Re: blue on black is unreadable
> Date: 24 Mar 2000 11:43:38 +0100
> From: Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: blue on black is unreadable
>
> Peter Cordes <peter@llama.nslug.ns.ca> writes:
>
> > Unless the darkish colours get used as alternate background colours, they
> > are wasted. There only are 16 colours, so deciding to never use 4
> > ({dark ,}{blue,red}) of them seems like a bad idea. Brightening them up so
> > they look good on a black background is good, since hardly anything uses
> > dark-but-not-black background colours.
>
> No it isn't. By acting against the ANSI standard, you will just move
> the problem to other configurations: Users logged in from Non-Debian
> machines will still see the unreadable combination. Just not using
> black/blue is more prudent.
>
> It's bad that we're stuck with this ...
Oh crap, you're right. I wasn't thinking on that one. Oh well, I guess
somebody will have to find good colour combinations for every colour
package. Some days it seems like there's always a reason why not to do
stuff that would otherwise be good :(
>
> > Is there a reason why /etc/X11/Xresources/xterm defaults to black on white
> > instead of gray90 on black?
>
> Because some people think it is the superior combination (it works
> good on paper). Others think exactly the opposite.
>
> > With my colour mods to make ls output visible, could the default
> > change to be gray90 on black?
>
> With this being highly religious a decision, I'd rather chicken out
> and say: leave it be.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that not many people actually like
"black" on "white", or vice versa. Maybe the default should be
fg: black, bg: blanchedAlmond which works the same as black on white for
configuration of colours in programs, but which doesn't strain the eyes.
I guess the current system of having some stuff in the config file, but
commented out, is what we should continue to do. I think we could get away
with having blanchedAlmond background uncommented, though. I would really
like to see something other than the eyestrain inducing default. (bright
white is especially stressful unless your monitor has a very high refresh
rate, probably 80Hz or so, because it is so bright that the persistence of
vision effect isn't so strong, and the phosphors in the monitor probably
actually fade more noticeably. (This is pure speculation, but I know that
bright white looks more flickery on non-super-high rez monitors.)
--
#define X(x,y) x##y
DUPS Secretary ; http://is2.dal.ca/~dups/
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes.phys. , dal.ca)
"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE
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