Typesetting is the composition of
text
Text may refer to:
Written word
* Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including:
**Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred
**Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preachin ...
by means of arranging
physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''
glyphs
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
'' in digital systems representing ''
characters'' (letters and other symbols).
[Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 23 December 2009]
Dictionary.reference.com
/ref> Stored types are retrieved and ordered according to a language's orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
for visual display. Typesetting requires one or more font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
s (which are widely but erroneously confused with and substituted for typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
s). One significant effect of typesetting was that authorship of works could be spotted more easily, making it difficult for copiers who have not gained permission.
Pre-digital era
Manual typesetting
During much of the letterpress era, movable type was composed by hand for each page
Page most commonly refers to:
* Page (paper), one side of a leaf of paper, as in a book
Page, PAGE, pages, or paging may also refer to:
Roles
* Page (assistance occupation), a professional occupation
* Page (servant), traditionally a young m ...
by workers called compositors. A tray with many dividers, called a case, contained cast metal '' sorts'', each with a single letter or symbol, but backwards (so they would print correctly). The compositor assembled these sorts into words, then lines, then pages of text, which were then bound tightly together by a frame, making up a ''form'' or page. If done correctly, all letters were of the same height, and a flat surface of type was created. The form was placed in a press and inked, and then printed (an impression made) on paper.[Lyons, M. (2001). ''Books: A Living History. (pp. 59–61).''] Metal type read backwards, from right to left, and a key skill of the compositor was their ability to read this backwards text.
During typesetting, individual sorts are picked from a type case with the right hand, and set into a composing stick
In letterpress printing and typesetting, a composing stick is a tray-like tool used to assemble pieces of metal type into words and lines, which are then transferred to a ''galley'' before being locked into a ''forme'' and printed. Many composing ...
held in the left hand from left to right, and as viewed by the setter upside down. As seen in the photo of the composing stick, a lower case 'q' looks like a 'd', a lower case 'b' looks like a 'p', a lower case 'p' looks like a 'b' and a lower case 'd' looks like a 'q'. This is reputed to be the origin of the expression "mind your p's and q's". It might just as easily have been "mind your b's and d's".
A forgotten but important part of the process took place after the printing: the expensive sorts had to be ''sorted'', so they would be ready for reuse. Errors in sorting would produce later ''misprints''.
The diagram at right illustrates a cast metal sort: a face, b body or shank, c point size, 1 shoulder, 2 nick, 3 groove, 4 foot. Wooden printing sorts were used for centuries in combination with metal type. Not shown, and more the concern of the casterman, is the “set”, or width of each sort. Set width, like body size, is measured in points.
In order to extend the working life of type, and to account for the finite sorts in a case of type, copies of forms were cast when anticipating subsequent printings of a text, freeing the costly type for other work. This was particularly prevalent in book and newspaper work where rotary presses required type forms to wrap an impression cylinder rather than set in the bed of a press. In this process, called stereotyping
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
, the entire form is pressed into a fine matrix such as plaster of Paris
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...
or papier mâché
Papier may refer to :
*paper in French, Dutch, Afrikaans, Polish or German, word that can be found in the following expressions:
**Papier-mâché, a construction material made of pieces of paper stuck together using a wet paste
**Papier collé, a p ...
, called a flong
In relief printing, a flong is a temporary negative mould made of a forme of set type, in order to cast a metal stereotype (or "stereo") which can be used in a rotary press, or in letterpress printing after the type has been broken down for re-use ...
, to create a positive, from which the stereotype form was electrotyped, cast of type metal
In printing, type metal refers to the metal alloys used in traditional typefounding and hot metal typesetting. Historically, type metal was an alloy of lead, tin and antimony in different proportions depending on the application, be it individu ...
.
Advances such as the typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
and computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
would push the state of the art even farther ahead. Still, hand composition and letterpress
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker comp ...
printing have not fallen completely out of use, and since the introduction of digital typesetting, it has seen a revival as an artisanal
An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, s ...
pursuit. However, it is a small niche within the larger typesetting market.
Hot metal typesetting
The time and effort required to manually compose the text led to several efforts in the 19th century to produce mechanical typesetting. While some, such as the Paige compositor, met with limited success, by the end of the 19th century, several methods had been devised whereby an operator working a keyboard or other devices could produce the desired text. Most of the successful systems involved the in-house casting of the type to be used, hence are termed "hot metal" typesetting. The Linotype machine
The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing; manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for individual uses. Lin ...
