I have just installed MMA-11 on my MacBook and the very first reactions I have, on a most trivial level, are these (and I cannot resolve them myself obviously):
[1] The dock icon has changed from a cool(-ish) spiky sphere to a Simpsons like starburst - yuk.
[2] Typing zero - 0 - in a notebook puts a centre dotted zero on the page - where did this come from?
I am looking forward to exploiting many of the new mathematics functionality but if anyone can help me clear up these early interface issues, I will be so grateful.
The zero is the zero with slash typically used to distinguish it from the letter o. But I also don’t like the new font. In Dr Wolfram’s blog, it is said to be a crisper font:
But I don’t find it so. On my computer (Win 7 x64) I find the fonts for input and output to be fuzzy, leading to eye strain. I would welcome a return to the last implementation.
Sadly I am old enough to recall the need for a / to distinguish zero from ‘oh’ especially when filling in 80 column wide coding sheets for someone to translate into a deck of punched cards. Until MMA-11 I have not been confused between the two so I think that this is an unnecessary tweak (at least make it configurable via Preferences).
Given that we all look to MMA for its mathematical assistance rather than anything else, I guess this is all a bit mundane, but why did they do it? Can we ask for a small download patch to restore some of the MMA interface back to 10.4…
On the Mac, the font for Input/Output is Source Code Pro – a distinct improvement over Courier, which had been present since version 1. On my computer, at least, the new fonts are very sharp.
The other fonts – Arial and Gill Sans – leave a lot to be desired. Gill Sans is OK for Titles, etc., but Arial is an ugly font for display text. However, I am sure that Arial is still being used because it is available for all platforms. I’d prefer Helvetica over Arial, but would prefer a serifed font such as Garamond (Times – the cross platform variant) is just ugly. When I make my own stylesheets, I use Optima,which is quite elegant for both text and headings, but is not generally available on Windows or Linux.
I have suggested that Wolfram adopt Knuth’s Computer Modern, which would have the additional advantage of making LaTex translation easier.
As for the icon – on the Mac, at least, there has been a ‘fashion’ of making slab-style icons for most apps, so at least the new icon does not stand out as being old-fastened by current taste. Taste changes, though, and perhaps the pendulum will swing back.
