Re: General Exception for Essential Purpose

At 08:58 AM 2000-10-30 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>
>The key points are
>1. It is a requirement to provide a version that anyone can use

AG::

Here it is useful to get a little more pedantic about our statement of the
logic.

It _is_ a requirement that "for each user, there is a version that they can
use."

It is_not a requirement that "there is one version that all users can use."

[A casual reader might take the quoted statement to mean the stronger
condition
-- that is not required.]

In other words, for the mathematicians like Len, it is permissible that in
meeting the first requirement that M greater than 1 versions are used to
satisfy the needs of N much greater than 1 users.  Even if you classify the
users somehow, to ensure usability there will be N1 still much greater than 1
user classes -- the point Lisa was making.

So some of the flexible-document practices that make one version mostly work
for all are almost certainly still needed if one prepares an array of
versions,
because the array of versions is unlikely to address all cases with their own
optimized version.

Al

Received on Monday, 30 October 2000 09:27:43 UTC