# Black Background



## eax.qbyte (Oct 11, 2019)

Remember those days computers were shell-only environment with commands you could run? Background was restricted to black unless you had done some config which were rarely done in PCs.
But after graphic cards came in to market OS developers started to add graphical GUI in their production letting you choose any colorful picture you like as background with nice icons.
But there were some people always missing their old blipping cursor which were helping them do every thing typing commands and didn't have to do every little thing among a lot of wizards and visual components, and they didn't know what was that wizard doing because they didn't have access to source, and a proper shell command didn't exist for them to do the equivalent job, and the saddest thing was that they had paid for that source closed stuff. That was when story of open source OSs started.
I don't know why every thing in this world works upside down: "You have to pay for cheaper things and you get more expensive things for free".
Well let's not go too much off topic from main line of our off topic discussion. Yea, We gonna talk about black backgrounds here.
So people could set a very nice scene of nature as background picture of their computing dude box. They thought "Oh Yeah, Now I'm free of that hellish black and white world, I can do every thing now, Super Mario is in level 9-1 now .. bla bla".
But here, I'm going to say:"May be that black and white world not only because of commands you could run but even for the color scheme itself was not that bad!"
I bet you don't want to know "why", You are now hardly curious to know "Why!!!???", But I'm not gonna to tell ya, ha ha.
Allright, Don't hurt yourself, I'm going to say my reasons:
Note that these are my personal opinion to be shared and I respect yours even if it is opposite.
Main reason: More light makes your eyes more tired "Cows feel that even better". As you all know LCDs or Monitors produce light in their pixels to create color. Total black is 0x000000(no light) and total white is 0xFFFFFF(full light) then it fires that little spectre againt our eyes. Then the eye guy recieves the spectre and does process on it. If the color is 0x00.. every thing is easier. That's why you use sun glasses at noon or turn off the lights at sleep. Oh, no no, don't get me wrong don't open the config file right away... No, don't tab out... ah damn.. somebody call him back please.
Alright you back now? So we can continue.
Second reason: I think producing less light will improve life time of your LCD or monitor.
Thank you all for reading. Have a good time.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Oct 11, 2019)

To me, a white (or light) background is hard to read because of the large amount of meaningless light distracting me.

I use green text on a black background and that's the clearest I've found. I did like the old IBM 5151 with the warm and slow phosphor, but nobody is using TTL these days. The nice thing about setting those colours in a GUI is that one can add a little more clarity, via coloured prompts etc. Also, green is at the centre of our light sensitivity and is generally fairly clean so that we avoid chromatic aberation and the slightly fuzzy image resulting from lack of common focus with multiple frequencies.

People report that bright text on a black background is hard to get used to. I don't doubt that, but nevertheless the physical facts of clarity and quick recognition, belie their claims. It does take a little while to adapt to any change, but the brain will usually do it after a little practice.

The whole idea of black type on a white background is interesting. Yes, it gives good contrast, but the actual choice was based on the limitations of technology at the time. It's actually quite simple. Ink and paper. Black ink of high quality (and particular high coverage) is fairly easy to make and use. White is much more difficult, doesn't easily form as good an ink, and has poor coverage.

Now for the paper. The basic product is light colored to start. To make that black requires a lot of pigment. It is an expensive process and a good quality black paper is not suitable for general use. Hence, we end up with a buff or bleached background.

This paper and ink technology ran for many generations and is still in heavy use. The reason, however, is the practicality of the basic technology, and not the ultimate clarity of the resulting text. We've lived with this for so long that it seems odd when we change it. But now that we have computers, we should.


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## eax.qbyte (Oct 11, 2019)

Thank you and I remind here, there is a significant difference between Paper and digital output.
On paper full color is black. You draw multiple colors on each other you create darker color. And non colored means white.
I believe the light preasure thrown at eye from a white paper is a lot less than same from monitor. You can try reading some paper under stright sunlight can be abusing to your eye too.  If we want to be natural, we must adapt with nature of our tool.
Even mother nature has created the sky in black(or dark color) with tinsy shiny lights inside. If you get a little far from earth, that will happen in day too. Means black background is most efficient for both user and producer!


