Role of Computers in Publishing
Computer is the most powerful tool man has ever invented. It has made a great impact on every activity of mankind and plays an important role in daily functioning of all industrialized societies. Earlier, computers were used for scientific and engineering computations. But now about 75% of work done by computers is of non computational nature. Now-a-days they are used for office work, games, preparation of manuscripts, automatic controls in factories, weather forecasting, ticket issue and reservation in railways and other places, control of military equipment; to store, display, send and receive information; to make drawings, graphs and pictures; to control missiles and to control airplanes; to diagnose diseases and prescribe medicines, to perform clinical tests; to maintain and sort records of clients; to teach students; to perform accounting and financial work, to tabulate results; to prepare horoscopes, to select life partner; to supervise and watch areas; help the police in crime investigation: to control robots and so on. The Role of Computers in Publishing is explained below.
Computer Application in Publishing
Today, conventional letter composition in printing presses for book publishing has become obsolete. The manuscripts of books are now prepared using computers. These computers contain word processing programs. Text of the manuscript is entered into a computer. The entered text is displayed on the monitor. The text is edited and is stored on a floppy disk. Usually, laser printers are connected to the computer to produce high quality print. Prints of the text are taken out, First proof reading is done in the press. The stored text is retrieved and displayed on the screen. The programmer makes corrections as pointed out by the proof reader. Again prints of corrected text are taken out. Finally, these prints are sent to the author of the book for final proof reading. Errors pointed out by the author are corrected again. Then final prints are taken out. Space is left for pasting illustrations, sketches, diagrams etc. Drawing made in black ink is pasted on the pages of the text. For mass printing, a negative of the document is produced and it is used to prepare plates for offset printing. Now-a-days, theses, project reports etc. are also produced using word processing package. In case of theses, project reports etc., 4-6 copies are taken out using laser printers. Alternatively, only one copy of the text is printed out using laser printer and rest of the copies are produced by photocopying.
Desktop Publishing System
Desktop publishing, once used only by the professionals, is currently used by everyone because of the availability of several open source programs and other online software that helps the user to create the product with just a few clicks. You just need only the photos, icons, logos, banners, text and illustrations to complete the task. If you want to create the books, invitation cards, advertisement banners or greeting cards, Desktop publishing helps to do it simply. Also you can create several digital products like newsletters, junk mails and online digital magazines easily, since there available so many templates with detailed guides in the web.
A desktop publishing package is extra dominant than word processor package. The system includes computer and a variety of peripherals with dominant software that can make page layouts whole with pictures and text printed in a range of attractive ways. Such pages are used in manuals, bulletins, newsletters etc. They are more attractive and efficient compared to the simple clear print outputs of word processors. It contains an art library containing over thousand pictures which can be used in a document. The system contains an output device which can produce text and pictures. Digitizers or scanners are used to convert art, photo and text images into suitable signals to be fed into the processors. The screen used is a high resolution screen. Though the package may run on a PC, powerful computers are generally used. Phototypesetting gives better output than dot-matrix or laser printers.
The desktop publishing package can accept the text which has already been prepared by word processing packages and stored in a file. Examples of desktop publishing packages (DTPs) are Ventura, Page Maker, Quark Xpress, MS-Publisher, Scribus etc.
The desktop publishing package includes a program called page layout (or page make up or page composition) program which permits operators to format pages of the text and merge text and pictures on display screen. It helps the operator to arrange the text around the picture as he likes. He can add pictures, change position of the picture, alter the style and size of headlines, design of borders etc.
When the design is completed the text is entered, the output of the desktop publishing package, i.e., text and images are sent to graphics printer for multiple copies. Alternatively photo-typesetting equipment can be used for output, or a negative can be prepared. The negative is sent to printing firms for mass production.