Who invented desktop publishing?

Answer 1

The term "desktop publishing" was invented in 1985, when Aldus released PageMaker 1.0. What we think of as desktop publishing was invented in 1981 by a company called Interleaf. The second publishing program was called FrameMaker. They were both created for the production of documents that are so big they can't be bound in one volume, like the United States Code - which is a FrameMaker file. The programs cost thousands of dollars when they came out, but that was okay because you needed a $25,000 Sun workstation to run them on.

Now, this is really cool: This is a Section of the USA PATRIOT Act...

SEC. 104. REQUESTS FOR MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO ENFORCE PROHIBITION IN CERTAIN EMERGENCIES.

Section 2332e of title 18, United States Code, is amended-- (1) by striking ``2332c'' and inserting ``2332a''; and (2) by striking ``chemical''.

FrameMaker can automatically go to that section of the US Code, and make the amendments specified in the PATRIOT Act. Similarly, if you are the document manager at Boeing and you have to make an edit in the million-page 747 maintenance manual that will show up in five thousand places across a hundred different books including such non-maintenance documents as the Pilot's Operating Handbook, Interleaf will do it in one step. (It's easier to learn how to design the airplane than to learn the program that makes the owner's manual.) Because those programs do what nothing else can, they still sell well.

Answer 2

Type Processor One is sometimes regarded as the first Desktop Publisher, from 1983. In 1985 a program called Pagemaker was launched and it became the first really big one, and set the standard for many that followed, so some people regard it as the first Desktop Publisher.

Answer 3

Desktop publishing has been around since 1985. Since the rise of home computers, desktop publishing has become more and more popular.

Answer 4

me

It was invented by Hewlett Packard with the laser printer and page maker in 1980