🚀 go-pugleaf

faigin@aero.org (Daniel P. Faigin) writes:

>Constrast CACM with what it was 10 years ago (the black and blue
>covers). I think the readability has gone up markedly.

Please go back and actually look at the August 1982 issue, instead of
relying on your hazy memory.  You might be surprised.  The journal
title is black and blue all right, but cover is dominated by a colorful
fractal image by Benoit Mandelbrot containing a green, white, and blue
world over the horizon of a yellow cratered moon.  The table of
contents is right inside the front cover, where it belongs, and its
typography makes it easy to see what's in the issue and where to find
it.  The masthead's print is small but readable, and it's easy to find
people's names and responsibilities.  The articles (even the
non-research ones) have readable titles and abstracts, so you can
easily tell what they're about.  There is a wealth of helpful diagrams,
examples, figures, and tables.  There are no hilariously out-of-context
pull quotes, and no pages are devoted to irrelevant art and font
frippery.

Granted, the 10-year-old issue is less high-tech than today's.  Its
insides are black-and-white, not color, and its typography and diagrams
are a tad old-fashioned.  In some ways the format introduced the next
year (February 1983) was an improvement.  But by comparison to either
of the older formats, today's format is a real turkey.  In nearly every
respect it's less readable than it was in 1982.