Re: [Python-ideas] 80 character line width vs. something wider
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 09:47:05AM -0700, Aahz wrote:
On Tue, May 26, 2009, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:
Personally, I would consider "objective arguments" to be controlled, repeatasble, studies with quantitative results. I've seen such studies about light-background-dark-foreground vs. dark-foreground- light-background, which is why I use the former now. I haven't seen such studies about line width, especially not with Python text as opposed to English text.
Personally, I would be amazed to see any significant difference between the two foreground/background combinations you list. ;-)
BTW, I know the topic's pretty dead by now, but there is a pretty conclusive argument on this topic (which I bring back up only because I find myself continually annoyed at most IDE's).
If the medium *emits* light, it's significantly better to have a dark background (the reverse being true if the medium is reflective--like the surface of a book or Kindle). Several arguments *support* this and none *contradict* it:
1) Examine the edge cases. Which would you fatigue in front of faster: a monitor emitting and filled with bright white light or one that is dark? (duh) 2) Adjust screen refresh to 60Hz. Text your source code on the screen with the different foregrounds. Stand back and move your head around. With which do you see the flicker? (answer: white background) 3) The retina has to resolve the actual raw and otherwise meaningless dark and light spots into useful information. Partly due to the resolving power of the retina being greater than the display and also because of interpolation effects that happen within the retina itself, there's going to be a slight advantage if the actual data on the page is emitting the light (i.e. a light foreground) rather than having to compete with trying to stand out against the white wash bleeding over. The significance of this problem is inversely proportional to the fatness of the fonts (finer fonts-->more problem). 4) It's easier on your monitor and your ears (if your using a CRT). The photon gun only has to emit streams of particles on the "on" bits and can be off less, saving your shadow mask and those 15kHz screams emitting from the back. 5) Less power consumption. I'd estimate the power savings roughly 60% and higher on CRTs. If anyone has one of those $15 Kill-o-Watt power measuring device they can check.
And for those who would otherwise take a populist approach to the problem ("gee if it was better, it would have been adopted by now...."), consider that the main reason that white backgrounds are common is because the guys at XEROX Park took either a naive approach to wanting a display "more like the real world" or because they knew that it would be that much more striking and novel at a time when green monochrome was the norm. It was then subsequently and blindly copied by Apple who wanted to be like XEROX, and then again by MS Windows which wanted to compete with the Mac. I seriously doubt ($0.02 blah blah) that any of these companies propagated the idea based on research into white-foreground effects on neural fatigue and such. And now it's a serious chore to re-customize all the colors to work well with a dark background and that totally *blows*....
Hope that puts THAT issue to rest.... ;^)
marcos
On May 27, 2009, at 14:29 PM, average wrote:
BTW, I know the topic's pretty dead by now, but there is a pretty conclusive argument on this topic (which I bring back up only because I find myself continually annoyed at most IDE's).
If the medium *emits* light, it's significantly better to have a dark background (the reverse being true if the medium is reflective--like the surface of a book or Kindle). Several arguments *support* this and none *contradict* it:
Ah yes, there are arguments and there are arguments. The ones you posted sound very persuasive. But in several controlled studies, the test subjects detected errors at a significantly better rate when the background was light than when it was dark. They did not report greater fatigue than the subjects who had a dark background.
I try to rely on arguments only when I can't find controlled studies to rely on.
Oh, thanks to denis.spir I now see that the explanation is probably due to overall luminance rather than to polarity per se:
http://www.math-nat-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/WE/Psychologie/abteilungen/ aap/Dokumente/Buchner-et-al.-in-press-Ergonomics.pdf
Although this probably doesn't change the fact that you'll find errors better if you set your background to be light and your text to be dark.
Regards,
Zooko
P.S. The tenuous link to the topic of this list is that if there *were* any controlled studies about Python programmers using different line lengths, then they could give us something to go on. Maybe somebody out there knows how to get research funding for experimenting on programmers? That would be wonderful.
On May 27, 2009, at 14:29 PM, average wrote:
If the medium *emits* light, it's significantly better to have a dark background (the reverse being true if the medium is reflective--like the surface of a book or Kindle).
This assertion seems to contradict common sense. All the eye detects is patterns of light and dark -- how can it know whether the light it receives was emitted by the screen itself or reflected by it?
If there is any such effect, there must be other factors involved, such as sharpness or resolution differences between the two display surfaces being compared.
In my experience, dark-on-light tends to look sharper than light-on-dark for the same resolution on the same medium -- both emissive and reflective -- and it is therefore easier to read small-sized text that way.
I expect that's why Xerox and followers chose black on white. It's also probably why we have a long tradition of printing black ink on white paper and not vice versa. So if Xerox were imitating paper, they weren't just doing it blindly, but for a reason.
Greg Ewing wrote:
On May 27, 2009, at 14:29 PM, average wrote:
If the medium *emits* light, it's significantly better to have a dark background (the reverse being true if the medium is reflective--like the surface of a book or Kindle).
This assertion seems to contradict common sense. All the eye detects is patterns of light and dark -- how can it know whether the light it receives was emitted by the screen itself or reflected by it?
If there is any such effect, there must be other factors involved, such as sharpness or resolution differences between the two display surfaces being compared.
In my experience, dark-on-light tends to look sharper than light-on-dark for the same resolution on the same medium -- both emissive and reflective -- and it is therefore easier to read small-sized text that way.
I expect that's why Xerox and followers chose black on white. It's also probably why we have a long tradition of printing black ink on white paper and not vice versa. So if Xerox were imitating paper, they weren't just doing it blindly, but for a reason.
It seems to me (just speculation) that it was probably easier and cheaper to bleach paper white or leave it a light color after making it than it would be to dye or color it black. And also probably easier and cheaper to make black ink than to make white ink. So I think the factors as to why books are black letters on white pages is historically economic in nature for practical reasons.
I would also speculate that because we are so used to reading black letters on a white background, that it would be a bit more natural and easier to most people to also do that on computer screens.
The reason may be precisely to imitate paper because that is what most people are used to reading ... and it was a selling point. ;-)
Ron
participants (4)
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average -
Greg Ewing -
Ron Adam -
Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn