RFC: Disabling blinking cursor by default

Panu Matilainen pmatilai at laiskiainen.org
Tue Feb 3 11:44:42 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Dimi Paun wrote:

>
> On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 02:20 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>>>    Min power     Default    Max performance
>>
>> So a blinking cursor indicates higher performance than a non-blinking
>> one? You can't represent power management on a one dimensional scale.
>> That's poor UI.
>
> Whatever. This can be worked around.
>
> Somehow on this forum saying that "90%+ of users use Windows" is a
> "made up statistic" whereas saying that turning off blinking on a cursor
> is going to save millions of trees is self evident. Yay!
>
> Changing defaults like this is just a way to shoot ourselves in the
> foot. Real customers/users are very finicky about the tiniest of
> details. Dealing with them directly is a great learning experience.
>
> Besides, we seem to enjoy pain: nobody will appreciate a  non-blinking
> cursor,

Wrong.

> yet we know _some_ will have a big problem with it. The only
> people benefiting from it is the ones doing mental calculations about
> trees saved. That's a tiny minority.

Ignore the power savings aspect just for a second.

My television has a power on led below the screen. It blinks when the tv 
is starting up and when the remote control is used, both cases have a very 
clear and sane purpose. It does NOT blink while you're watching the tv, 
and for a good reason too.

Blinking things tend to draw attention, and in the case of Blinky the 
Cursor it's drawing your attention to the fact that there is nothing at 
all to attend to. It can also cause seizures for people with epilepsy or 
other disorders.

Now, somebody please tell me: what is the grande justification of 
consuming a few extra wats per every computer in the world to attempt to 
draw the users attention to exactly nothing, despite being known to cause 
health issues to some people while doing so? And "it's always done that" 
is not an answer.

 	- Panu -




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