988, following on from the release of

GST GST may refer to: Taxes * General sales tax * Goods and Services Tax, the name for the value-added tax in several jurisdictions: ** Goods and services tax (Australia) ** Goods and Services Tax (Canada) ** Goods and Services Tax (Hong Kong) **G ...

's word processor, '' First Word Plus'',

Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK, including the Acorn Electron and the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn's ...

announced that it had commissioned GST to port and enhance the Timeworks product for the Archimedes series. Being designed for use with

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archi ...

, using the anti-aliased font technology already demonstrated on the Archimedes, utilising the multi-tasking capabilities of the RISC OS desktop environment, and offering printed output support for laser and dot-matrix printers, availability was deferred until the release of RISC OS in April 1989. The delivered product, Acorn Desktop Publisher, introduced Acorn's outline font manager and bundled 14 scalable fonts plus upgraded printer drivers (for Postscript-compatible and Hewlett-Packard

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-compatible printers, plus Integrex colour inkjet printers) to provide consistent, high-quality output on screen and paper. Despite being described as "streets ahead" of Timeworks on the Atari ST, offering "real desktop publishing, not the pale imitation possible with a Master 128 or model B", being comparable to "mid-priced DTP packages on the Mac or IBM PC", the software was regarded as barely usable on a machine with 1 MB of RAM and no hard disk (Acorn recommended 2 MB to use the software alongside other applications), and the limitations in editing and layout facilities led one reviewer to note that at the £150 price level and with other desktop publishing packages (notably Computer Concepts' Impression,

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's Ovation, and Clares' Tempest) announced if not yet available, purchasers would be advised to "wait and see" before making any decision. Nevertheless, with competitors still unavailable in early 1990, Acorn User deemed to name it as the platform's best desktop publishing package, noting that there was "little available yet for Archimedes DTP, although much is on the way soon". Ultimately, Acorn would promote Impression as part of its Publishing System package. Of the other anticipated competitors, Ovation was released later in 1990, and succeeded by Ovation Pro in 1996, having been previewed in 1995, whereas Tempest was apparently never released, being absent from Clares' software catalogue. Curiously, Tempest was itself described as being "based on the Acorn DTP package" but aiming to remedy deficiencies and provide enhancements such as multi-column frames, "text flow around regular shapes", and improved text editing support, along with memory management facilities. Developed by a freelance programmer for Clares, a pre-release version was demonstrated in late 1989, apparently requiring only 128 KB of RAM, with work underway to optimise the display routines. A price of £129.95 including VAT was announced. Initially destined for an autumn 1989 release, it was postponed to an unspecified point in time in September 1989 with the specification having changed, but hints of a 1990 release were subsequently made in early 1990. Although a demo disk was apparently available, the product was widely advertised, and a preview of the software appeared in a late 1990 magazine issue, the product was evidently not completed. Clares later took over development of another Acorn product, the spreadsheet ''Schema'', in 1990.

Publish-It!

In the US, Timeworks Inc. marketed the program as Publish-It!. Released in 1987, there were versions available for IBM PC (running over the GEM environment),

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, and Apple II (Enhanced IIe or better) computers. Further versions were named KeyPublisher 1.0 (versions 1.19 and 1.21) and produced by Softkey Software Products Inc. in 1991 for PCs with GEM. Another version, aimed at the business market, was named DESKpress. A later CD-based multilingual version for Windows was named Press International.

Other names

The product was also sold under other names including NEBS PageMagic (changed after objections from Adobe), Macmillan Publisher,

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Publisher, and many other brands, distinguished by use of the .DTP

file extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...

. The latest version was sold as

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Publisher 4 and is downwards file compatible with earlier versions.

Releases

* 1987 - Timeworks Publisher (IBM PC, Atari ST) * 1987 - Timeworks Publish-It! 1.12 (IBM PC GEM-based) * 19?? - Publish-It! 1.19 by GST * 1987 - Publish-It! (

Apple IIe The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The ''e'' in the name stands for ''enhanced'', referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in ...

) * 1988 - Acorn Desktop Publisher * 1990 - Publish-It! 1.20 (IBM PC) * 1990 - Publish-It! Easy 2.0 (Macintosh) * 1991 - KeyPublisher 1 by softkey (IBM PC) * 1991 - Timeworks Publisher 2 (IBM PC, Atari ST) GEM-based * 1991 - Timeworks Publish-It! PC 2.00 (IBM PC) * 1991 - Publish-It! Easy 2.1 (Macintosh) * 1992 - Publish-It! Easy 2.1.9 (Macintosh) * 199? - Timeworks Publisher 2.1 (IBM PC - GEM/5-based) * 1992 - Timeworks Publisher 3 (IBM PC for Windows) * 1994 - Timeworks Publish-It! 4 (Windows 3.1) * 2009 - Publisher 4.6 Home & Business (Windows XP, Vista)

References

{{Desktop publishing software 1987 software Atari ST software Desktop publishing software Discontinued software GEM software