Newsgroups: comp.org.acm
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!ox.com!math.fu-berlin.de!ira.uka.de!THD-News!iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de!schrod
From: schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Joachim Schrod)
Subject: Re: Communications
Sender: news@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de (The Usenet-News System)
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.143256.8844@infoserver.th-darmstadt.de>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1991 14:32:56 GMT
Reply-To: xitijsch@ddathd21.bitnet (Joachim Schrod)
References:  <2B7A99A8E0400312@northeastern.edu>
Organization: TU Darmstadt, Institut fuer Theoretische Informatik

In article <2B7A99A8E0400312@northeastern.edu>, SPOOL@NORTHEASTERN.EDU 
(Jared M. Spool/User Interface Engineering (508)470-1213) writes:

|> I think the best way to get HQ's attention is to send a letter to the editor.
|> The letter shouldn't be "THE NEW FORMAT STINKS!".  Instead, it should be
|> something constructive that they can work with.
|> 
|> If everyone on this list were to write a letter to the editor stating
|> three things that the CACM should stop doing, three things it should start
|> doing and three things that it should continue doing, I bet you would see
|> ACM being very responsive.  This would give HQ some hard and fast information
|> to learn from.

OK, but what if the constructive suggestion would be: ``Use a better
typesetting system''? Really ugly spacing and bad line breaks (I am able
to cite some if someone wants to know what I mean ;-), a lot of wrong
hyphenations are not pleasent.

I have read in the editorial that they want to make CACM more ``professional''
(whatever this meant -- I did not got it). Well, if it is really a
professional journal then the above points -- purely technical -- should
not occur. There are enough systems out there which do it better.

(As an ironic sidepoint: ACM has published stuff on this topic: Read the
TOPLAS article of Knuth on ``Optimal Line Breaking in Paragraphs.'' In the
meantime, a lot of systems do it this way, not only TeX :-)

--
Joachim		(no one official, just a `normal' ACM member since 8 years :-)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Joachim Schrod				Email: xitijsch@ddathd21.bitnet
Computer Science Department
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany