What program would Atari have used for their manuals?

[leech]

So this is a pretty random question, I know...

 

But I am curiuos if anyone knows what programs were used in the creation of their manuals.  I am talking mostly about their 80s era computers, though it would be interesting to hear about the 8bit ones as well!

 

(I have some motive in this, as I have been trying to basically rewrite the Atari PC4 Owners manual, as it seems there is not a great copy of the English version online.  But damned if I can get the indexing to look correctly in Word or LibreOffice!)

[TheDevil'sCompass]

Someone may have some direct knowledge, but I can tell you that during that time period there were a few ways print materials were created and it was all labor intensive. My family had a local print shop and we often farmed out jobs to be typeset depending on the requirements. Owning typesetting equipment at that time was a massive luxury most places couldn't afford. This is probably way more information than you want, so my apologies ahead of time.

 

Here are the different ways we accomplished it at the time:

1. Had the local newspaper do it on their specialty typesetting systems - that's all these machines did, they didn't run any other program and weren't even WYSIWYG. If I recall correctly, pages were printed out using film. We then took these pages, pasted them (with wax) in the correct order by hand and imaged them with our film platemaker then printed them using our presses. BTW, this is also how the newspaper was put together every day - i.e. by hand - print out a block, paste it to a master sheet, print out the next block, etc. Several typesetters were employed and did this all day long. When they had a free hour, they'd squeeze in outside jobs.

 

2. If it was a small job, there were times we manually did the setup using essentially an industrial version of a label printer and pasted each line down by hand. We had several wheels of type that offered different fonts. This was typically only done for things that resulted in a single page or less due to the time involved.

 

3. Had a friend who owned a letterpress print shop set the type for us. There were a couple of ways he could do this, one being placing every single letter by hand (he had drawers upon drawers of lead or wooden fonts with different styles, sizes, and spacing) and another was using his "typesetter" (can't remember the actual name of the machine-might have just been called a typesetter). Essentially it typed out lead sticks one letter at a time from a molten vat of lead, maybe a few words, maybe a sentence, that he would then place together by hand to create the page. He'd print a couple copies of each page for us then we'd image the page and do the printing.

 

4. If the quality didn't need to be ultra professional - think window sales ads or coupons - I may have put it together using my Apple //c and Okimate 20 thermal transfer printer in the early 80's.

 

Bottom line is that print materials back then were very labor intensive (yes, even textbooks, novels, newspapers) and may have been laid out by hand using rulers and wax (easily repositionable) as adhesive. For instance, to do a booklet you would take several sheets of blank paper fold them then manually number the "pages" so you could determine that page 1 and page 30 were to be printed on the same sheet. Indexes and Chapter Selections were all done manually after a dummy book was created. Fonts that were used may not even exist any more though you may be able to get a close approximation by altering a fonts height, width, character, and line spacing. Typesetting could take anywhere from a few hours, to a day, to a few weeks, depending on the job. Keep in mind that once the typesetting was complete it was just as easy to print the 1st copy as it was the 1,000,000th copy. The typesetting was then all filed away in filing cabinets and boxes in case the customer came back and said "I need 5 or 500 more." Computers and Laser Printers changed everything.

 

 

[leech]

1 hour ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

Someone may have some direct knowledge, but I can tell you that during that time period there were a few ways print materials were created and it was all labor intensive. My family had a local print shop and we often farmed out jobs to be typeset depending on the requirements. Owning typesetting equipment at that time was a massive luxury most places couldn't afford. This is probably way more information than you want, so my apologies ahead of time.

 

Here are the different ways we accomplished it at the time:

1. Had the local newspaper do it on their specialty typesetting systems - that's all these machines did, they didn't run any other program and weren't even WYSIWYG. If I recall correctly, pages were printed out using film. We then took these pages, pasted them (with wax) in the correct order by hand and imaged them with our film platemaker then printed them using our presses. BTW, this is also how the newspaper was put together every day - i.e. by hand - print out a block, paste it to a master sheet, print out the next block, etc. Several typesetters were employed and did this all day long. When they had a free hour, they'd squeeze in outside jobs.

