Students' Guide to Desktop Publishing

The purpose of this book is to introduce the student to desktop publishing techniques and the language of desktop publishing, following the syllabus of the City and Guilds course in desktop publishing. Activities and assignments are suggested throughout the text as a basis for practical work.

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The purpose of this book is to introduce the student to Desktop Publishing (DTP) techniques and the language of DTP, following the syllabus of the City & Guilds 7261/407 course in Desktop publishing. So that the text does not become too abstract, illustrations are taken from the use of a typical modern DTP program, showing the capabilities of DTP by using examples which can be applied to a wide range of applications. Since DTP is liable to be used by students whose subjects cover a wide range of disciplines, some care has been taken to avoid using, without explanation, terms that would be familiar to the student of typography. The advent of DTP makes any user to some extent a student of typography, as far as the traditional teachings of typography can be said to have relevance nowadays. An important point that this book makes, however, is that DTP does not reduce typography to a set of rules. The emphasis throughout is on good-looking results, even if this means that many users will never require more than a few of the huge number of facilities that programs such as Aldus PageMaker can offer. In the course of this book, however, the full range of these possibilities is explored.
Questions have been included throughout the text, and though most of these are of the conventional multiple-choice type, a few are multiple-answer and others require an answer to be supplied. The activities and assignments that are suggested throughout the text are intended as a basis for practical work and some of them may be omitted so as to allow more time for the C&G assignments which have to be performed. The initial pages are aimed at the newcomer to the use of the computer, introducing the essential hardware of the system and also showing how some auxiliary devices can be used.