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## Deleted member 30996 (Oct 11, 2019)

I like a black bg because I use white text and transparency in my terminal and it makes it much easier for me to read. A white bg is too bright and a lot of bright colors distracting.

Red seems to go with that somehow so that's a theme I often go with.


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## shkhln (Oct 11, 2019)

What's the point of this thread?



eax.qbyte said:


> I believe the light preasure thrown at eye from a white paper is a lot less than same from monitor.



Oh, please…



eax.qbyte said:


> Second reason: I think producing less light will improve life time of your LCS or monitor.



That's not at all how LCD works.


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## eax.qbyte (Oct 11, 2019)

shkhln said:


> What's the point of this thread?


What's the point of this post?


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## shkhln (Oct 11, 2019)

Well, if you would like to spread your b ideas unopposed, there is always /r/freebsd. Although, you would probably get the same question even there.


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## eax.qbyte (Oct 11, 2019)

shkhln said:


> spread your b ideas


Do you really think, this is my own idea and no one else has thought about it nor spread it around?


shkhln said:


> unopposed


Opposing means to prove what I say is wrong, not smashing the whole thread with a hammer.


shkhln said:


> you would probably get the same question even there.


Just check out posts by two people before you.


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## shkhln (Oct 11, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> Opposing means to prove what I say is wrong



Ah, that's not how proofs work either.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 11, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> Remember those days computers were shell-only environment with commands you could run? Background was restricted to black unless you had done some config which were rarely done in PCs.


You mean like right now? And every day when I sit at my workstation?

I agree with shkhln. There is no point of this thread other than throwing words on the 'net like most posts on reddit.


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## xtremae (Oct 11, 2019)

This thread looks suspiciously similar to previous Xorg vs tty _discussions_.


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## sidetone (Oct 11, 2019)

I read that Green text on a black background is the best for the eyes. This is what old consoles had. Gray text on a black background is good too. White text is too bright, even on a black background. The one we often use is gray text, that we call white. There is variance in eye strain by different background monitor colors, but unless it's bright text, I don't really experience problems.


eax.qbyte said:


> I think producing less light will improve life time of your LCS or monitor.


If it's off or in standby mode, doesn't go through bad enough power spikes, and doesn't accumulate too much dust, they all last longer, provided they aren't powered on and off often.

With OLED, blue LEDs deteriorate faster, so they compensate by manufacturing them with larger blue LED lights. LEDs last longer than flourescent, but older LEDs, can't turn off black light either. Flourescent LCD's, even with backlighting, lower black light levels better than older LED's. OLED's have true off for black.


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## D-FENS (Oct 11, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> Remember those days computers were shell-only environment with commands you could run? Background was restricted to black unless you had done some config which were rarely done in PCs.
> But after graphic cards came in to market OS developers started to add graphical GUI in their production letting you choose any colorful picture you like as background with nice icons.
> But there were some people always missing their old blipping cursor which were helping them do every thing typing commands and didn't have to do every little thing among a lot of wizards and visual components, and they didn't know what was that wizard doing because they didn't have access to source, and a proper shell command didn't exist for them to do the equivalent job, and the saddest thing was that they had paid for that source closed stuff. That was when story of open source OSs started.
> I don't know why every thing in this world works upside down: "You have to pay for cheaper things and you get more expensive things for free".
> ...


You COULD have black background, it's no problem with any desktop environment. Fact is, people don't use it because it's boring. And your monitor will not die due to the colors you are displaying on it. You're probably spill coffee on it, or your kid will hit it with a ball when playing, or a friend will drop it when moving your furniture. For real, I have an LCD monitor from 2003 that is still working, mightily obsolete. Colors or no colors - believe me, it's not going to matter anyway.
One more thing, the original working background was indeed a picture of nature. When stoneage people went working, this was the only background in stock, ha ha ha LOL.

