4 ms·

What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because that's what we had in bad old days before the monitors

by acqq 7y ago

What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because that's what we had in bad old days before the monitors were able to show pixels -- the text consoles could actually show only text and the technology used was too poor to have nice pale background and black letters. But why would somebody want this on the modern displays, except because he does that instead of properly adjusting the background light or because "the real cool guys look at black screens" is beyond me. Seriously, the displays aren't cheap eighties displays anymore. And even then the expensive ones already looked much better by default than these "modern" themes now. /end of the old guy's lawn rant Otherwise, I definitely like every debugging tool that tries to have a good GUI.

pjmlp 7y ago
Basically that is how I feel when I see HD colour screens being used to organize XTerms, similar to the IBM XWindows terminals I got to use in 1994.
gpderetta 7y ago
I have tried to use a lighter background because apparently "that's the correct thing". After experiencing significant eye fatigue I switched back to dark blue.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use (though it looks pretty at a glance, and if you are composing things for print WYSIWYG may be more important than what is most comfortable on the screen.) We tried light themes as the almost invariable rule for the first several decades of GUIs, but recently got over it. (Light backgrounds are awesome on reflective media, and if eInk was cheap and fast enough to use for primary monitors for coding we’d do that.)
- acqq 7y ago
  > Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use I claim it’s not true. If one would measure The light flux of my screen I’m sure it wouldn’t be higher than that of the paper when reading in good light conditions. I claim that it’s dependent of how one configures his display.
  - scoutt 7y ago
    Emitting light != reflecting light. I used to battle too against "dark modes". But I was forced to use VSCode for one project (since a couple of months), and I have to say that I became so used to it that now I want to use "dark mode" everywhere I can. Unfortunately IDEs for embedded like KEIL uVision will never get such feature, and now it's a pain to go back to white background.
    - acqq 7y ago
      > Emitting light != reflecting light. No. It's photons, and the photons count is the same for a given flux. If your screen emits more photons, it's because you've set the background light too high. That's that user configurable setting I've mentioned in the first post. If you have problems with reflection of some other light source and you solved it by turning it off and sitting in the dark room, you of course have to reduce the background light of your monitor to match the ambient light conditions.
      - scoutt 7y ago
        Light is light, I know. But reading from e-ink is not as comfortable as reading from an LCD whatever the brightness setting is. There are many reasons, like refresh frequency, angle, etc. I'm sorry I don't have time now, but you can look it up.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Light themes are better than dark themes from an eye strain perspective if a room is well lit. On the other hand, dark themes are better in low light conditions, so if you like coding in dark rooms dark themes are essential. Dark themes are also good for photo editing where you don’t want chrome saturating content.
Razengan 7y ago
"I don’t like this so nobody else should" is always obnoxious to read. I like dark mode. If it has options to let you have dark-text-on-bright-backgrounds, why does the option for a dark mode bother you? Tech should cater to different needs. Nobody should have to defend their preferences against anyone, but for those wondering if there are any objective reasons: I don’t want intense light constantly blasting my eyes, taking up more energy and reducing the display’s effective lifetime, and I want to be able to work comfortably in dark environments, which may be dark for any reason: Not wanting to wake other people up, or bother anyone in theaters/restaurants/cars/planes/etc. or simply reducing energy usage.
- acqq 7y ago
  That “quote” of what I wrote: > > I don’t like this so nobody else should. > Is always obnoxious. Is completely fake. Readers beware.
  - virgilp 7y ago
    It's not "completely fake", it's how your rant reads to a lot of readers - whether you intended it or not. @Razengan was giving you a hand here, helping you understand why that rant is disliked.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Unless you are using an OLED, a dark theme is not more energy efficient than a light one.
  - BeeOnRope 7y ago
    I don't think this is true: many transmissive LCD technologies adjust their backlight brightness, including differently across regions, depending on the displayed image?
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      OLEDs incorporate the backlight with the pixel, so they can turn on or off the light for each pixel, giving you much nicer blacks. A typical LED backlight is just a single uniform light, so it can only be adjusted for the entire screen, and unless your screen is black, you need some light. I guess if everything was a at most a darker grey, they could crank it down, but I don’t think anyone does that?