, invented in 1884, used a keyboard to assemble the casting matrices, and cast an entire line of type at a time (hence its name). In the Monotype System, a keyboard was used to punch a paper tape, which was then fed to control a casting machine. The Ludlow Typograph
A Ludlow Typograph is a hot metal typesetting system used in letterpress printing. The device casts bars, or slugs of type, out of type metal primarily consisting of lead. These slugs are used for the actual printing, and then are melted down a ...
involved hand-set matrices, but otherwise used hot metal. By the early 20th century, the various systems were nearly universal in large newspapers and publishing houses.
Phototypesetting
Phototypesetting or "cold type" systems first appeared in the early 1960s and rapidly displaced continuous casting machines. These devices consisted of glass or film disks or strips (one per font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
) that spun in front of a light source to selectively expose characters onto light-sensitive paper. Originally they were driven by pre-punched paper tapes. Later they were connected to computer front ends.
One of the earliest electronic photocomposition systems was introduced by Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...
. The typesetter typed a line of text on a Fairchild keyboard that had no display. To verify correct content of the line it was typed a second time. If the two lines were identical a bell rang and the machine produced a punched paper tape corresponding to the text. With the completion of a block of lines the typesetter fed the corresponding paper tapes into a phototypesetting device that mechanically set type outlines printed on glass sheets into place for exposure onto a negative film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
. Photosensitive paper was exposed to light through the negative film, resulting in a column of black type on white paper, or a galley
A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by oars. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft, and low freeboard (clearance between sea and gunwale). Virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used ...
. The galley was then cut up and used to create a mechanical drawing or paste up
Paste is a term for any very thick viscous fluid. It may refer to:
Science and technology
* Adhesive or paste
** Wallpaper paste
** Wheatpaste, A liquid adhesive made from vegetable starch and water
* Paste (rheology), a substance that behaves as ...
of a whole page. A large film negative of the page is shot and used to make plate
Plate may refer to:
Cooking
* Plate (dishware), a broad, mainly flat vessel commonly used to serve food
* Plates, tableware, dishes or dishware used for setting a table, serving food and dining
* Plate, the content of such a plate (for example: ...
s for offset printing
Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on t ...
.
Digital era
The next generation of phototypesetting machines to emerge were those that generated characters on a cathode ray tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), pictu ...
. Typical of the type were the Alphanumeric APS2 (1963), IBM 2680 (1967), I.I.I. VideoComp (1973?), Autologic APS5 (1975), and Linotron 202 (1978). These machines were the mainstay of phototypesetting for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Such machines could be "driven online" by a computer front-end system or took their data from magnetic tape. Type fonts were stored digitally on conventional magnetic disk drives.
Computers excel at automatically typesetting and correcting documents.[(webpage has a translation button)] Character-by-character, computer-aided phototypesetting was, in turn, rapidly rendered obsolete in the 1980s by fully digital systems employing a raster image processor
A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a raster image also known as a bitmap. Such a bitmap is used by a later stage of the printing system to produce the printed output. The input may be a page de ...
to render an entire page to a single high-resolution digital image
A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with ''finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions ...
, now known as imagesetting.
The first commercially successful laser imagesetter, able to make use of a raster image processor, was the Monotype Lasercomp. ECRM, Compugraphic
Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraph ...
(later purchased by Agfa) and others rapidly followed suit with machines of their own.
Early minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...
-based typesetting software introduced in the 1970s and early 1980s, such as Datalogics
Datalogics is a computer software company formed in 1967 and based in Chicago, IL. The company licenses software development kits for working with PDF and other document file types. They have previously developed their own typesetting and datab ...
Pager, Penta, Atex
The ATEX directives are two EU directives describing the minimum safety requirements for workplaces and equipment used in explosive atmospheres. The name is an initialization of the French term ''Appareils destinés à être utilisés en ATm ...
, Miles 33, Xyvision, troff
troff (), short for "typesetter roff", is the major component of a document processing system developed by Bell Labs for the Unix operating system. troff and the related nroff were both developed from the original roff.
