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From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Newsgroups: comp.org.acm
Subject: Re: New format of CACM
Message-ID: <5987@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 9 May 91 19:13:45 GMT
References: <1991May9.183407.9294@mp.cs.niu.edu>
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From article <1991May9.183407.9294@mp.cs.niu.edu>,
by rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert):
> 
>   If those in HQ really want it to be a magazine, and not a journal, can't
> they at least model it on a magazine like Scientific American, instead of
> on something like PC-Magazine?
> 

The sad thing is, the recent style change in CACM was actually accompanied
by the claim that they wanted to take Scientific American as a model of the
level of publication they were shooting for!

Furthermore, Scientific American was "re-designed" quite recently, including
the design of new typefonts for their own use, and remarkably, the article
they published on this indicated that one of their inspirations was Knuth's
work on his Computer Modern fonts.  The result was quite the opposite of
what happened to CACM, where essentially every bit of Knuth's advice on
typography has been consistently ignored.

					Doug Jones
					jones@cs.uiowa.edu

(I admit, I've only been reading CACM for 20 years while I've been reading
 Scientific American for 30, so perhaps I'm prejudiced.)