So how did they make magazines back then? Answer: Paper mockups made with IBM composers (typewriters that automatically justified), pasted-in paper photos, color separation negatives, and aluminum printing plate positives (one per color per page (or group of pages)). And an offset press. And folding machines, signature gatherers, binders and trimmers. No computers necessary.
Heh. It's gotten better but, as I can tell you from finishing up laying out a book in Word, it's still a frustrating layout tool.
Unfortunately the market has bifurcated into word processors that aren't really very good layout tools for something as complicated as a book and programs like InDesign that are complex and expensive. (Haven't looked at Scribus recently but I assume the complex point stands.)
> It's gotten better but, as I can tell you from finishing up laying out a book in Word, it's still a frustrating layout tool.
That's... dedication.
InDesign is probably the best I've used, but it is expensive.
Inkscape is actually flexible enough to do it well, and incredibly simple on the surface, though a few quirks.
Scribus can talk to Krita, and some Photoshop stuff, which can lift the burden with some image-heavy things. Complexity wise, it looks a lot like InDesign, but can't do quite a few things it can.
But, for most people, any of the above will fit the bill.
I've never heard of using Inkscape for layout. I think of it just as a vector drawing tool.
InDesign is certainly the standard.
Things got complicated because I needed to output an interim version of the book and wanted a format collaborators could work in. Plus I thought I'd save having to re-layout the book after editing. Which of course didn't happen that way.
Lesson for next time is either live within Google Docs limitations or do layout in a proper tool only when content editing is 99.9% complete.
Around 2003 I used KWord for laying out a school magazine. I didn't have any experience, but it was easy to do for 12-16 pages. It wasn't until I entered the corporate world a couple years later that I found out the dominant word processor (MS Word) sucked badly at layout.
By 1979, you would often have been using computer typesetting equipment. (Source: I did even at school newspapers) But writers/editors would still have been using typewriters. The edited story was then manually typed into the computer typesetter.
As you say, the output of this along with photos and so forth had to then be assembled by hand.
