🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15dfkgINNiqd@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>In article <9207312247.AA28238@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
>>Perhaps the publications staff could ask for a knowledgable volunteer or
>>two to help them get their design into shape.
>
>Unfortunately, they think they've already got someone.  As it says in the
>latest CACM: "In 1990, we switched from an external art consultant to a
>full-time art director. ... The 1992 Gallup survey indicated that readers
>have reacted favorably to changes in artwork, layout, and the overall
>'look-and-feel' of the magazine."

  ACM seems to think that hiring a full time art director was a step
forward.  I suggest they would step further forward if they fired him.
They are obviously doing their art director a disservice, since I am
sure he would be much happier designing the art work for MAD Magazine
or for a comic book.

  Here is my preliminary list of horrors in the August issue of CACM:

  When you look at the cover, you see the word "SUPER" splattered all
over it.  It looks like a comic book cover, and you expect to see Superman
bursting out if you look closer.  You ignore the SUPER, as it seems to
be similar to the garish cover designs which have become all to common
in CACM.  Looking elsewhere on the cover you see "Computing in the Middle
East" as the first prominently displayed article title.  Only later,
after looking inside, do you realize that the cover was supposed to be
read as "SUPER COMPUTING".  But, with the choice of type styles, colors,
and sizes, the word "COMPUTING" is all but invisible.  Inside, on page 65,
there is a similarly formatted "SUPER COMPUTING".  Here the word
"COMPUTING" is not quite as invisible.  But, on both the cover and
page 65, the letter "P" is shared between "SUPER" and "COMPUTING", yet it
is presented in a graphic format in which the "P" only meshes with the
"SUPER".

  Move now to ACM FORUM on page 13.  The second letter has three
references.  But, looking at the end of that letter, you will not find
a listing of the items referred to.  The fifth letter in FORUM also
makes one reference, but again the item referred to is nowhere to be
found.  But if you read the sixth letter, most of which is on page 113,
you will find 4 extraneous bibliographic items at the end.  Apparently
the ACM art director, of whom they are so inexplicably proud, treats
FORUM as a single article with a single unified bibliography.

  The table of contents lists one article title as "Factoring: A method
for scheduling parallel loops."  This title suggest an article on parallel
programming by decomposing (factoring) the program into suitable
components.  But if, instead, you first see the title on page 90 where
the article appears, you are likely to assume that it is an article on
computational number theory (factoring integers).  This is a consequence
of the gross overemphasis on the word "FACTORING" in the title.

  Similarly on page 102, an article title grossly overemphasized the
words "A PRACTICAL ALGORITHM" when the article is really about Exact
Array Dependence Analysis.