 

2. If it was a small job, there were times we manually did the setup using essentially an industrial version of a label printer and pasted each line down by hand. We had several wheels of type that offered different fonts. This was typically only done for things that resulted in a single page or less due to the time involved.

 

3. Had a friend who owned a letterpress print shop set the type for us. There were a couple of ways he could do this, one being placing every single letter by hand (he had drawers upon drawers of lead or wooden fonts with different styles, sizes, and spacing) and another was using his "typesetter" (can't remember the actual name of the machine-might have just been called a typesetter). Essentially it typed out lead sticks one letter at a time from a molten vat of lead, maybe a few words, maybe a sentence, that he would then place together by hand to create the page. He'd print a couple copies of each page for us then we'd image the page and do the printing.

 

4. If the quality didn't need to be ultra professional - think window sales ads or coupons - I may have put it together using my Apple //c and Okimate 20 thermal transfer printer in the early 80's.

 

Bottom line is that print materials back then were very labor intensive (yes, even textbooks, novels, newspapers) and may have been laid out by hand using rulers and wax (easily repositionable) as adhesive. For instance, to do a booklet you would take several sheets of blank paper fold them then manually number the "pages" so you could determine that page 1 and page 30 were to be printed on the same sheet. Indexes and Chapter Selections were all done manually after a dummy book was created. Fonts that were used may not even exist any more though you may be able to get a close approximation by altering a fonts height, width, character, and line spacing. Typesetting could take anywhere from a few hours, to a day, to a few weeks, depending on the job. Keep in mind that once the typesetting was complete it was just as easy to print the 1st copy as it was the 1,000,000th copy. The typesetting was then all filed away in filing cabinets and boxes in case the customer came back and said "I need 5 or 500 more." Computers and Laser Printers changed everything.

 

 

There is a show called Outlander, about a woman who touches a hedge stone and ends up going back in time 200 years (it was just after WWII, so she ends up back in 1746).  As time goes on... well I won't spoil anything, but there is a point in the show where the Scottish guy she ends up with starts working at a newspaper that printed its own.  And what you describe is pretty much that, which means it really did not change much in ~200 years, until computers came along!

Granted it doesn't answer the main question, but is fascinating nonetheless!   Thanks!

 

[Leonard Smith]

Yeah.  PageMaker really changed things for the better.

I believe that came out in the 1986 - 1987 time frame for the Macs of the era.

 

[zzip]

11 hours ago, leech said:

There is a show called Outlander, about a woman who touches a hedge stone and ends up going back in time 200 years (it was just after WWII, so she ends up back in 1746).  As time goes on... well I won't spoil anything, but there is a point in the show where the Scottish guy she ends up with starts working at a newspaper that printed its own.  And what you describe is pretty much that, which means it really did not change much in ~200 years, until computers came along!

Granted it doesn't answer the main question, but is fascinating nonetheless!   Thanks!

In high school in the 80s  I took print shop as my shop elective and they still had a huge setup for typesetting.   I think I did one typeset project and it was tedious!

 

Oh and the printing presses we used looked like these huge cast iron beasts from the 19th century,  but at least they were electric powered!  Well I think one of them might have had a crank but anyway.

 

They also "offset presses" that were more modern-  you could arange your page like a scrapbook, take a photo of it with a giant camera,  develop it, then put in on the press and rapidly churn out hundreds of pages quickly--  much quicker than any printer or photocopier can duplicate them.   But you spent all your time composing the page.    Oh but if you wanted multiple colors you had to do your own color separation and run your sheets through the printer again for each color.   If you wanted to do full color, again you needed to separate the magenta, cyan and yellow elements and run each separately, but if your pages all lined up correctly, voila!  Full color.

