Desk Top Publishing
Desk Top Publishing (DTP) became popular in the mid 1980s starting with the Apple Macintosh, Aldus PageMaker and PostScript.  PCs had become more popular as word processing systems such as Wang and WordPerfect revolutionized office documents.  The usage of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) user interface increased.  WYSIWYG displayed content during editing such that what was shown on the screen was very similar to the final output.  Examples of the final output included printed pages, web pages, slide presentations or computerised lighting for theatrical events.  One of the big advantages of this software was that the layout could be manipulated without having to use layout commands.  The screen display simulated the appearance and precisely represented the effect of font choices, line breaks and final pagination.  Early versions of layout software were basic by today’s standards.  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.

DTP allows 2 types of pages to be prepared: electronic pages, e.g. web pages, which are not constrained by virtual paper parameters; and virtual paper pages which will be printed on paper, posters, billboards, etc.  Master pages are templates that automatically copy or link elements and graphic design styles where these are common to more than one published product, e.g. serials, newsletters, so that these do not have to be re-created each time.  Elements are laid out on the page in an orderly, aesthetically-pleasing and precise manner with text added to linked images and embedded images.  Typographic elements are applied to text with style sheets.  Modern software programs, including Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver, use a layout engine similar to a DTP program.  However, some Web designers prefer to use HTML without a WYSIWYG editor for greater control.