Cheers


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## Geezer (Oct 11, 2019)

Can anyone read this?


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## D-FENS (Oct 11, 2019)

Geezer said:


> Can anyone read this?


Sure


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## Geezer (Oct 11, 2019)

What about this then?


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## olli@ (Oct 11, 2019)

For both normal paper and screens, black letters on white background are best for human eyes, in general (there are always exceptions, of course). This has been the result of several scientific studies.
*However*, there are two important points to keep in mind:

First, that _only_ holds true if you use a flicker-free display. What is considered flicker-free is very subjective. Some people are ok with 75 Hz, some are not. This also depends on the type of display, i.e. for quick displays (gaming monitors) you need a much higher refresh rate than for slow monitors that have a certain “afterglow effect”. In the 90ies of the last century, you commonly had CRT screens that were _not_ flicker-free, that's why many people preferred a black background. But the situation has changed.

Second, many people tend to turn brightness and contrast of their screen _way_ too high. If you do that, it will indeed be uncomfortable to use a bright background. It's best to set the brightness so that it is not much higher than the brightness of a (white) wall in a normally lit room. And of course, the lighting should be so that you have the light source neither behind you nor right in front of you. The screen surface should be perpendicular to the windows of the room.


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## shkhln (Oct 11, 2019)

olli@ said:


> First, that _only_ holds true if you use a flicker-free display. What is considered flicker-free is very subjective. Some people are ok with 75 Hz, some are not. This also depends on the type of display, i.e. for quick displays (gaming monitors) you need a much higher refresh rate than for slow monitors that have a certain “afterglow effect”. In the 90ies of the last century, you commonly had CRT screens that were _not_ flicker-free, that's why many people preferred a black background. But the situation has changed.



One note, though. Usually the term "flicker-free" is reserved for LCD backlight, this is a wholly separate thing from the picture refresh rate.



olli@ said:


> Second, many people tend to turn brightness and contrast of their screen _way_ too high.



Yep. My current display brightness setting is 30 (out of 100) and then I have 50 / 22 / 0 for the red / green / blue tone settings, color accuracy be damned. Defaults on U24E850R are just painful to look at.


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## ralphbsz (Oct 11, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> Remember those days computers were shell-only environment with commands you could run? Background was restricted to black unless you had done some config which were rarely done in PCs.



Yes, I remember those days. I also remember the days when computers were programmed by walking up to a card punch (IBM 029 or the Univac one with memory). You could use cards of any color, but in practice, nearly all were beige. In practice, programming was actually done before you even walked to the card punch, using paper and pencil (or pen). So the original interface for a computer was black on a white background, and corrections required an eraser.

After using a variety of computers (IBM 3277, Univac Uniscope, Digital VT52 and VT100, IBM 3151, and various microcomputers like Commodore PET and Apple II), one revolutionary change in the user interface of computers that actually reached the real world was the Digital VT2xx series of terminals. For the first time you could set the text to be black on a light background (the standard model came in white, but you could order green or orange, they were monochromatic for the first few years). And even more radically, this was the first time in mass production you could get soft scroll: instead of the text jumping by one whole text line at a time, it moved by one scroll line (probably 1/512th of the screen), which made reading along as it moved by much more ergonomic. The technology for bright backgrounds and soft scroll moved to most other vendors (including clone vendors) relatively quickly, within a few years. And this all happened before PCs became universally available; in 1986, few people had a PC, but nearly all minicomputer users were switching to VT2xx style terminals.

(Yes, I know in theory things like the Xerox Alto already existed, but they were Silicon Valley toys, and didn't actually go into real production. Windowed user interfaces were years away. And IBM mainframes were way behind on this ergonomics thing, I think the successor to the 327x series, the 3180 and 3190, showed up in mass production only years later.)

