Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System

MEPS (Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System) is a system for offset printing in a variety of languages and character sets. It's creation was completed in 1986 by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

Creation of MEPS

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was printing Bible literature in various languages, but at the time, there was no available system for printing in all languages, largely because the economies of many countries meant that production of literature in their languages was not financially viable. This led to the creation of the MEPS program, which is capable of correctly laying out different languages with different character sets. The program was designed based on responses from the organization's own translators about each language's grammar rules.

Industry Leading to MEPS

The printing industry has advanced from letterpresses to lithographic offset presses.

In January 1978, printing on rotary offset presses was begun at the headquarters printery of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York. In offset printing, the image to be printed is not raised as it is in letterpress, but it is on the same plane, or level, as the surface that surrounds it. This method of printing is accomplished by taking a photograph of the printed page and then using the film produced to make thin offset printing plates. This slow process was later replaced by the faster lithographic process.

An earlier solution to the problem of requiring multilanguage printing was the IPS project, but this and MEPS were developed at the same time, MEPS being intended as a longer-term project to supersede IPS once it had been completed and fully developed.

MEPS System

The heart of the system is the MEPS computer, housed within a compact frame approximately 40 inches (1016 mm) high, 36 inches (914 mm) wide and 34 inches (864 mm) deep. Most of the principal equipment, including circuitry, was built by Jehovah's Witnesses.

A visible workstation, composed of a familiar but enlarged typewriter keyboard and a graphics display screen, is approximately the size and shape of a page of the Awake! or Watchtower magazine. The keyboard has its own 16-bit microcomputer to control the 182 keys. Each key has five shift levels that provide the equivalent of 910 keys to represent commands, characters or combination commands.

The work station is designed to perform two basic functions. The first function, or operation, is to enter written text. If a printout of a document is needed, a nearby printer (similar to a high-speed typewriter) can be activated to type out on regular sheets of paper everything that has been entered. Such material can then be editorially read or proofread in the usual way.

After a publication has been composed on the display terminal, it is transferred from there by the MEPS phototypesetter. It is housed in a 42-inch-high (1067 mm) by 33.5-inch-wide (851 mm) by 32-inch-deep (813 mm) cabinet that matches the rest of the MEPS hardware. The phototypesetter produces an image on photographic paper by using a tiny beam of light as a very small paint brush, much the same way as a television set produces an image on its screen. After the photographic paper is processed, it is photographed to produce film that, in turn, is used to make offset printing plates.

Usage

Because of the equipment’s simplicity of design, it has been taking people familiar with typing and composition procedures only about two weeks to become proficient both at text entry and page composition. Other people have stayed longer and received training in the maintenance of the equipment. Thus when MEPS arrived in Greece, one of the trained personnel from Germany traveled over to install it.

An Arabic linotype must have different keys for all of the scores of different variations of the 22 Arabic letters that are written in the four different ways. But MEPS was programmed so that only one keystroke is needed for each Arabic letter. The machine automatically determines, by the position of that letter in the word or sentence, the correct way to write it, a process that makes the entering of text on MEPS much easier and faster.

References

Watchtower magazine www.watchtower.org, April 22, 1984