Talk:Phototypesetting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a sentance to describe the process of phototypesetting that makes no sense. I don't know how the process works, so there is no way for me to rework it. If you understand the meanding of the following sentance, please rewrite it and post it on my talk page. I will be glad to put it back in the article. "By using a strobelight and tracking the position of the letters on the filmstrip, characters were exposed onto photopaper as the filmstrip drum moved across the photopaper, creating justified or unjustified text." telekid 20:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

There's a lot that should be added to this article: the development of input methods (paper tape, etc.), and information about the technologies of a number of companies other than Compugraphic. I've edited it a bit, but I'd like to participate in some expansion. Potpublstu 05:18, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

telekid: Here's how it works.

The "filmstrip" on the phototypesetter had characters going down one side and hash marks going down the other. As the drum spins, the system counts the hashmarks and always knows what character from the filmstrip is in front of the lens. When the user types a character onto the keyboard, the system calculates where that character is on the strip and the next time it passes that character's position, based on the hashmark count, the strobe flashes through the strip, it is magnified by the lens and exposes the photopaper. There was an associated "width card" that came with each filmstrip that contained information about the width of each character and thus the amount of space it would take up, based on the point size. After the strobe flashed, the entire lens assembly would move based on the character's width.

For justified composition, such as you see in newspaper columns, the system also kept up with the amount of space remaining on the line and had some intelligence regarding hyphenation. If it reached the end of the line and there was not enough space left to complete the word, it would analyze the word for hyphenation points (rudimentary by today's standards) and if it could find no place to hyphenate, it would move the entire word down to the next line and place an equal amount of space between all remaining characters on the previous line. This sometimes caused some very strange looking type.

In the event you are interested, I worked for Compugraphic for about 7 years as an installation specialist. I installed the equipment and trained the users on it. If you'd like any more information, please let me know. I'm consultant999@hotmail.com