Here is the interesting thing. While soft scroll was pretty universally accepted, by most users of VT2xx class terminals, the background color (black on bright versus bright on black) was hotly debated. I intentionally bought a VT2xx clone, a Falco 5000, for myself, so I could have my own terminal, and I ended up switching back and forth occasionally. It really does depend on lighting, mood, personal preference, and probably even on what one is doing (graphics versus text, coding versus watching batch processes roll along, and so on).

So the answer is: there is no single answer. Your preferences and my preferences can be differences. The arguments about display lifetimes were already debunked above.


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## CraigHB (Oct 11, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> For real, I have an LCD monitor from 2003 that is still working, mightily obsolete.


Ha, you got me beat.  I have one from 2006 that works just fine, was on all the time for about ten years.  Now it sits in a box unused somewhere.


olli@ said:


> Second, many people tend to turn brightness and contrast of their screen _way_ too high


I had run up the brightness on my monitor the other day.  I think it's been hurting my eyes, just turned it down.  But yeah the old black background with green font was comforting.  On my terminal windows I use black background with white font, could easily go green if I go to the trouble of changing it.


ralphbsz said:


> I also remember the days when computers were programmed by walking up to a card punch


Me too.  My first programming class in college (Fortran) was on punch cards.  They did have some terminals, but us lowly intro students had to use the card readers.


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## VladiBG (Oct 11, 2019)

__





						FreshPorts -- x11/cool-retro-term: Terminal emulator which mimics old cathode displays
					

cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode ray tube (CRT) screens.  It has been designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight.  It is based on QML port of QTermWidget (Konsole) and requires Qt 5.2+.




					www.freshports.org
				











						GitHub - Swordfish90/cool-retro-term: A good looking terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display...
					

A good looking terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display... - GitHub - Swordfish90/cool-retro-term: A good looking terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display...




					github.com


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## kpedersen (Oct 11, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> In practice, programming was actually done before you even walked to the card punch, using paper and pencil (or pen).



Using vi must have sucked back then 

I can barely write 2 lines of code without getting twitchy and running a build to check for compile errors. Are you telling me that people back then used to attempt to write correct programs first time? :O


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## ralphbsz (Oct 11, 2019)

On microprocessors (which sometimes had really bad editors, for example if the machine has neither floppy nor disk, but uses cassettes for storage), I used to write longish programs first in pseudo-code, then write assembly code with pencil and paper, sometimes 20-30 pages long. It is a really good way to review the code and think it through. It only gets typed in once you are pretty sure it will mostly work.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 11, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> Are you telling me that people back then used to attempt to write correct programs first time? :O


'Tis true. You had to schedule time to have your cards put through and, if it didn't run, you had to reschedule time again and that might not be till the next day or 2AM.


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## ralphbsz (Oct 12, 2019)

The main reason behind this was that in those days, computer time was very expensive, in particular compared to the time of low-paid programmers (like students). Wasting the CPU on compiling and running a program that was less than 90% likely to actually function was correctly considered inefficient. This is particularly true in a big computer center, where the cycle is: write the program (on paper), type it into punched cards (at real companies, they had data entry clerks for that, for low-paid people you had to do it yourself). Then submit the program (by putting a rubber band around it and putting it into an box at the computer center), wait until the operators get around to running it, and then wait for the printed output to come out in your mailbox.

So the programming discipline was to read and review code before running it. The act of programming was much slower and deliberate. Code review and group programming was a much more natural thing, since you had time for it: you would hand the card deck to your colleague, and ask them to proof-read it first. To some extent 40 years of being able to do development online has really turned programming into a trial-and-error discipline.


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## Geezer (Oct 12, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> Using vi must have sucked back then



Using vi has always sucked.


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## D-FENS (Oct 12, 2019)

CraigHB said:


> Ha, you got me beat.  I have one from 2006 that works just fine, was on all the time for about ten years.  Now it sits in a box unused somewhere.


