"Web extras" relating to 2018, 2019, and 2020 Annals special issues on desktop publishing (DTP)

Categories below: ⦿ Special issue contents for issues 1 and 2, etc.; ⦿ corrections for issue 1; ⦿ corrections for issue 2; ⦿ corrections for papers in other issues; ⦿ May 2017 DTP pioneers meeting transcripts and group photo; ⦿ related oral histories for the DTP pioneers; and ⦿ additional content related to the papers published in the special issues.

This web page will be updated as new documents and videos are available.
[Send notes on errors, etc., to dave.walden.family@gmail.com with the subject field "DTP extras page".]

The first of these two special issues was published as Annals issue 3 of 2018. The second issue was published as issue 3 of 2019. The papers in the first issue deal with technology developments that led up to desktop publishing. The papers in the second issue deal with the development of the desktop publishing technology and business itself. Because of too much content for issue 2, several issue 2 papers are being published in other Annals issues.

⦿ Special issue contents

⦿ Corrections to issue 1

⦿ Corrections to issue 2

⦿ Corrections to papers in other issues

⦿ May 2017 DTP pioneers meeting, transcripts, and group photo

The three special issues grew out of a May 2017 two-day meeting of desktop publishing pioneers held at the Computer History Museum (CHM). There have been two anticipatory write-ups since the meeting and before publication of the first special issue: in the Annals (search for "Events & Sightings") and in TUGboat, the journal of the TeX Users Group.

Videos and transcripts from the meeting are available on the CHM web server:

  1. Purpose and Introductions of Participants: transcript; video
  2. Technology in the 1960s: transcript; video
  3. Technology in the 1970s: transcript; video
  4. Technology in the 1980s: transcript; video
  5. Seybold Newsletter and Seminars: transcript; video
  6. Adobe: transcript; video
  7. Ventura, Aldus and Apple: transcript; video
  8. Atex and TeX: transcript; video
  9. Impact on the Future of Desktop Publishing: transcript; video

Group photo


© Douglas Fairbairn Photography; courtesy of the Computer History Museum
Left to right in the photo: Hansen Hsu (CHM historian), Mike Humphries (CHM Software Industry Special Interest Group, SISIG), John Markoff (New York Times and CHM), Matthew Kirschenbaum (historian, University of Maryland), Ike Nassi (CHM trustee), Marc Weber (CHM Internet Curator), Tom Haigh (historian, University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee), Liz Crews (was Liz Bond, Xerox PARC and Adobe), Larry Tesler (Xerox PARC and Apple), Paul McJones (CHM Software Preservation Group), Butler Lampson (Xerox PARC), Paul Brainerd (Aldus), John Shoch (Xerox PARC, CHM trustee), Johm Warnock (Xerox PARC, Adobe), Lee Lorenzen (Ventura), Charles Geschke (Xerox PARC, Adobe), Charles Simonyi (Xerox PARC, Microsoft), Bob Sproull (Xerox PARC), Don Knuth (Stanford, TeX), Jonathan Seybold (ROCAPPI, Seybold Publications and Seminars), Chuck Bigelow (Bigelow & Holmes type design studio), Richard Ying (Atex), Burt Grad (co-founder SISIG), Dave Walden (independent scholar), John Holler (CHM CEO until June 2017), David Brock (CHM Center for Software History).

⦿ Related oral histories (and other writings) of desktop computing pioneers

⦿ Extras for various articles

Extras for Jonathan Seybold papers on Rocappi and the Seybold Reports

Extras relating to the two Atex anecdotes

Extras relating to Xerox PARC

Lots of documentation is available about Xerox PARC, which figures prominently in several of the papers in the special issues and in the meeting transcripts; see, for instance:

Extras (including any corrections) for TeX history paper(s) by Beeton, Berry, and Walden

Extras for Frame Technology and FrameMaker paper by David J. Murray

Extras for Font Wars parts 1 and 2 by Charles Bigelow

Extras for Interleaf paper by Mark Dionne and David Walden

Another text processing system

Relevant prior Annals special issue

Relevant new (2019) book