Movable type on a composing stick on a type drawer. Movable type is the system of Printing and Typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation In Letterpress printing and Typesetting, a composing stick is an instrument used to assemble pieces of metal type into words and lines which are later bound into

A specimen sheet issued by William Caslon, letter founder, from the 1728 edition of Cyclopaedia. Cyclopaedia or A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences ( folio, 2 vols

Diagram of a cast metal sort. See also Letterpress printing In Typesetting by hand compositing a sort is a piece of metal type representing a particular letter or Symbol

Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. A data storage device is a device for recording (storing information (data Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines. Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a Personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout Software to create Publication Documents

The general principle of typesetting remains the same: the composition of glyphs into lines to form body matter, headings, captions and other pieces of text to make up a page image, and the printing or transfer of the page image onto paper and other media. A glyph is an element of writing Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol whether interchangeable or context-dependent are called Allographs the abstract unit they Typography is the art and techniques of arranging type, Type design, and modifying type Glyphs Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety Printing is a process for reproducing text and image typically with ink on Paper using a printing press The two disciplines are closely related. For example, in letterpress printing, ink spreads under the pressure of the press, and typesetters take this dynamic factor into account to achieve clean and legible results. Letterpress printing is a term for Printing text with Movable type, in which the raised surface of the type is Inked and then pressed against a smooth

Letterpress era

Main article: Letterpress printing

During the letterpress era, moveable type was composited by hand for each page. Letterpress printing is a term for Printing text with Movable type, in which the raised surface of the type is Inked and then pressed against a smooth Cast metal sorts were composited into words and lines of text and tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme, with all letter faces exactly the same height to form an even surface of type. See also Letterpress printing In Typesetting by hand compositing a sort is a piece of metal type representing a particular letter or Symbol The forme was inked and mounted in a press, and an impression made on paper.

The diagram at right illustrates a cast metal sort: a face, b body or shank, c point size, 1 shoulder, 2 nick, 3 groove, 4 foot. Wooden printing sorts were in use for centuries in combination with metal type.

Hand compositing was rendered obsolete by continuous casting or hot-metal typesetting machines such as the Linotype machine and Monotype at the end of the 19th century. The Linotype machine (pronounced "Line-O-Type") is a "line casting" machine used in Printing. Monotyping is a type of Printmaking made by Drawing or Painting on a smooth non-absorbent surface The Linotype, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler, enabled one machine operator to do the work of ten hand compositors. Hand-compositing and letterpress printing did not fall completely out of use, and has undergone a revival since the introduction of digital typesetting. However, it is a very small niche within the larger typesetting market.

Phototypesetting

Phototypesetting systems first appeared in the early 1960s and rapidly displaced continuous casting machines. Phototypesetting is a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the Personal computer and Desktop publishing software that These devices consisted of glass disks (one per font) that spun in front of a light source which selectively exposed characters onto light-sensitive paper. Originally they were driven by pre-punched paper tapes. Later they were hooked up to computer front ends.

One of the earliest electronic photocomposition systems was introduced by Fairchild Semiconductor. Present day Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc is a spin-off company resulting from reconstitution of assets in National Semiconductor The typesetter typed a line of text on a Fairchild keyboard that had no display. To verify correct content of the line it was typed a second time. If the two lines were identical a bell rang and the machine produced a punched paper tape corresponding to the text. With the completion of a block of lines the typesetter fed the corresponding paper tapes into a phototypesetting device which mechanically set type outlines printed on glass sheets into place for exposure onto a negative film. The film was then cut-and-pasted into full page galleys used to create plates for offset printing. Galleys redirects here For other uses see Galley (disambiguation. Offset printing is a commonly used Printing technique where the Inked image is transferred (or "offset" from a plate to a rubber blanket then to the Offset printing is a commonly used Printing technique where the Inked image is transferred (or "offset" from a plate to a rubber blanket then to the

Digital era

Computers excel at automatically typesetting documents. A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. Character-by-character computer-aided phototypesetting was in turn rapidly rendered obsolete in the 1980s by fully digital systems employing a raster image processor to render an entire page to a single high-resolution digital image, now known as imagesetting. Phototypesetting is a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the Personal computer and Desktop publishing software that A raster image processor (RIP is a component used in a Printing system which produces a raster image also know as a Bitmap. A digital image is a representation of a two-dimensional Image using ones and zeros (binary

