Thanks Kris - a very good article, which stirred interesting memories.
In the late 90s I was working for a firm that produced internal publications for many companies, most of them British, but also some international, including Lucent Technologies, John Deere and Osram. One of my jobs as "production editor" (general dogsbody!) was preparing Quark (3.3 IIRC) documents for output. First, assemble three folders, one for every font used in a document, one for the high-res pictures, and one for the QXP files. Then burn the disc on the Mac so it could be given to a courier for delivery to the printer (for those printed in the UK).
Those printed in the US or Germany, were "distilled" to PDF to be transmitted over what passed for high-speed lines at that time, but only after the recipient had been called and asked to set up the receiving equipment. Disconnections were frequent and, from memory, the send had to be restarted from scratch.
Writing that reminds me just how time-consuming new technology was at that time. Many of the tasks were so processor intensive that the Mac could manage only one job at a time and I'd be moved on to read proofs or some other non-tech task - like being sent off to the kitchen to make a round of tea and coffee
By the time I retired a couple of years ago, the paper I was then working on was using InDesign - plan the page, edit the content, create PDF, send to platemakers....
And that change came in the space of just eight years!
