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\centerline{\bf Leslie's friend says\dots}
\medskip
\noindent
I agree entirely with Leslie Lamport on the relative ease
of changing the handful of parameters in \LaTeX\
which affect the overall page layout. It is one of the most staightforward
changes to a style file.  It is also one of the few which is clearly
and reasonably comprehensively explained in the manual: one warning is,
however, needed here --- anything you read about the parameter |\footheight|
is probably false --- the truth, as Leslie admits in the January 88 version
of the macros, is that |\footheight| is never (!!!) used, although it is
religiously defined in every style file.  As far as I know, no correction to the
manual has been issued on this one.

I also agree with him that, like so many things in the typographic world,
making it easy means that it is easy to produce ``execrable'' results.
So either get yourself a designer you like and can understand, or, and this 
is quite feasible for this type of design change, find a similar document
which has been professionally designed (NB: for the same type  and size of
font) and which you like, \dots\ and copy it!

The people/person I disagree with is whoever was the ``professional'' who 
produced the designs for the standard Latex styles: I, and my ``professional
advisers'' find them  execrablissimo(mi?).

Modesty does not forbid me to add that if you want a large source of 
well-designed (well, professionally designed) A4 format publications on a 
variety of topics and a in a wealth of different typographic styles, then you 
need look no further than the enormous output of the Open University over the
last 19 years (help, if the OU is that old, I must be  due for retirement soon).
\smallskip
\rightline{\sl Chris Rowley}
\smallskip
\leftline{\sl Another editor's note:}
\noindent
Although I have been unable to trace any reference from LL which gives a clue to who
might be responsible for the styles, he does credit Marshall Hendrichs, Lynne 
Ruggles and Richard Southall for ``what little I know about typography''. In a recent
\TeXhax\ he
fingered Hendrichs as contributing to the design of the \LaTeX\ book.
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