Early minicomputer-based typesetting software introduced in the 1970s and early 1980s such as Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33, Xyvision, troff from Bell Labs, and IBM's Script product with CRT terminals, replaced these electro-mechanical devices and used text markup languages to describe type and other page formatting information. A markup language is an Artificial language using a set of annotations to text that give instructions regarding the structure of text or how it is to be displayed In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises The descendants of these text markup languages include SGML, XML and HTML. The Standard Generalized Markup Language ( ISO 88791986 SGML) is an ISO Standard Metalanguage in which one can define Markup languages Don't change "Extensible" HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure

The minicomputer systems output columns of text on film for paste-up and eventually produced entire pages and signatures of 4, 8, 16 or more pages using imposition software on devices such as the Israeli-made Scitex Dolev. A signature (from Latin signare, " Sign " is a handwritten (and sometimes stylized depiction of someone's name nickname or even a simple Imposition is a term used in the Printing industry Print operators will print books using large sheets of paper which will be folded later The data stream used by these systems to drive page layout on printers and imagesetters led to the development of printer control languages such as Adobe PostScript and Hewlett-Packard's HP PCL. Adobe bricks are a Natural building material made from Sand, Clay, water and some kind of fibrous or Organic material ( Sticks, PostScript ( PS) is a dynamically typed concatenative Programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982 Printer Command Language, more commonly referred to as PCL, is a Page description language (PDL developed by HP as a printer protocol and

Text typeset in Iowan Old Style roman, italics and small caps, optimised at approximately 10 words per line, typeface sized at 14 points on 1. In Typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure being a subdivision of the larger pica. 4 x leading, with 0. In Typography, leading (ˈlɛdɪŋ rhymes with heading) refers to the amount of added vertical Spacing between lines of type 2 points extra tracking. In Typography, letter-spacing also called tracking, refers to the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in a line or block of text Extract of an essay by Oscar Wilde The Renaissance of English Art ca. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900 was an Irish Playwright, Novelist, poet and Author of 1882.

Before the 1980s, practically all typesetting for publishers and advertisers was performed by specialist typesetting companies. These companies performed keyboarding, editing and production of paper or film output, and formed a large component of the graphic arts industry. In the United States these companies were located in rural Pennsylvania, New England or the Midwest where labor was cheap, but within a few hours' travel time of the major publishing centers.

In 1985, desktop publishing became available, starting with the Apple Macintosh, Adobe PageMaker (and later QuarkXPress) and PostScript. Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a Personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout Software to create Publication Documents Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc PageMaker was the first Desktop publishing program introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the Apple Macintosh but soon after also QuarkXPress ("Quark" is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment PostScript ( PS) is a dynamically typed concatenative Programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982 Improvements in software and hardware, and rapidly-lowering costs, popularized desktop publishing and enabled very fine control of typeset results much less expensively than the minicomputer dedicated systems. At the same time, word processing systems such as Wang and WordPerfect revolutionized office documents. WordPerfect is a proprietary Word processing application At the height of its popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s it was the De facto They did not, however, have the typographic ability or flexibility required for complicated book layout, graphics, mathematics, or advanced hyphenation and justification rules (H and J).

By the year 2000 this industry segment had shrunk because publishers were now capable of integrating typesetting and graphic design on their own in-house computers. Many found that the cost of maintaining high standards of typographic design and technical skill made it more economical to out-source to freelancers and graphic design specialists.

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. In typography a font (also fount) is traditionally defined as a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular Typeface. The advent of PostScript, supplemented by the PDF file format, provided a universal method of proofing designs and layouts, readable on major computer and operating systems. PostScript ( PS) is a dynamically typed concatenative Programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982

