In the '90s I worked for a weekly paper with a similar process, layout in Quark, then final pasteup on boards. Before that, I worked for a magazine with a Compu

In the '90s I worked for a weekly paper with a similar process, layout in Quark, then final pasteup on boards. Before that, I worked for a magazine with a Compugraphic typesetter, but by then, it had a PC-based front end for the compositor. I got pretty good with an X-Acto knife. For the halftones, I would paste in the FPOs, and the printer would strip in the film as you describe.