 

This was around the time when WYSIWYG Desktop publishing with laser printers started to be a thing.  it was easy to see that computers were going to radically change how a lot of it was done.

 

So I agree that printing had not changed massively for hundreds of years prior to computers.   The main difference was the sizes, capabilities and speed of various presses as well as photo capabilites were the main areas of innovation prior to computers.

[leech]

16 minutes ago, zzip said:

In high school in the 80s  I took print shop as my shop elective and they still had a huge setup for typesetting.   I think I did one typeset project and it was tedious!

 

Oh and the printing presses we used looked like these huge cast iron beasts from the 19th century,  but at least they were electric powered!  Well I think one of them might have had a crank but anyway.

 

They also "offset presses" that were more modern-  you could arange your page like a scrapbook, take a photo of it with a giant camera,  develop it, then put in on the press and rapidly churn out hundreds of pages quickly--  much quicker than any printer or photocopier can duplicate them.   But you spent all your time composing the page.    Oh but if you wanted multiple colors you had to do your own color separation and run your sheets through the printer again for each color.   If you wanted to do full color, again you needed to separate the magenta, cyan and yellow elements and run each separately, but if your pages all lined up correctly, voila!  Full color.

 

This was around the time when WYSIWYG Desktop publishing with laser printers started to be a thing.  it was easy to see that computers were going to radically change how a lot of it was done.

 

So I agree that printing had not changed massively for hundreds of years prior to computers.   The main difference was the sizes, capabilities and speed of various presses as well as photo capabilites were the main areas of innovation prior to computers.

It's a good thing no one is nostalgic for those giant printing presses, I don't have enough room for my old computers as it is

41 minutes ago, Leonard Smith said:

Yeah.  PageMaker really changed things for the better.

I believe that came out in the 1986 - 1987 time frame for the Macs of the era.

 

Yeah, I had started messing around with Pagestream.  I recently bought the 5.x version for the Amiga.  One of these days I'll figure out how to use it...

[TheDevil'sCompass]

1 hour ago, leech said:

It's a good thing no one is nostalgic for those giant printing presses, I don't have enough room for my old computers as it is

 

Actually, there are people who covet these old machines. Letterpress machines are still used today, but mostly for boutique print runs and they command quite a price premium. Since a letterpress actually presses the letters into the paper it has a look and feel that can't be duplicated. Mostly used for things like high-end wedding or party invitations. It's also used for die-cutting for the exact same reason.

 

Offset printing is still used because it is typically cheaper per piece on large print runs and is much less finicky when it comes to different sizes and weights (thickness) of materials. Imagine trying to print a cereal box on a copy machine. The new generation of offset presses skip the photographic plates and essentially work like giant inkjet printers. If you've ever folded a page printed on a laser printer (or copier - which is just a laser printer with a scanner) and seen the image crack - that's toner which is laid on top of the paper. If it doesn't crack, that's ink (offset) which soaks into the paper.

 

I'm also interested in knowing the answer to your question, but I have a feeling that there really isn't one. Depending on the year the manuals were created, there may not be a program that was used to create them because they were created like I said in my initial post and not on a computer (or at least what we consider a computer today).

[leech]

4 minutes ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

Actually, there are people who covet these old machines. Letterpress machines are still used today, but mostly for boutique print runs and they command quite a price premium. Since a letterpress actually presses the letters into the paper it has a look and feel that can't be duplicated. Mostly used for things like high-end wedding or party invitations. It's also used for die-cutting for the exact same reason.

 

Offset printing is still used because it is typically cheaper per piece on large print runs and is much less finicky when it comes to different sizes and weights (thickness) of materials. Imagine trying to print a cereal box on a copy machine. The new generation of offset presses skip the photographic plates and essentially work like giant inkjet printers. If you've ever folded a page printed on a laser printer (or copier - which is just a laser printer with a scanner) and seen the image crack - that's toner which is laid on top of the paper. If it doesn't crack, that's ink (offset) which soaks into the paper.