SGML and XML systems

The arrival of SGML/XML as the document model made other typesetting engines popular. The Standard Generalized Markup Language ( ISO 88791986 SGML) is an ISO Standard Metalanguage in which one can define Markup languages Don't change "Extensible" Such engines include Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33, OASYS, Xyvision's XML Professional Publisher (XPP), FrameMaker, Arbortext, YesLogic's Prince, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. XML Professional Publisher (XPP is a high-end publishing system which developed out of a proprietary typesetting system Adobe FrameMaker is a Desktop publishing (DTP and Word processing application that is popular for large documents Arbortext is an XML -based publishing system available from PTC. Prince is a proprietary software program that converts XML and HTML documents into PDF files by applying Cascading Style Sheets (CSS QuarkXPress ("Quark" is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment Adobe InDesign is a Desktop publishing (DTP software application produced by Adobe Systems. These products allow users to program their typesetting process around the SGML/XML with the help of scripting languages. Some of them, such as UltraXML, provide attractive WYSIWYG interfaces with support for XML standards and Unicode to attract a wider spectrum of users. UltraXML™ is a WYSIWYG XML dynamic Desktop publishing solution that can be used for complex document creation requiring high level of typographical WYSIWYG (ˈwɪziwɪg or /ˈwɪzɪwɪg/ is an Acronym for W hat Y ou S ee I s W hat Y ou G In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

troff and successors

Main article: Troff

During the mid-1970s Joseph Ossanna, working at Bell Laboratories, wrote the troff typesetting program to drive a Wang C/A/T phototypesetter owned by the Labs; it was later enhanced by Brian Kernighan to support output to different equipment such as laser printers and the like. See also Trough. TROFF may also refer to a command in the BASIC programming language. Joseph F Ossanna ( December 10 1928 - November 28 1977) received his BSEE from Wayne State University, Detroit Bell Laboratories (also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) is the Research organization Phototypesetting is a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the Personal computer and Desktop publishing software that Brian Wilson Kernighan (ˈkɛrnɪhæn the 'g' is silent (born 1942 Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a Computer scientist who worked at A laser printer is a common type of Computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper While its use has fallen off, it is still included with a number of Unix and Unix-like systems and has been used to typeset a number of high-profile technical and computer books. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer A Unix-like (sometimes shortened to *nix) Operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system while not necessarily conforming Some versions, as well as a GNU work-alike called groff, are now open source. GNU ( pronounced) is a computer Operating system composed entirely of Free software. groff is the GNU replacement for the Troff and Nroff Text formatters It is an original implementation written primarily in C++ Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge

TeX and LaTeX

Mathematical text typeset using TeX and the AMS Euler font.

Main article: TeX

The TeX system, created by Donald E. Knuth, is another widespread and powerful automated typesetting system that has set high standards, especially for typesetting mathematics. TeX (ˈtɛx as in Greek, often /ˈtɛk/ in English; written with a lowercase 'e' in imitation of the logo is a Typesetting system designed and mostly TeX (ˈtɛx as in Greek, often /ˈtɛk/ in English; written with a lowercase 'e' in imitation of the logo is a Typesetting system designed and mostly Donald Ervin Knuth (kəˈnuːθ (born 10 January 1938) is a renowned computer scientist and Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Standard TeX does not provide a WYSIWYG interface, though there are programs such as LyX and Scientific Workplace that provide one. WYSIWYG (ˈwɪziwɪg or /ˈwɪzɪwɪg/ is an Acronym for W hat Y ou S ee I s W hat Y ou G Another WYSIWYG editor very much inspired by TeX is TeXmacs. GNU TeXmacs is a free scientific Word processor component of the GNU project which was "inspired" by both TeX and GNU Emacs

Since TeX is considered fairly difficult to learn on its own, the LaTeX macro package written by Leslie Lamport offers a simpler interface. LaTeX (ˈleɪtɛ Dr Leslie Lamport (born February 7, 1941 in New York City) is an American computer scientist. LaTeX markup is very widely used in academic circles for published papers and even books.

TeX is a very powerful typesetting system used in many applications other than mathematics. The Editora graphical user interface written by D. Klutz, using TeX as typesetting engine, offers a powerful pagination tool for Classified Ads Newspapers and Magazines. Editora is used by the major Classified Ads Newspapers and Magazines in France. The 12,000 pages landmark French dictionary Le Robert edition 2003 was typeset by TeX in less than 10 minutes. Le Robert is the third-largest commune in the French overseas département of Martinique.

Further reading

• dingbat
• hot metal typesetting
• justification (typesetting)
• ligature
• orphan (typesetting)
• printing
• printing press
• sort (typesetting)
• typeface
• typography
• widow (typesetting)
• strut (typesetting)
• composing stick

External links

• Metal Type - For Those who Remember Hot Metal Typesetting
• TeX Users Group
• XML page at www.W3C.org
• SGML page at www.xml.org
• Forum for typesetters