[HN Gopher] Paul Brainerd, founder of Aldus PageMaker, has died
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Paul Brainerd, founder of Aldus PageMaker, has died
Author : fortran77
Score : 121 points
Date : 2026-03-06 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.adafruit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.adafruit.com)
| cc-d wrote:
| fug. he had a cool name tho
| prmph wrote:
| Brainer d(aemon). Totally cool.
| Cyuonut wrote:
| I have always seen it as Brain Nerd
| drob518 wrote:
| He was a brain nerd, for sure.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| Wordstar and Pagemaker were two of my favorite programs from that
| golden era.
| putlake wrote:
| My dad still uses PageMaker to publish his print magazine. He's
| been using this program since 1987, starting with a Macintosh and
| then later moving to Windows in the late 1990s. RIP Paul
| Brainerd.
| jeffbee wrote:
| And why not? It was sufficient to publish real magazines as
| long as they weren't too long, and it costs a fraction of the
| cost of Quark. If you have a copy and it runs, keep using it.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Out of curiosity, which PageMaker version does he use that
| works with his workflow today? I'd be interested in seeing the
| magazine.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Died Sunday? Sunday two weeks ago.
|
| Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/pagemaker-pioneer-paul-
| brainer... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145777)
| gjvc wrote:
| as long as you get your correction in that's all that matters.
| no respect for the dead have you.
| parl_match wrote:
| maybe it's just me, but it shows more respect when people are
| getting the date right
| drob518 wrote:
| RIP. I was a big user of Pagemaker back in the early 1990s. Great
| product for the time.
| i_think_so wrote:
| I never used PageMaker but I learned that we have it to thank for
| the classic institution of Lorem Ipsum.[1]
|
| Thank you, sir.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum
| CharlesW wrote:
| Even more notably, Paul coined the term "desktop publishing".
| jeffbee wrote:
| Getting seed funding from Fluke is a very PNW detail. RIP to a
| founder from a different age.
| nashashmi wrote:
| For many years since 1997, I would brag and boast about Adobe
| PageMaker, and everyone would look at me funny and tell me "it
| doesn't exist". I would insist it did. I used it for web
| publishing. It was fast. No cruft. It had FTP client built in
| (which was a little new at the time). It had ability to change
| file paths in HTML if the file was renamed or saved as something
| else.
| KIFulgore wrote:
| I'd forgotten about PageMaker. I was on my college newspaper
| staff and we used it for layout.
|
| It was a small college in the rural midwest, so the local
| newspaper ran our copies. They didn't use digital tools, so we
| printed our content from PageMaker and laid it out by hand on a
| wax board. [1]
|
| RIP and many thanks for making our jobs easier. At least to the
| point we waxed the master layout.
|
| [1]: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/05/dead-tech-
| waxers.h...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| (Thanks for the link--I'm a fan of James Gurney and his videos
| on Gouache painting on YouTube.)
| echelon wrote:
| I'm a big fan of James Gurney's dinosaurs. That was my
| childhood. Some of the most beautifully illustrated books.
|
| Had no idea he was still around or had a blog. This is
| awesome.
| bergfest wrote:
| I can still see that black and white splash screen in my head.
| Computers were so magical back then.
| linker3000 wrote:
| I used to support DTP, and graphics for the systems house at
| which I worked. I travelled round the UK installing PageMaker
| and A4 paper-white CRT displays - boy were they heavy!
|
| My endearing memory is calling the company in Edinburgh for
| technical support, to be greeted on the phone by a lady with a
| lovely, cheery Scottish accent announcing "Aldus UK".
|
| Fun fact: I was first person in the UK to print in colour on an
| HP ink jet printer at the trade show where they were first
| demonstrated. The HP folks hadn't got the official colour
| driver ready for the show, so the HP guys were printing in
| mono, but I'd had an advanced model to try and hacked some
| other print driver to work with it.
| flopsamjetsam wrote:
| PageMaker was an iconic program of the DTP revolution for me,
| along with the Aldus logo. We couldn't afford a Mac at the time,
| so I made cargo-cult copies of programs like this on my home
| computer, and pored over the screenshots I saw in magazines.
| Years later, my Mum got a job in her office producing the in-
| house company magazine using PageMaker. I spent hours getting to
| know it while helping her out.
| Pixelbrick wrote:
| I used a pirate copy of it to lay out a group newspaper project
| for English class in the early 90s. Our teacher gave me an A and
| the rest of the group a B. It was alot of fun learning to use it.
| geephroh wrote:
| Not only a tech pioneer, also a genuinely decent human who helped
| found Social Venture Partners and IslandWood here in the puget
| sound. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| I still have a dusty old XP box here with PageMaker 7 on it.
|
| As long as you don't need transparency effects it's still plenty
| capable.
|
| I used to use it with an Agfa Accuset imagesetter - and in that
| role it was more capable than InDesign, since it exposed all the
| options in the PPD, whereas InDesign would expose only a subset.
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(page generated 2026-03-06 23:01 UTC)