Re: CCL:Electronic Publishing

 Rainer Stumpe wrote:
 >
 >All this discussion started with the question of color plates.
 >Let me comment my personal view. And I am limiting myself to
 >sciences (not arts, not medicine). Color may distract attention
 >or focus it on a minor issue (I use color transparencies in
 >presentations if I have something to hide). Black-and-white
 >line drawings have their advantage over multicolored area
 >graphs (not only in sciences): the viewer cannot easily be
 >cheated, the psychology is better known (e.g. using logarithmic
 >scale). I do believe, color should be used sparsely and applied
 >only where necessary. Would you prefer watching the movie
 >"Casablanca" in color?
 >
 >
 Colorized Bogart aside, this is a specious argument
 against the use of color. It makes the assumption that
 the mapping of color to the quantities of interest is
 indeterminate.  This need not be the case.  If the color
 scheme is carefully chosen (and described to the audience),
 a color presentation can reveal important aspects of
 a set of data which cannot be seen otherwise.
 In my own work (on phase transitions of crystalline polymers),
 I have found the use of color visualization tools to be
 invaluable in identifying phenomena (soliton wave propagation
 as an example) which I couldn't find in other ways.  The
 use of gray-scale version of a figure in a recent paper of mine
 was necessitated by outrageous (IMHO) page and reprint
 charges for color expected by the journal (PRL).  This is
 unfortunate for the reader because the color version was
 much more effective in conveying the same point.
 It is true that color can be used to "hide" or overemphasize
 certain aspects of the data. Intentional use in this manner
 is simply unscrupulous; naive misuse should be identified
 and corrected. But I don`t believe that color needs to be
 singled out in these instances any more than a poorly
 described (or applied) theory.
 The use of color to present data requires that its
 use be appropriate, well-described and understood.
 This is no different than anything else that we do.
 Dave Doherty
 ps. I can provide postscript versions of the aforementioned
 figure upon request. Inspection of the gray-scale and
 color versions should demonstrate my points.  Of course,
 reading the paper to understand what they represent
 is highly advised ;-).
 --
 David C. Doherty
 Minnesota Supercomputer Center
 doherty.,at,.msc.edu