Foreground and background (was: top post fixer?)

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 02:41:21PM -0500, Kamaraju Kusumanchi wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 January 2007 14:03, Steve Lamb wrote:
> >
> > > The fanatics insisted that the background should be black and the text
> > > white because that was the "natural" way to view a computer screen. It
> > > was the way that it would always remain. Of course, when I went to my
> > > office supply store and tried to buy some black paper and white ink they
> > > thought I was crazy.
> >
> >     Of course they are.  I would, too.  Now to explain *your* ignorance.
> > Paper is REFLECTIVE.  Monitors are PROJECTIVE.  What's that mean?  It means
> > that paper REFLECTS the light that hits it.  Without an outside source of
> > light you wouldn't see jack on paper.  However a monitor PROJECTS light. 
> > In the absence of all other light you would still see a text on the
> > monitor.
> 
> Wow! Nice explanation. I have always liked white on black xterms and never was 
> able to explain why so. Glad to hear that there is a logical reason behind 
> all this. If this is so, I wonder why gnome, kde chose to have white on black 
> background as defaults in konsole, gnome-terminal etc., Are those developers 
> so "reflective" than being "projective"? :-)
> 

I wich I could set *everything* on the screen to default to white on 
black.

Unfortunately, the world is full of web pages that explicity specify the 
opposite.

Still, I thought I could specify a different default foreground and 
background and at least see some pages reasonably.

But that was worse -- many pages specify the foreground colour 
without specifying the background (or vice versa) and I ended up with 
dark on dark, or bright on bright, comnpletely illegible.

-- hendrik