 

I'm also interested in knowing the answer to your question, but I have a feeling that there really isn't one. Depending on the year the manuals were created, there may not be a program that was used to create them because they were created like I said in my initial post and not on a computer (or at least what we consider a computer today).

I think I've seen some cheaper / smaller alternatives these days for printing out like wedding invitations and such like the old ones.  But for sure I could see some really rich collectors having something crazy like a printing press. 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/154956361846

 

Ha, that's not even as much as I'd think....

[TheDevil'sCompass]

1 minute ago, leech said:

I think I've seen some cheaper / smaller alternatives these days for printing out like wedding invitations and such like the old ones.  But for sure I could see some really rich collectors having something crazy like a printing press. 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/154956361846

 

Ha, that's not even as much as I'd think....

That's an offset press, not a letterpress. Yes, you can print invitations on that (and many do), but it doesn't do the look and feel that I was referring to. It also requires a platemaker before you can print anything. You can set up a small offset shop for a few grand. Then someone will ask you to fold their material and stable it or three-hole punch it or... lol

[leech]

10 minutes ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

That's an offset press, not a letterpress. Yes, you can print invitations on that (and many do), but it doesn't do the look and feel that I was referring to. It also requires a platemaker before you can print anything. You can set up a small offset shop for a few grand. Then someone will ask you to fold their material and stable it or three-hole punch it or... lol

Haha, just printing PDFs of game books and three hole punching got old real quick...

[CatPix]

16 hours ago, leech said:

It's a good thing no one is nostalgic for those giant printing presses, I don't have enough room for my old computers as it is

There are currently still two newspapers (that we know of) using Linotype, so that not only use vintage presses but also non-computerized composition machines: The Saguache Crescent, in the USA, and Le Démocrate de L'Aisne, in France.

 

 

 

Very recently in February, Le Démocrate de l'Aisne (note : this isn't a political newspaper, in France the word only have his original meaning of someone who advocate democracy) machines, all dating from the 1920's and 1930's, were protected as Historical Monuments; in addition, the newspaper is currently owned by a non-profit association, meaning that it will probably be printed as long as enough people buy it... And since they accept worldwide deliveries...

In contrast, the current owner of the Saguache Crescent said that he wasn't training anyone, and that most likely, when he will retire, the newspaper will go with him.

[waynel]

Here's a place that uses vintage letter presses to do its current work: https://hobanpress.com/

 

I've had them do a few jobs for me, and they come out like nothing you've seen in decades.

 

Pictures of the shop:https://hobanpress.com/about-us

[Clint Thompson]

@leech did you ever have any luck with obtaining the English manuals or re-creating them?

[+Nathan Strum]

On 4/20/2022 at 12:59 AM, leech said:

Granted it doesn't answer the main question, but is fascinating nonetheless!   Thanks!

On 4/20/2022 at 2:55 PM, TheDevil'sCompass said:

I'm also interested in knowing the answer to your question, but I have a feeling that there really isn't one. Depending on the year the manuals were created, there may not be a program that was used to create them because they were created like I said in my initial post and not on a computer (or at least what we consider a computer today).

I think that's probably the likeliest scenario. Even when PageMaker came out, it took a few versions before it became properly useful, plus you still had to have access to a PostScipt imagesetter to make any professional use out of it. As I recall, it didn't even support color separations for some time. Given that Atari had been creating printed materials for years at that point using traditional methods, they would've been unlikely to switch until the technology behind desktop publishing had been thoroughly ironed out, in order to avoid unforeseen production delays. If you have a system that works - you're likely to stick to it, especially under deadlines. Even then, in the early years of desktop publishing, it wouldn't have been an all-or-nothing proposition. They might have done the typesetting and simple things like page borders or boxes in an application like PageMaker, but color graphics, illustrations and photos would have been done traditionally. Desktop publishing was initially used to bypass the traditional process of speccing type and having it phototypeset somewhere, so you had direct control over your type (WYSIWYG).

