Newsgroups: comp.org.acm
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!kurt
From: kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth)
Subject: Re: New format of CACM
Message-ID: <1991May9.155820.1467@tc.fluke.COM>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
References: <1991May2.115138.1323@rti.rti.org>
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 9 May 91 15:58:20 GMT

Add my voice to the storm of protest over CACM's new format.  The Table of
Contents is unreadable.  The characters are too blocky and there's too
little white space between lines.  Professional compositors ought to have
more pride in their work than to allow this to happen.  Strangely, I have
the opposite reaction to the typeface in the articles.  It is so light I can
barely make it out.

I would prefer a two-or-three column justified layout with articles
beginning on the right hand page.  (Right hand page?  So if you want to tear
out the 10 pages of useful article and throw out the 120 pages of noise the
title will be on an outside surface of the chunk you tear out.  This process
has reduced my 10 year collection of CACM to 3 inches).

CACM has dreams of becoming a genral circulation magazine.  They want to
drop into the mindless oblivion of IEEE Computer with its meaningless
graphics full of box charts labelled "input", "process", "output".

But I don't read CACM because I like the pretty pictures.  I read the
articles.  I even save them if they describe a technique I might use.  The
graphics go in the dumper.  I wish the publishers would hold this in mind
when deciding how to spend their (no, my) time and money.