[COFF] Re: White Backgrounds on GUIs after Dark Backgrounds on Terminals?

[segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org>]

> As for the current light on dark, I wonder if this is just a new set of engineers making their mark. I'm sure it's better. The cost is the same, so now it's just marketing and a way to show off being different - e.g., new/cool.

That kinda gets at the root of what I'm puzzling on too.  At times where a dark color scheme would've had some, if even minor, technical benefit, it was stepped away from (as you said, Xerox is a paper company, that all makes perfect sense), however, now we're seeing the pendulum swing at a time where any amount of phosphor relief or other potential power savings from not driving visual content are lost on modern display technologies.

And I'll be the first to admit the difference is probably negligible, it's not like I've done a power consumption analysis on a tube, although in this discussion it has made me curious if a noticable difference in power consumption could be measured between two tubes powered up to the same state but one has zero drawing going on (i.e. no electrons beaming to the screen) whereas the other one is on full blast bright white.  I'll add it to the list of experiments for this winter...

> side tidbit - he has the patent on the loadable curser - which was initially a martini glass, not an hourglass to show time

I was waiting for a work conference to kick off as I was reading this email, shared this tidbit.  Our resident COBOL/dinosaur era guy just remarked if programming at the time didn't drive you to drink there was something wrong with you.

- Matt G.