For sure! That's the destiny of most monitors I have seen - become obsolete before becoming broken.
I also have a notebook from 2001. LCD is working perfectly. Some pixels show constant colors but that's probably a problem in the controller or a broken connection, not an LCD issue. The keyboard fell apart completely though, but I was able to buy a new one online for 20 bucks. From my experience this stuff just works unless you abuse it.


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## D-FENS (Oct 12, 2019)

Geezer said:


> Using vi has always sucked.


LOL, prepare to be met with a lot of hate by the vi army.


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## Crivens (Oct 12, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> LOL, prepare to be met with a lot of hate by the vi army.


They are currently busy playing rouge by punch card/printout in the 3.rd level basement. So you may have a head start if you run now.


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## sidetone (Oct 12, 2019)

My florescent LCD display didn't last as long. It was from maybe 2009, until 2018. I believe attic dust that got into the room, which wasn't always the case, killed the florescent part of it. I could hear static coming from it, before it broke as if it were on a florescent bulb. The ways dust could get into the room has been reduced since then.

LCD Florescent light bulbs don't last as long. Touching them shortens their life sometimes to hours or days, because oils from the hand cause it to go bad, perhaps by when the lightbulb heats.

I read that some gamers prefer old CRT displays for games over LCD. The benefit was that the graphic of movement was smoother, while of course, CRT has lower resolution. It was about the order in which the images were put out, related to the refresh rate.

A similar comparison, but one which is unproven, is that music from tapes sounds better than that of CD. I noticed this, and I looked it up, that others noticed this too. They said it's unproven that it is, except the sounds feel warmer, and that people do say tapes sound better. They said it's the static hiss that sounds good around the lower bit music, but I don't believe that's the complete answer. I believe that tapes aren't digital, so the individual sound bits are smoother. A CD is higher resolution, but perhaps it's not high enough, that we can hear that the bits are square, rough, sharp edged or not smooth. Perhaps it's like seeing square edges, when we zoom in on a still image from a movie on a DVD, but instead hearing sharp edges of "square" sounds. I heard 24 bit flac before, and it does feel fuller than a CD, and the ranges are a little bit more to hear. On the timespan, they are more dense. They also seem denser when hearing a 24 bit piece of audio played on a 16bit sound card. I know others will say it's just me, but I believe a 16 bit sound card can play the rate denseness of the sounds. It doesn't play the full depth range of 24bit, can't, and isn't intended to.


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## shkhln (Oct 12, 2019)

sidetone said:


> I read that some gamers prefer old CRT displays for games over LCD. The benefit was that the graphic of movement was smoother, while of course, CRT has lower resolution. It was about the order in which the images were put out, related to the refresh rate.



The benefit is lower blurring and, unlike whatever you believe about 24 bit sound, it's not placebo. That said, in year 2019 we do now have very fast and capable LCD panels, see https://www.blurbusters.com/faq/motion-blur-reduction/.


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## Geezer (Oct 12, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> LOL, prepare to be met with a lot of hate by the vi army.



I'll take the vi army straight on and emacs from behind.

The world is full of nice simple intuitive graphics based text editors. 

Yes, I know the we all use a VT (of sorts), so what about * ee*.


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## sidetone (Oct 12, 2019)

shkhln said:


> The benefit is lower blurring and, unlike whatever you believe about 24 bit sound, it's not placebo. That said, in year 2019 we do now have very fast and capable LCD panels, see https://www.blurbusters.com/faq/motion-blur-reduction/.


I know 24 bit sound is real. I was saying whether listening to the density per second (bitrate) of a 24bit quality file on a 16bit capable soundcard possibly is placebo. I don't believe it's placebo, that I can tell a difference on 1 criteria of 24bit files on a 16bit soundcard, but I can't discount that argument. I will be shot down for suggesting that, I may hear a difference of bitrate on a 16bit capable sound card of higher quality audio files.

