Acyl Wrote:Is a white or pale background the best colour, though? It certainly isn't easy on the eyes either. I suspect we're just used to it because...well, that's what the printed page is.
I think one important thing about white backgrounds is that, when it comes to books, the paper is usually a matte white, while computer monitors tend to be pretty shiny overall. It seems to make a significant difference. Judging by the hardware I see coming in, people making e-book readers are going to great lengths to make screens where white looks more like white paper than white monitor.
If I were going to be staring at a plaintext editor for a long time on end, I'd probably go for black on some sort of mild gray. But if I'm staring at the computer for a long time, it's more likely to be programming, where I'm going between multiple tools with their own color schemes, reference documents, etc., and it seems to be less of an issue. (Like, for a ruby project, I'll regularly be going back and forth between black on white, white on black, and black on *pink*, and that's before getting into any project-specific material.)
-Morgan.