While nroff was inten ...
from Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
, and IBM's Script
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
product with CRT terminals, were better able to drive these electromechanical devices, and used text markup language
Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...
s to describe type and other page formatting information. The descendants of these text markup languages include SGML
The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates":
* Declarative: Markup should des ...
, XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
and HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
.
The minicomputer systems output columns of text on film for paste-up and eventually produced entire pages and signature
A signature (; from la, signare, "to sign") is a handwritten (and often stylized) depiction of someone's name, nickname, or even a simple "X" or other mark that a person writes on documents as a proof of identity and intent. The writer of a ...
s of 4, 8, 16 or more pages using imposition
Imposition is one of the fundamental steps in the prepress printing process. It consists of the arrangement of the printed product’s pages on the printer’s sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplify binding and reduce paper waste.
...
software on devices such as the Israeli-made Scitex
Suny Cellular Communication was known as Scitex Corporation Ltd. until December 2005 and Scailex Corporation Ltd. () until November 2016.
History
Scitex was an Israel-based multi-national company, founded by Efraim (Efi) Arazi in 1968, and w ...
Dolev. The data stream used by these systems to drive page layout on printers and imagesetters, often proprietary or specific to a manufacturer or device, drove development of generalized printer control languages, such as Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...
' PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
and Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
's PCL.
Computerized typesetting was so rare that ''BYTE
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
'' magazine (comparing itself to "the proverbial shoemaker's children who went barefoot") did not use any computers in production until its August 1979 issue used a Compugraphics system for typesetting and page layout. The magazine did not yet accept articles on floppy disks, but hoped to do so "as matters progress". Before the 1980s, practically all typesetting for publishers and advertisers was performed by specialist typesetting companies. These companies performed keyboarding, editing and production of paper or film output, and formed a large component of the graphic arts industry. In the United States, these companies were located in rural Pennsylvania, New England or the Midwest, where labor was cheap and paper was produced nearby, but still within a few hours' travel time of the major publishing centers.
In 1985, with the new concept of 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 ...
(for What You See Is What You Get) in text editing and word processing on personal computers, 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 c ...
became available, starting with the Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
, Aldus PageMaker
Adobe PageMaker (formerly Aldus) is a discontinued desktop publishing computer program introduced in 1985 by the Aldus Corporation on the Apple Macintosh. The combination of the Macintosh's graphical user interface, PageMaker publishing software, ...
(and later QuarkXPress
QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing software for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on macOS and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and ...
) and PostScript and on the PC platform with Xerox Ventura Publisher under DOS as well as Pagemaker under Windows. Improvements in software and hardware, and rapidly lowering costs, popularized desktop publishing and enabled very fine control of typeset results much less expensively than the minicomputer dedicated systems. At the same time, word processing systems, such as Wang
Wang may refer to:
Names
* Wang (surname) (王), a common Chinese surname
* Wāng (汪), a less common Chinese surname
* Titles in Chinese nobility
* A title in Korean nobility
* A title in Mongolian nobility
Places
* Wang River in Thailand ...
, WordPerfect and Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
, revolutionized office documents. They did not, however, have the typographic ability or flexibility required for complicated book layout, graphics, mathematics, or advanced hyphenation and justification rules (''H and J'').
By 2000, this industry segment had shrunk because publishers were now capable of integrating typesetting and graphic design on their own in-house computers. Many found the cost of maintaining high standards of typographic design and technical skill made it more economical to outsource to freelancers and graphic design specialists.
The availability of cheap or free fonts made the conversion to do-it-yourself easier, but also opened up a gap between skilled designers and amateurs. The advent of PostScript, supplemented by the PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
file format, provided a universal method of proofing designs and layouts, readable on major computers and operating systems.
QuarkXPress had enjoyed a market share of 95% in the 1990s, but lost its dominance to Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, ...
from the mid-2000s onward.
SCRIPT variants
IBM created and inspired a family of typesetting languages with names that were derivatives of the word "SCRIPT". Later versions of SCRIPT included advanced features, such as automatic generation of a table of contents and index, multicolumn page layout, footnotes, boxes, automatic hyphenation and spelling verification.
NSCRIPT was a port of SCRIPT to OS and TSO from CP-67/CMS SCRIPT.
