🚀 go-pugleaf

I just received my June CACM. I thought I would comment
while my blood is still simmering.  I continue to find the magazine
extremely hard to read.  The fonts are the same as before, and the layout
is about the same.  Bright background colors on some pages and heavy type
on others creates the usual strain.  In addition, there is a new twist:
the illustrations are now labeled with the illustrator's name, but the name
appears on the side of the page, alongside unrelated type.  See pages 19 & 25.
This is extremely distracting.  I don't know how they
can keep coming up with so many new ideas for cute little distracting things.
I have never had so much trouble reading a magazine or technical journal before.


But, for a real laugh, look at the Soviet Computing/Project Start articles.  
In addition to the now commonplace type-on-background-art, and broken up columns,
we have:


An internal cover sheet, in the middle of *each* article, which is almost all
solid red, with a small "Soviet Computing" logo.  A solid page of Red?
I guess CACM must have a lot of extra pages to burn.

The obligatory multiple use of "paradigm" in the MARS article - 
I wonder what "paradigm" is in Russian?

The use of "fractal" to describe the structure of a modular
computing system.

And, two whole columns devoted to internal "headlines".  How about this one:

"We have found that there is a lot of freedom of the creative design inside 
the MARS philosophy frame."

This being an important, deep, statement, a whole column was devoted to it,
in bright red type, and it looks like this:


   We have

  found that

   there is

   a lot of

    freedom

     of the

    creative

  design inside

    the MARS

   philosophy

     frame.





For some reason, the following came to me:




    It reminds

      me of

 the Woody Allen

      movie

    "Sleeper"

  in which a poem

    was deeper

   than McKuen.



The subsequent articles are similar.  In one, the red column typeface is
replaced by a black 3-D type which is too closely spaced, which gives 
the appearance of being smudged in printing.

I certainly am missing the point on the new look of CACM.

Please note that some of the articles are interesting.  I am not attempting
to review their content at this time. I am contributing
this review in hopes ACM will stop trying so hard to be cute, to the
detriment of the magazine's readability.


-- 
  Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-9,  UUCP:                ames!lamaster
  NASA Ames Research Center  Internet:            lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov
  Moffett Field, CA 94035    With Good Mailer:    lamaster@george.arc.nasa.gov 
  Phone:  415/604-1056                            #include <std.disclaimer>