Re: blue on black is unreadable
> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 13:50:59 -0600
> From: Steve Greenland <stevegr@debian.org>
> To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: blue on black is unreadable
>
> 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, you doen't use them. I use them a lot, to highlight urls and headers
> in mutt, for example.
You're right that I don't use them all, but I do have colour highlighting
stuff turned on in mutt, and I use jed with syntax highlighting for C,
LaTeX, and HTML (in an xterm, not xjed). The thing is that I always have a
black background or else a colour that was already light
>
> > Is there a reason why /etc/X11/Xresources/xterm defaults to black on white
> > instead of gray90 on black?
>
> Because that's what xterms do (by default) on every other single X
> implementation ever done? (Ok, that's probably an exageration...but not
> completely misleading, either.)
Is that enough of a reason to not change it? Does it break any programs
specifically?
>
> > With my colour mods to make ls output visible, could the default
> > change to be gray90 on black? Most new users won't get around to
> > finding the xterm resources file for a long time, and I imagine they
> > would be happier with black bg xterms until they do.
>
> I wouldn't. A lot of people I work with wouldn't. (Many would, of
> course). I, for example, find it easier to read black text on light
> backgrounds in xterms. My favorite is black on "blanchedAlmond". I
> don't, however, think that should be Debian's global default.
Hmm, that looks not bad. I notice that my adjusted bright-blue and blue
colours are still dark enough to be easily seen on the blanchedAlmond
background. However, symlinks, device files, and named pipes come out almost
invisible on that background. (I assume you have a nice DIRCOLORS setting
that fixes that, though.) I don't remember if the default on a fresh install
is to have ls use colours or not, but if it is then something should be done
so stuff isn't nearly invisible in an xterm. (If the default is to not use
colours, then leaving it the way it is is ok, I guess.)
> (I wonder if the preference for light-on-dark vs dark-on-light depends
> on ambient light conditions?)
I usually like to work in a relatively dark room. I think I'm nocturnal or
something (looks at clock... :(
>
> > We should cater
> > to users who don't know where you change everything by having a nice set of
> > default colours. This isn't like keymaps and stuff, since it only looks
> > different, and isn't nearly so hard to get used to.
>
> We do cater to them. We have window managers that support themes and
> easy ways to change them.
Hrm, I've never used a heavyweight window manager with themes for more than
a few minutes. I think I noticed that the GNOME terminal lets you change
the colour scheme to fairly closely match the Linux console, which seems to
be where the ls default colours work best. (ls's default colours were
definitely chosen with a light-on-dark terminal in mind.)
> We have a nice set of default colors. They are easy to modify (in the
> xterm case, if you don't have the desire to mess with Xresources, -fg
> and -bg work quite nicely). Are they they best possible defaults?
> Probably not. But if you change them, probably for every person who you
> made happier, there's another you've pissed off.
>
> Why do so many people want to believe that their personal preferences
> represent universal truth? I agree that demonstrably bad defaults
> (dark-on-dark) should be changed. But the reality is that things like
> color selection are such a personal-preference issue that *most* people
> will eventually tweak them to their preference, and the best we can (and
> should) do is use a *workable* default, and go on.
>
> (If there is a >90% consensus that we change the xterm default to white
> on black, and change the kernel definition (or whatever) of "blue" to
> something lighter, then fine, do it. But I strongly believe that you
> won't get anywhere near that much agreement.)
I'm one of those people who thought that my preference was universal truth
on this subject. I realize there are a lot of things that I like configured
differently from most people, and that there isn't any one set of settings
that is best for everyone. In the case of terminal colours, I thought most
people really did use black bg terminals, or at least dark something, like
blue. Also, real VT100s and VT220s have black bg screens with amber text.
There's a precedent for black bg terminals outside of X.
If it's not the case that almost everyone uses black bg terms, then I agree
that we shouldn't change it. In my experience, changing xterm colours is
one of the first things I after an install to localize the box to my tastes.
Other Unix users I know do similarly, I think.
I thought that most people who used black-on-white xterms did that because
they didn't know how to change it. (that's probably the case, since most
people would change it similarly to what you have if they liked
dark-on-light, since black-white is too much contrast and makes the text
hard to read, I find. (same problem with full white on black.)
In any case, the default configuration is somewhat broken. The
bright-white bg is too bright, and glares, making the black text hard to
read without really big fonts. (on monitors I've used, anyway.) Colour ls
looks bad on it. It would be nice if something changed so that a newly
installed system had easy-to-read terminals which used readable colours for
ls, mutt, jed, etc. As long as these conditions are met, I don't really
mind if we don't have black bg xterms by default, since I can always change
my own system. I just thought that going with black bg xterms was one of
the easier ways to accomplish my goal, which I think is a reasonable one.
I was thinking that everyone like black bg terminals, though, and I
apologize for that.
--
#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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