Waterloo Script was created at the University of Waterloo (UW) later. One version of SCRIPT was created at MIT and the AA/CS at UW took over project development in 1974. The program was first used at UW in 1975. In the 1970s, SCRIPT was the only practical way to word process and format documents using a computer. By the late 1980s, the SCRIPT system had been extended to incorporate various upgrades.
The initial implementation of SCRIPT at UW was documented in the May 1975 issue of the Computing Centre Newsletter, which noted some the advantages of using SCRIPT:
The article also pointed out SCRIPT had over 100 commands to assist in formatting documents, though 8 to 10 of these commands were sufficient to complete most formatting jobs. Thus, SCRIPT had many of the capabilities computer users generally associate with contemporary word processors.
SCRIPT/VS was a SCRIPT variant developed at IBM in the 1980s.
DWScript is a version of SCRIPT for MS-DOS, named after its author, D. D. Williams, but was never released to the public and only used internally by IBM.
Script is still available from IBM as part of the Document Composition Facility
SCRIPT,Stuart E. Madnick and Allen G. Moulton (1968) IEEE Transactions on Engineering Writing and Speech, Vol. EWS-11, No. 2, pp. 92-100. any of a series of text markup languages starting with Script under CP/CMS, Control Program-67/Cambridge Moni ...
for the z/OS
z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest:
* O ...
operating system.IBM Document Composition Facility (DCF)
/ref>
SGML and XML systems
The standard generalized markup language (SGML
The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates":
* Declarative: Markup should des ...
) was based upon IBM Generalized Markup Language
Generalized Markup Language (GML) is a set of macros that implement intent-based (procedural) markup tags for the IBM text formatter, SCRIPT. SCRIPT/VS is the main component of IBM's Document Composition Facility (DCF). A ''starter set'' of ...
(GML). GML was a set of macros on top of IBM Script. DSSSL
The Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL) is an international standard developed to provide stylesheets for SGML documents.
DSSSL consists of two parts: a tree transformation process that can be used to manipulate the tree ...
is an international standard developed to provide a stylesheets for SGML documents.
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
is a successor of SGML. XSL-FO
XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) is a markup language for XML document formatting that is most often used to generate PDF files. XSL-FO is part of XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and ...
is most often used to generate PDF files from XML files.
The arrival of SGML/XML as the document model made other typesetting engines popular.
Such engines include Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33's OASYS, Xyvision's XML Professional Publisher
XML Professional Publisher (XPP) is an automated XML based publishing system that was developed out of a proprietary typesetting system.
XPP is a standards-based, content formatting and publishing application for the automatic composition, transf ...
, FrameMaker
Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor designed for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents. It was originally developed by Frame Technology Corporation, which was bought by Adobe.
Overview
FrameMaker ...
, and Arbortext
Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher (APP, formerly Advent 3B2) is commercial typesetting software application sold by Parametric Technology Corporation.
The software contains an automated publishing engine that can manually or automatically produce ...
. XSL-FO compatible engines include Apache FOP
Formatting Objects Processor (FOP, also known as Apache FOP) is a Java application that converts XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) files to PDF or other printable formats.
FOP was originally developed by James Tauber who donated it to the Apache So ...
, Antenna House Formatter
Antenna House Formatter (AH Formatter) is a proprietary software program that uses either XSL-FO or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to convert XML and HTML documents into PDF, SVG, PostScript, XPS, text, and Microsoft Word formats. It supports 30 ...
, and RenderX
RenderX, Inc is a commercial software development company that provides standards-based software products, used for typeset-quality electronic and print output of business content. RenderX develops products that convert XML content into printable ...
's XEP.
These products allow users to program their SGML/XML typesetting process with the help of scripting languages.
YesLogic's Prince
A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...
is another one, which is based on CSS Paged Media.
Troff and successors
During the mid-1970s, Joe Ossanna
Joseph Frank Ossanna, Jr. (December 10, 1928 – November 28, 1977) was an electrical engineer and computer programmer who worked as a member of the technical staff at the Bell Labs, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He be ...
, working at Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
, wrote the troff typesetting program to drive a Wang C/A/T phototypesetter
Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting).
The ...
owned by the Labs; it was later enhanced by Brian Kernighan
Brian Wilson Kernighan (; born 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist.
He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known through co-au ...
to support output to different equipment, such as laser printer
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to d ...
s. While its use has fallen off, it is still included with a number of Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
and Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
systems, and has been used to typeset a number of high-profile technical and computer books. Some versions, as well as a GNU
GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...
work-alike called groff, are now open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
.
