Adobe Systems Inc Essay Research Paper Adobe

Adobe Systems, Inc. Essay, Research Paper

Adobe Systems, Inc.

At a time when the business world was

eager for a high-quality way to print documents created on a personal

computer (PC), Adobe Systems was positioned with the software technology

to not only produce professional images, but create a new industry – desktop

publishing.

Like so many of the pioneers in the PC industry, John Warnock and Charles

Geschke escaped the confining structure of a large corporation and used

their entrepreneurial spirit and knowledge to move the industry forward.

In the early 1980s, as IBM was about

to announce its move into the PC market, Warnock and Geschke were working

at Xerox’s Palo

Alto Research Center (PARC) to develop a page-description language

(PDL) called Interpress. Frustrated with Xerox’s refusal to introduce

Interpress, Warnock and Geschke decided to go into business for themselves.

Warnock had written flight

simulation software and Geschke had run the PARC electronic printing

lab for Xerox. Considering briefly the copying business and office printing,

they finally turned to what they knew best, writing specialized software.

In 1982 they started Adobe Systems, Inc.

and began to work on solving some of the long-standing problems that plagued

the relationship between PCs and printers.

Solving Old Problems

For a PC to work with a printer, software

developers had to include print commands, called drivers, in the software.

A different driver had to be written for each of dozens of printers. In

addition, each of the text fonts that would be available to a printer

had to be included in a full range of sizes. There was also a language

barrier between the PC and the printer that didn’t allow the printer to

get a full description of the page, only the text and fonts; users couldn’t

print exactly what they saw on their screen and they were unable to manipulate

the text or change it until after it was printed. At the time, changing

the layout of the text or adding graphic images was typically done by

a graphic artist who would physically cut and paste the document together

after it was printed, then send the pasted-up pages to a commercial printer.

The solution for Warnock and Geschke was to create PDL software that

would work for the PC and the printer; a common language that would not

only let the user manipulate the text, but enable any printer to print

what the user saw on the screen.

Creating a New Industry

Although Adobe was ignored by most of the PC industry, it did attract

the attention of Apple Computers, which was in the process of developing

a new laser printer for its Macintosh PC. By 1984, Adobe had revenues

of over $2 million, 68 percent of which came from Apple. Revenue for 1985

more than doubled when Apple Computers

introduced the Apple LaserWriter. This $7,000 laser printer came with

Adobe PostScript,

a PDL that gave the user more flexibility than ever before. Together,

Apple and Adobe had created desktop

publishing.

Adobe PostScript used a coded description of the page, including a mathematical

description of the text, to communicate directions to the printer controller

card, a Motorola 68000 microprocessor

with at least 1MB of memory. By storing fonts in an outline format description

rather than as a library of font sizes, text could be manipulated to appear

as white on black, shaded, a mirror image, or be stretched, compressed,

or manipulated to produce a variety of effects. PostScript language treated

the text and graphics identically. Because only one printer driver was

needed for all PostScript-equipped printers, the program was machine independent.

With PostScript, a printed page was a combination of the text and graphics,

formatting commands, and the PostScript PDL. This allowed business PC

users to be creative in the layout and presentation of information and

produce dramatically improved documents on their printers. With desktop

publishing, a business could create and modify print materials, store

them on the PC, and print high quality documents without going to an offset

printer. Even if a document was to be professionally printed, the turn-around

times for proofreading and changes were substantially reduced because

the document could be stored and manipulated on a diskette.

Adobe didn’t just target the desktop printers such as LaserWriter. It

saw that the PostScript PDL would be important for $50,000 high-resolution

commercial printers as well as mid-range printers priced at $20,000. Adobe

licensed PostScript to Allied Linotype, Dataproducts, and QMS to serve

the commercial printer market. It was

also supported by word processing programs such as Word, Scenic Writer,

and GEMWrite. Even with its expansion into the commercial printer market,

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