Desktop publishing system (NIS) is a set of equipment for preparing the original layout of the publication, ready for transfer to the printing house.

As a rule, NIS includes one or more personal workstations with software for creating a layout of design, recognition, typing and layout of text, image editing, preflight preparation of the original layout. NiS can also include a printer (for displaying intermediate results and films) and a scanner.

The advent of personal computers and publishing software in the 1980s revolutionized publishing and printing, significantly changing and, in part, technologically simplifying publishing. Typing and layout operations moved from the printing house to the publishing house, while the printing houses began to deal almost exclusively with printing and post-printing processes, in particular, binding, binding, etc.

The evolution of NIS actually began in 1985, when the PageMaker program created by Aldus Corporation and the laserwriter personal laser printer from Apple Computer were released. The ability to create WYSIWYG page layouts on a computer monitor screen with subsequent printing on a printer was new to both the computer industry and the printing industry. The term "desktop publishing" was coined by Aldus Corporation founder Paul Brainerd.

Early desktop publishing systems today look very primitive. The PageMaker+LaserWriter+Macintosh 512K bundle was not entirely stable - it often froze - a black and white screen was used, it was impossible to control kerning, tracking and other important printing parameters. But at the time, reviews of the system were favorable.

The technologies developed by Adobe Systems laid the foundation for the further development of professional publishing software. The LaserWriter and LaserWriter Plus printers contained scalable fonts from Adobe in the built-in ROM memory.

In 1986, Ventura Publisher was released for computers running MS-DOS. If PageMaker simulates the process of creating a page layout manually, Ventura Publisher automated this process by using tags and style sheets, which made it possible to automate the process of creating indexes and page layout elements. Thus, Ventura Publisher was more convenient than PageMaker when creating layouts of books and multi-page documents. Practical at the same time, various UNIX-systems began to be ported to personal computers. Most often it was BSD UNIX and its derivatives. Together with UNIX, another publishing system of this type came to the PC - TeX, which appeared in 1978, and with the appearance on the PS became a de facto "trendsetter" in the environment of publishing systems of this type. (TeX itself exists and is being improved to this day.)

And yet, at the time, NIS was perceived by many as unsuitable for industrial use, largely due to users who used unprofessionally designed layouts. Nevertheless, the professional use of publishing programs made it possible to obtain good results even then. For example, info magazine at the end of 1986 became the first full-color publication produced with the help of NIS. In particular, it became possible to prepare printed publications independently or by small publishing firms capable of approaching projects individually.

In the 1990s, on the one hand, a new generation of specialized specialists came to publishing and printing. On the other hand, digital printing equipment began to be actively introduced into commercial operation, which made mass printing "from a computer" possible. The constant growth of the total computing power of personal computers, and, in particular, the radical improvement of the video subsystems of computers, which are certainly used in publishing, also did its job. Naturally, the improvement and expansion of software tools for working with text and graphics for computers was not long in coming, which in turn attracted the attention of the professional community to publishing software. Also in the publishing and printing business came a new generation of specialized specialists who grew up on the avalanche-like spread of personal computers, accompanied by a rapid qualitative growth of the PCs themselves. The turning point was the appearance of the QuarkXPress program in the 1990s and the expansion of the database of computer fonts. QuarkXPress has become the dominant system in the market. In the early 2000s, Adobe InDesign gained popularity. This was due to its great capabilities, as well as integration with other programs from Adobe, which dominated the field of computer design, image and photo processing, audio and video editing.

All this raised the publishing business to a new technological level, and in particular, the quality of publications has greatly improved. But this "barrel of honey" was not without a "fly in the ointment" - also in large quantities began to appear publications with low quality of design of printed texts, published by figures without special printing education, who poured into the publishing business in the wake of this technological revolution.