DESKTOP PUBLISHING PACKAGES

Desktop publishing (DTP) packages are used primarily for designing and publishing professional looking documents. They offer you a wide variety of publishing applications. Typical applications include newsletters, advertisements, letterheads, reports, presentations, catalogs, books (such as this TRAMAN), brochures, or flyers, forms, business cards, contracts, magazines, and overhead displays. Again, you will see and hear new terms when you begin working with desktop publishing software. These terms come primarily from the printing/publishing industry.

The features of desktop publishing can be categorized as composition, layout, and graphics. Let's take a look at each area.

Desktop Publishing Composition

Composition includes defining the sizes and styles of type to be used, the amount of space to allow between horizontal letters and vertical lines, and coding the text (copy) to meet these standards and definitions.

You can enter and edit text directly or you can input text created using a word processing program. Documents created in word processing programs can be imported into the DTP software. Once they are imported, you can manipulate the text (copy) any way you want to satisfy your particular publication needs. The following are features and terms you need to become familiar with: l Type styles and sizes\ Type is classified

according to its style of letter and size. You can choose a variety of type styles (typefaces) and sizes to create impressive forms, letterheads, brochures, flyers, and so on. Examples of Courier and Roman-WP are shown in Table 3-1. Notice each is in a different size. Printers' measurements are based on the point system. The point is approximately 1/72 of an inch. When you hear someone say 8-point type, that simply means that the body of the type measures 1/9 of an inch from top to bottom; 12-point type measures 1/16 of an inch, and so on. The typeface itself is seldom as large as the body, because a small shoulder or ledge is left below the letter on most type. Type sizes range from 3-to 120-point. You will also see the term font used in connection with desktop publishing and word processing. A font is a collection of characters of unified design\the typeface and point size are needed to specify a font. However, the term font is often used interchangeably with typeface.

Table 3-1.\Table of Type Styles in Several Fonts

. Letterspacing and leading\ You can adjust

space both horizontally and vertically. Letterspacing refers to the addition of small spaces between l|e|t|t|e|r|s within a word. Leading refers to the space added between lines of material.

You can create an index or table of contents by marking special words for an index or use headings and sideheadings to make a table of contents.