Computer typesetting of technical journals on UNIX

Abstract

A UNIX-based system for typesetting technical papers for high-quality output was evaluated by measuring use of computer and economic resources. Five manuscripts submitted to Physical Review Letters were typeset at Bell Laboratories, after preparation of programs to handle the equations, tables, and layout problems of this journal. Computerized typesetting is substantially cheaper than typewriter composition. The primary cost of page composition is keyboarding and the aids provided by UNIX to facilitate input of complex mathematical and tabular text reduce input time significantly. Typing and correcting articles on UNIX, with a single experienced typist, is between 1.5 and 3.3 times as fast as typewriter composition. Input on UNIX averaged 2.4 times as fast as conventional methods. The composition cost per camera-ready page using a full-scale UNIX-based system producing 200 finished pages per day would be about $10 per page as compared with typewriter composition costs of $30 per page.