TeX and LaTeX
The TeX
Tex may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr.
Entertainment
* ''Tex'', the Italian ...
system, developed by Donald E. Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...
at the end of the 1970s, is another widespread and powerful automated typesetting system that has set high standards, especially for typesetting mathematics. LuaTeX
LuaTeX is a TeX-based computer typesetting system which started as a version of pdfTeX with a Lua scripting engine embedded. After some experiments it was adopted by the TeX Live distribution as a successor to pdfTeX (itself an extension of ε-TeX, ...
and LuaLaTeX are variants of TeX and of LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
scriptable in Lua
Lua or LUA may refer to:
Science and technology
* Lua (programming language)
* Latvia University of Agriculture
* Last universal ancestor, in evolution
Ethnicity and language
* Lua people, of Laos
* Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...
. TeX is considered fairly difficult to learn on its own, and deals more with appearance than structure. The LaTeX macro package, written by Leslie Lamport
Leslie B. Lamport (born February 7, 1941 in Brooklyn) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems, and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX and ...
at the beginning of the 1980s, offered a simpler interface and an easier way to systematically encode the structure of a document. LaTeX markup is widely used in academic circles for published papers and books. Although standard TeX does not provide an interface of any sort, there are programs that do. These programs include Scientific Workplace
Scientific WorkPlace (often abbreviated to SWP) is a software package for scientific word processing on Microsoft Windows and OS X.
Although advertised as a WYSIWYG LaTeX-based word processor, it is actually a graphical user interface for editin ...
and LyX
LyX (styled as ; pronounced ) (Based on 3 developers, they say it can be pronounced "Licks", "Lucks" and "Leeks") is an open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, ...
, which are graphical/interactive editors; TeXmacs
GNU TeXmacs is a scientific word processor and typesetting component of the GNU Project. It originated as GNU Emacs with TeX functionalities, though it shares no code with those programs, while using TeX fonts. It is written and maintained by J ...
, while being an independent typesetting system, can also aid the preparation of TeX documents through its export capability.
Other text formatters
GNU TeXmacs (whose name is a combination of TeX and Emacs
Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...
, although it is independent from both of these programs) is a typesetting system which is at the same time a WYSIWYG word processor. Several other text-formatting software packages exist—notably Lout
Patoline
Sile
Pollen
an
Ant
—but are not widely used.
See also
* Dingbat
In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or a ...
* Formula editor
A formula editor is a computer program that is used to typeset mathematical formulas and mathematical expressions.
Formula editors typically serve two purposes:
* They allow word processing and publication of technical content either for print ...
* History of Western typography
Modern typographers view typography as a craft with a very long history tracing its origins back to the first punches and dies used to make seals and coinage currency in ancient times. The basic elements of typography are at least as old as ci ...
* Ligature (typography)
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the fir ...
* The Long Short Cut
''The Long Short Cut'' is a 192-page novel by English author Paul Winterton using the pseudonym Andrew Garve. It was published by Harper and Row in April 1968.
It was the first book printed completely by electronically controlled typesetting (a ...
* Point (typography)
In typography, the point is the smallest unit of measure. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other items on a printed page. The size of the point has varied throughout printing's history. Since the 18th century, the size of a poi ...
* Prepress Prepress is the term used in the Printing and Publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress process includes the preparation of artwork for press, media ...
* Printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
* Printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...
* Sort (typesetting)
In typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, which is lined up with others to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand with other sorts be ...
* Strut (typesetting) In typesetting, a strut is an invisible character or element, used to ensure that a text has a minimum height and depth, even if no other elements are included.
For example, LaTeX and plain TeX
Donald E. Knuth. ''The TeXbook'' (Computers and Typese ...
* Symbols
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
– Comprehensive list of typographical symbols
* Technical writing
Technical writing is writing or drafting technical communication used in technical and occupational fields, such as computer hardware and software, architecture, engineering, chemistry, aeronautics, robotics, finance, medical, consumer electronics, ...
References
External links
Metal Type – For Those who Remember Hot Metal Typesetting
TeX Users Group
Fundamentals of typesetting
The Lout Document Formatting System
XML page at www.W3C.org
{{Authority control
Typography
Textual scholarship
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