LaTeX and Vector

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 121

Vector claims to be the best journal of APL and I dare not contradict. We are proud of its elegance and power but on the other hand I met some unintelligible resistance when I submitted articles written in LaTeX the other day (Vector 12,1 and 12,2).

We are working hard to convince people that APL is also very well suited to the mathematically unsophisticated user, but where is Vector’s support for those who write maths? I hold, in this respect, Vector is unduly conservative, being an attitude we APLers always have to fight against. In the meantime (La)TeX has become an accepted standard in scientific journals and books and Vector resembles a firm fortress withstanding the breakers. I am not willing to believe that this is because the journal is British.

To say it frankly, to my eyes most formulas in Vector look horrible and I shrink back from submitting a paper being forced to use a word processing software (Word) which does not correspond to the standards I am used to and which deprives me of the freedom I enjoy using APL and LaTeX. Bernhard Strohmeier and I struggled hard to force TeX to deliver a format resembling that of Vector’s standard and I felt a little bit let down on the part of Vector especially since articles in LaTeX had earlier been accepted without further ado and other formats have also been accepted. So I want to know what is your attitude concerning the layout of the articles. Is it laisser faire or is it the strict Word dogma? If it is neither some guidelines would be very welcome.

Ed/Production: Obviously we want to get Vector looking as good as possible! It would be helpful to know what Dietrich finds wrong with the Microsoft Equation Editor format; to our eyes there is little to choose between the formulae in his article (Vector 12.2 page 87) and Joseph de Kerf’s which follows it on page 95.

The text of his article was received camera-ready and fitted to page as well as we could. In the first draft, all the font sizes were perfect, but in the copy as printed the body text was too small – the subheads and APL are correct. Unfortunately we did not have time to ask for another run as we were (as usual) running to very tight schedules.

In general we very much prefer to have editable copy, but we have no problems accepting mathematical content as .EPS files for inclusion. APL code can be accepted in most known workspace formats, and again we much prefer to have ‘soft copy’, particularly as most of the material will soon be made available on the BAA Web site for download.