Re: Theme Set, part two

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 16:11, Seth Nickell wrote:
...
> > I don't agree with the number-of-clicks argument, keeping Fonts out of
> > Theme Set just decreases the number for some use cases at the expense of
> > others.
> 
> That's exactly what it does, but not all use cases are created equal[1].
> Decreasing the number of windows needed for the majority use case at the
> expense of two extra clicks for the minority use case is a clear win.
> You can disagree with my premise that the majority use case involves
> *not* wanting font or background to be changed, but if you don't accept
> the principle in the first sentence we're not talking on even remotely
> the same wavelength.

I follow your logic and accept most of it, though I don't have
confidence in your premise.  I don't think we can make any absolute
statements about it even the first statement, because in order to make a
fair adjudication we must take into account other subjective things like
how we weight the various user' groups needs, and how severe the impact
of the various options on the user groups would be, and the impact of
external requirements on the desktop, etc.  Also, there are lots of
counter-arguments to the "greatest good for the greatest number" school
of moral philosophy.

However I think the cases where a "minority" need will win out for
accessibility reasons alone will be few.  That is because I firmly
believe that good accessibility == good usability, if one had the luxury
of a clean-slate approach and the infinite wisdom to pick the "optimal"
architecture.  In our real world there will be times when the two appear
to collide, but I think there will most often be an option which is a
good fit for both.  Hope we can find it in this case :-)

-Bill

> -Seth
> 
> [1] Which is why things like "crack preferences" can even be
> distinguished. If all use cases were of equal importance, including the
> "0.5% of users want this preference" use case we'd be absolutely
> flooded.
>