Desktop publishing

Desktop publishing (DTP) involves the use of computers to lay out text and graphics for printing in magazines, newsletters, brochures, etc. A good DTP system provides precise control over templates, styles, fonts, sizes, colour, paragraph formatting, images and fitting text into irregular shapes.

History
Aldus PageMaker was considered the first desktop publishing "killer application" for the Macintosh platform in the 1980s, followed by QuarkXPress which quickly became a direct competitor. PageMaker was acquired by Adobe and has since been superseded by InDesign. Apple presently markets Pages as a word processor and desktop publishing application.