9. The portable document and direct-to-plate printing

In 1993 Adobe released its most definitive product, Acrobat, a consolidated suite of software applications, including Illustrator, PhotoShop and Acrobat Reader; programmes to be used for creating and viewing WYSIWYG documents. ‘pdf’, or Portable Document Format, derived from the fundamental principles of PostScript, is 'a file format for representing documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system used to create them and of the output device on which they are to be displayed or printed' [1].

When computer-to-plate (CTP) and direct-to-plate (DTP) technologies succeeded those of computer-to-film (CTF) image-setting in 1994, Adobe's pdf, which was initially developed, like PostScript, for the office environment, quickly became the industry's standard prepress proofing and print medium. Using existing laser-printing techniques, platesetters enabled the digital etching of lithographic printing plates directly from a WYSIWYG application, such as pdf, eliminating the use of film and its hazardous materials and wastes, and further reducing the commitment of prepress labour, cost, and time.

By the time computer-driven platesetting, the present-day lithographic prepress standard, replaced computer-to-film image-setting, the desktop-publishing revolution had been in motion for little over a decade, yet this momentum would continue to drive and direct digital innovation in publishing and beyond.

During these first years, the entire industrial prepress process changed in ways inconceivable ten years previously, when Michael Black concluded his history of Cambridge University Press by predicting – with some considered ambiguity – radical change ahead [2]. Not only had the effort of preparing copy for print been reduced, and with it the high prepress and 'makeready' costs of manufacturing, but, crucially, authorial content was reaching the publisher in digital form. No longer did the publishing process require a copy medium other than digital files, and such technical flexibility brought the control of composition under the editorial remit for the first time. As creative type design experienced a digital rebirth, text designers took a hands-on role in composition [3,4]], repurposing the traditional compositors' functions to 'DTP'-based prepress activities.

It was now implicitly understood that the dominant requirement for any text processing was 'the need for flexible reuse and electronic distribution' [5]: the printed book had by 1994 become a by-product of the publishing process.

Notes

Adobe Systems Incoroprated, 2001. pdf reference: Adobe portable document format version 1.4. 3rd ed.
Black M., 1984. Cambridge University Press: 1584–1984. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.315.
Eliot S. and Rose J., eds., 2007. A companion to the history of the book. Chichester: Blackwell, p.393.
Hendel R., 1998. On book design. Newhaven: Yale University Press, pp.189–90.
Eliot S. and Rose J., eds., 2007, p.393.

Tom O’Reilly worked in the Academic Books Production department of Cambridge University Press, 2007–2014.

This blog comprises excerpts from his book What You See Is What You Get: Desktop Publishing And The Production Revolution at Cambridge University Press (1980–1996).