Timeworks Publisher was a desktop publishing (DTP) program produced by GST Software in the United Kingdom. It is notable as the first affordable DTP program for the IBM PC. In appearance and operation, it was a Ventura Publisher clone, but it was possible to run it on a computer without a hard disk. Versions Timeworks Desktop Publisher Timeworks Publisher 1 for Atari TOS relied on the GDOS software components, which were available from Atari but were often distributed with applications that required them. GDOS provided TOS/GEM with a standardized method for installing printer drivers and additional fonts, although these were limited to bitmapped fonts in all but the later releases. GDOS had a reputation for being difficult to configure, used a lot of system resources and was fairly buggy, meaning that Timeworks could struggle to run on systems without a hard disk and less than 2 MB of memory - but it was possible, and for many users Timeworks was an inexpensive introduction to desktop publishing. For the IBM PC, Timeworks ran on Digital Research's GEM Desktop (supplied with the program) as a runtime system. Later versions ran on Microsoft Windows. Timeworks Publisher 2 included full WYSIWYG, paragraph tagging, manual control of kerning, text and graphics imports and more fonts. Timeworks Publisher 2.1 with GEM/5 is known to have supported Bézier curves already. Acorn Desktop Publisher In mid-1988, following on from the release of GST's word processor, First Word Plus, Acorn Computers announced that it had commissioned GST to port and enhance the Timeworks product for the Archimedes series. Being designed for use with RISC OS, using the anti-aliased font technology already demonstrated on the Archimedes, utilising the multi-tasking capabilities of the RISC OS desktop environment, and offering printed output support for laser and dot-matrix printers, availability was deferred until the release of RISC OS in April 1989. The delivered product, Acorn Desktop Publisher, introduced Acorn's outline font manager and bundled 14 scalable fonts plus upgraded printer drivers (for Postscript-compatible and Hewlett-Packard Laserjet-compatible printers, plus Integrex colour inkjet printers) to provide consistent, high-quality output on screen and paper. Despite being described as "streets ahead" of Timeworks on the Atari ST, offering "real desktop publishing, not the pale imitation possible with a Master 128 or model B", being comparable to "mid-priced DTP packages on the Mac or IBM PC", the software was regarded as barely usable on a machine with 1