Important Papers in the History of Document Preparation Systems: Basic Sources

Document preparation has been an increasingly important application of computers for over twenty-five years. When first developed, document preparation systems were only one of many applications supported on a computing system (and, indeed, an application that system administrators often tried to suppress rather than support). In the modern computing environment, it is common to find computers that are used only for document preparation. The sophistication of the systems has increased over the years, evolving from systems that were intended to produce text on a particular output device into device-independent systems in which it is possible to specify text, and also equations, tables, line drawings, and other document components. Modern systems enhance the ease with which the document can be specified, perhaps through an interactive interface, and enhance the reusability of the document and its components, perhaps through generic coding (generic coding is specification of the document’s logical structure rather than its physical appearance). In addition to being an important target for development projects, document preparation systems have become the focus of academic research, carried out both in universities and in industrial research centers. Indeed, the research is wide ranging as a successful document preparation system draws ideas from a broad collection of areas. Document