Desktop publishing (DTP) refers to the practice of producing high quality printed output, fully paginated and including graphics, using personal computers, page layout software, and printers designed to create near typeset-quality pages. The core technologies (the personal computer, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text processing, page description languages, and high-resolution laser printing) were developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the 1970s. However the particular configuration that launched the commercial phenomenon of desktop publishing in 1985 consisted of Apple Macintosh personal computers running Aldus Publishing's PageMaker page layout software, connected to Apple's 300 dpi Laserwriter laser printer with the Adobe Postscript page description language.

The emergence of DTP was a major event in the history of publishing technology because it allowed almost any small organization, even individuals, to easily and inexpensively produce hardcopy printed pages suitable for use as printing...