[Gllug] Font choice

[Jonathan Dye]

> On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, tet at accucard.com yowled:

*snip*

> >>Also anyone know what the accepted wisdom on restful colour
> >>combinations is?
> > 
> > Yep, accepted wisdom is wrong. Various people have done research
> > that supposedly proves dark text on a light background is easier
> > on the eyes. All I can say is that from personal experience, that's
> > not true for me.
> 
> I can't understand how it's true for anyone. That is, it's 
> *correct* ---
> if and only if you're reading off something like paper (a
> light-reflecting surface; and for that matter a surface with vastly
> better contrast than any computer display) --- but when you're looking
> at a white screen, you're staring into what amounts to a low-intensity
> light bulb. I can't *imagine* how anyone can find that restful.
> 
> (Perhaps they just don't know what restful *is* --- but that doesn't
> make any sense unless they never look away from the screen. 
> Perhaps they just have cast-iron eyes.)
> 
> I know I can't look at a white display for more than half an 
> hour before my eyes start to ache.
> 
> >>I tend to go for the traditional green-on-black
> > 
> > A man after my own heart. As all should know, it's the one 
> true way :-)
> 
> I did that, but then I discovered powderblue. I don't use 
> anything else anymore. (Well, that's not *quite* true; my 
> XEmacs is rather colourful; but the default face is powderblue.)
> 
> I don't know about other people (most of whom can't get past my tiny
> font sizes and the *black* background *gasp* to complain about the
> foreground colours), but I find powderblue more restful than green. I
> was probably spoiled by the lovely clear Hercules MDA displays... these
> days, the only things in green are part of my Emacs modeline and the
> procmeters down the side of the screen (LawnGreen on Black, with
> SlateGrey gridlines).

Blue is harder to see with the human eye than green, 4% of cones in the eye
see blue where as the (slight) majority see green.  Apparently for a blue
light and a green light at the same intensity the green one appears much
brigher to us.

Not a criticism of you colour choice but I'd just thought I'd mention it.  I
learnt it as part of a User Interface Design module which I took at
university.

JD

_____________________________________________________________________
This message has been checked for all known viruses by the 
MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug