[Python-ideas] 80 character line width vs. something wider

[Greg Ewing]

> 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