by acqq 7y ago

pjmlp 7y ago

Basically that is how I feel when I see HD colour screens being used to organize XTerms, similar to the IBM XWindows terminals I got to use in 1994.

gpderetta 7y ago

I have tried to use a lighter background because apparently "that's the correct thing". After experiencing significant eye fatigue I switched back to dark blue.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use (though it looks pretty at a glance, and if you are composing things for print WYSIWYG may be more important than what is most comfortable on the screen.) We tried light themes as the almost invariable rule for the first several decades of GUIs, but recently got over it. (Light backgrounds are awesome on reflective media, and if eInk was cheap and fast enough to use for primary monitors for coding we’d do that.)

acqq 7y ago
> Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use I claim it’s not true. If one would measure The light flux of my screen I’m sure it wouldn’t be higher than that of the paper when reading in good light conditions. I claim that it’s dependent of how one configures his display.
- scoutt 7y ago
  Emitting light != reflecting light. I used to battle too against "dark modes". But I was forced to use VSCode for one project (since a couple of months), and I have to say that I became so used to it that now I want to use "dark mode" everywhere I can. Unfortunately IDEs for embedded like KEIL uVision will never get such feature, and now it's a pain to go back to white background.
  - acqq 7y ago
    > Emitting light != reflecting light. No. It's photons, and the photons count is the same for a given flux. If your screen emits more photons, it's because you've set the background light too high. That's that user configurable setting I've mentioned in the first post. If you have problems with reflection of some other light source and you solved it by turning it off and sitting in the dark room, you of course have to reduce the background light of your monitor to match the ambient light conditions.
    - scoutt 7y ago
      Light is light, I know. But reading from e-ink is not as comfortable as reading from an LCD whatever the brightness setting is. There are many reasons, like refresh frequency, angle, etc. I'm sorry I don't have time now, but you can look it up.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Light themes are better than dark themes from an eye strain perspective if a room is well lit. On the other hand, dark themes are better in low light conditions, so if you like coding in dark rooms dark themes are essential. Dark themes are also good for photo editing where you don’t want chrome saturating content.

Razengan 7y ago

"I don’t like this so nobody else should" is always obnoxious to read. I like dark mode. If it has options to let you have dark-text-on-bright-backgrounds, why does the option for a dark mode bother you? Tech should cater to different needs. Nobody should have to defend their preferences against anyone, but for those wondering if there are any objective reasons: I don’t want intense light constantly blasting my eyes, taking up more energy and reducing the display’s effective lifetime, and I want to be able to work comfortably in dark environments, which may be dark for any reason: Not wanting to wake other people up, or bother anyone in theaters/restaurants/cars/planes/etc. or simply reducing energy usage.

acqq 7y ago
That “quote” of what I wrote: > > I don’t like this so nobody else should. > Is always obnoxious. Is completely fake. Readers beware.
- virgilp 7y ago
  It's not "completely fake", it's how your rant reads to a lot of readers - whether you intended it or not. @Razengan was giving you a hand here, helping you understand why that rant is disliked.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Unless you are using an OLED, a dark theme is not more energy efficient than a light one.
- BeeOnRope 7y ago
  I don't think this is true: many transmissive LCD technologies adjust their backlight brightness, including differently across regions, depending on the displayed image?
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    OLEDs incorporate the backlight with the pixel, so they can turn on or off the light for each pixel, giving you much nicer blacks. A typical LED backlight is just a single uniform light, so it can only be adjusted for the entire screen, and unless your screen is black, you need some light. I guess if everything was a at most a darker grey, they could crank it down, but I don’t think anyone does that?