 

I was learning graphic design in college starting in '87. The college had a Mac lab, and at the time Pagemaker (nice history of it here), was the layout application in use. In our first year, we were taught everything traditionally (typography, layout, paste-up, prepress), but after that we could take an introductory course in desktop publishing. It was quite a revelation moving from a traditional workflow (speccing type, hot wax, ruling tape, rub-on type, amberlith and Zipatone) to digital. I loved it though, and dove into it head-first.

 

I ended up working for an imagesetting bureau right out of college after graduating in '89, and it was really interesting watching the lightning speed at which everything changed. The first version of Photoshop was released while I worked there (we were one of the first places to get it, since we had connections at Adobe) and I remember going into the office that weekend just to play around with it. But I was always glad I learned all of the traditional methods first, because it gave me a better appreciation and understanding behind the digital tools that replaced them (I wonder how many people understand why the cropping tool icon looks the way it does). As I've created reproduction boxes and manuals for AtariAge, that knowledge has come in very handy in reproducing the look of those materials - how type was set, the sorts of fonts used, how color separations were typically created (useful in determining the CMYK value of something, when you realize they were laying things out using pre-made screens of fixed percentages).

 

Anyway, that was all kind-of long-winded and rambling. But I suspect that they weren't using page layout software until the very late 80's, except perhaps on fairly simple documents. And even at that, the early typographic capabilities of the software would've been fairly limited. If you're trying to match typesetting of that era, understanding traditional typesetting would help. One thing which might help get the spacing correct - it's all going to be measured in picas and points. Not inches, millimeters or "lines" (like single-line, double-line, etc). Word processing applications likely won't get you there.

[zzip]

2 hours ago, Nathan Strum said:

I think that's probably the likeliest scenario. Even when PageMaker came out, it took a few versions before it became properly useful, plus you still had to have access to a PostScipt imagesetter to make any professional use out of it. As I recall, it didn't even support color separations for some time. Given that Atari had been creating printed materials for years at that point using traditional methods, they would've been unlikely to switch until the technology behind desktop publishing had been thoroughly ironed out, in order to avoid unforeseen production delays. If you have a system that works - you're likely to stick to it, especially under deadlines. Even then, in the early years of desktop publishing, it wouldn't have been an all-or-nothing proposition. They might have done the typesetting and simple things like page borders or boxes in an application like PageMaker, but color graphics, illustrations and photos would have been done traditionally. Desktop publishing was initially used to bypass the traditional process of speccing type and having it phototypeset somewhere, so you had direct control over your type (WYSIWYG).

 

I was learning graphic design in college starting in '87. The college had a Mac lab, and at the time Pagemaker (nice history of it here), was the layout application in use. In our first year, we were taught everything traditionally (typography, layout, paste-up, prepress), but after that we could take an introductory course in desktop publishing. It was quite a revelation moving from a traditional workflow (speccing type, hot wax, ruling tape, rub-on type, amberlith and Zipatone) to digital. I loved it though, and dove into it head-first.

The late 80s were the start of the transition for sure,  but I was involved in yearbook in school, as well as a (full color) newsletter and everything was still done the traditional way.   The school was just starting to get some Apple IIgs systems with WYSIWYG tools, and it was seen as a cool toy, but not fully useful yet because as you said there was infrastructure that needed to be put in place before you could take the output of a WYSIWYG desktop publishing tool and have it printed professionally. 

 

But even after it became viable for professional publishing, I'm sure there were a lot of companies still doing it the traditional way because that was their process and were their expertise was.

[+slx]

The Linotype is a fascinating machine. Who wouldn't love something that works with molten lead.... Mark Twain sunk a fortune into developing something like that a few decades earlier (in vain) and a few decades later it's mostly a museum piece but in between it revolutionised printing.