[9fans] Re: Colors and other fun

[pavlovetsky@gmail.com]

I would like to point the attention of the audience to the notion,
which Rob made back in 2003:

From: r...@mightycheese.com (Rob Pike)
Date: Sep 16 2003, 8:49 am
Subject: g++
To: comp.os.plan9


> This is an interesting point. Plan 9 esthetics are really nice. colors,
> fonts, and so on just "look good". Who did all that?

glad you like it.  really glad.  most people say something rude about
it.

i can take no credit for the fonts except for having the good luck to
know
chuck bigelow and kris holmes well enough to ask them to do a deal
with
bell labs and let us use their fonts.  the postscript fonts used in
the
manual,
which are related to the screen fonts (primarily those used in acme),
were
the first font designed specifically for unicode.  i also rather like
the screen
fonts, which were also maybe the first.

the clean appearance of the screen comes mostly from laziness, but the
color scheme is (obviously) deliberate. the intent was to build on an
observation by edwardtuftethat the human system likes nature and
nature
is full of pale colors, so something you're going to look at all day
might best
serve if it were also in relaxing shades.  renee french helped me with
the
specifics of the color scheme (she's a professional illustrator and my
color
vision is suspect), once i'd figured out how i wanted it to look.
there are
still some features of the color system that i put in that i think no
one has
ever noticed.  that's a good thing, in my opinion; the colors should
fade
away, if you'll pardon the expression.

having used other systems with different approaches to color screens,
most especially windows XP (extra pukey), i thinktuftewas right.

-rob