I'm still entirely sure that "let the user decide" was a better way to
settle how big the page should be, what fonts and colour-schemes to use;
by all means let the author give hints and suggestions to the
presentation system, but let the user have the final say.  I shall like
the look of your document better if it's in a font I've chosen because I
find it easier or nicer to read; I shall like the appearance of your
page better if the overall colour scheme fits in with my desktop
environment; I shall like your web-site better if it adapts itself to my
tastes - and letting it do so spares you the need to agonise over which
entirely subjective details appeal to a bigger audience.

I totally agree with this as long as we're talking about documents - mostly 
consisting of text, to be read top to bottom (or some other direction, 
depending on locale). It gets hairy if we're talking about graphical 
applications where text only plays a minor role, and most of the visual 
elements have size constraints. It's very hard to have all those visual 
elements and their interactions scale smoothly to any dimensions or color 
schemes the user may choose. So, for those applications the designer usually 
chooses a few predefined UI styles, and tries to prevent the user from messing 
with those, as the result of that messing would only look bad and glitchy.

Ulf
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