As for range (highs and lows), I know that 24bit isn't expressed on a 16 bit sound card, and I don't perceive that either. I do hear better highs and lows of 24 bit audio files on a 24 bit card, but as expected, not on a 16 bit sound card. By comparison a CD sounds dull (to exaggerate, like a hum) in the sound frequency range aspect. There's little more to hear in terms of range on a 24 bit sound, but it's an appreciable difference.

We are generally more perceptible to visual differences than audio ones.

The argument of placebo to discredit is overused. Placebo, in my opinion, can only be for what we perceive or feel, and they use placebo as an excuse for chartable differences, that can be doubted for maybe randomness or coincidence, but not placebo. I believe in the placebo argument for perception by suggestion.

Newer LED technology is improving, and is expected to surpass past deficiencies. I'm not that much aware of newer technology than OLED. There was one, but I barely know of its existence. It wasn't QLED, which was said to be less better than OLED, but I don't know of QLED's current status.

About CRT, yes, it was about bluring, maybe other aspects of smoothness too. IIRC, that had to do with the order by the scanlines, refresh rate or otherwise of the display. It was how the order of the LED's were activated, that were each singular LEDs, rather than the backlight or tube, which put out an image more of at once. I may have gotten details wrong about the CRT vs LED subject for motion, but generally, this is my basic understanding of it.


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## CraigHB (Oct 12, 2019)

Geezer said:


> Using vi has always sucked.



Kind of, yeah.  The first time I used VI was in the early 90's when I was involved with maintaining a SCO Unix cluster.  Up until that time I had only been using MS DOS and Windows (though I had some programming education on PDP and IBM systems in college).  I quickly felt Unix was just the most awesome operating system, so smartly designed.  And of course prompted me to check out the Walnut Creek releases which on a personal level led me to Debian Linux until favoring FreeBSD after some years.

Anyway that VI really put me back a bit when I first started using Unix.  It does take a bit of time to learn and get used to.  Though due to my indoctrination I've always used VI with Unix, don't think that will ever change no matter how much I end up in VI hell.  I call it that when you get confused using it which still happens to me sometimes.


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## D-FENS (Oct 12, 2019)

Geezer said:


> I'll take the vi army straight on and emacs from behind.
> 
> The world is full of nice simple intuitive graphics based text editors.
> 
> Yes, I know the we all use a VT (of sorts), so what about * ee*.


It's fine. I am myself a fan of mcedit (misc/mc). It's not black (by default) but it's still text mode. 
Well, you could skin it black if you prefer to.


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## tingo (Oct 13, 2019)

kpedersen said:


> Using vi must have sucked back then


Nobody used vi at that time; they probably used ex or qed or another line-oriented editor which worked well on teletypes. Trying qed or ex will make you very happy to be able to use vi. Yes, I have tried both qed and ex.


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## olli@ (Oct 14, 2019)

tingo said:


> Nobody used vi at that time; they probably used ex or qed or another line-oriented editor which worked well on teletypes. Trying qed or ex will make you very happy to be able to use vi. Yes, I have tried both qed and ex.


Or they used vi in open mode.

(FreeBSD's version of vi – derived from nvi – doesn't support open mode, though, neither does vim. SunOS / Solaris _did_ support it when I last tried; I guess they still have the original BSD version of vi created by Bill Joy.)


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## sidetone (Oct 14, 2019)

You know what I realized, that takes away from the background being black? Florescent LCDs have a backlight, and older LEDs don't have true darkness for black. The black on my screens have a minor bright glow to it.

I noticed this from the glare of the dark parts of my screen, more on my LED monitor on a VGA port, than on the florescent LCD TV that I use as a monitor on HDMI. There's differences in the two, but I notice it on both of them. The glare from the black parts have more glare on the LED monitor.


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## SirDice (Oct 14, 2019)

sidetone said:


> more on my LED monitor on a VGA port, than on the florescent LCD TV that I use as a monitor on HDMI.


VGA is an analog signal, HDMI is a digital signal.


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## sidetone (Oct 14, 2019)

SirDice said:


> VGA is an analog signal, HDMI is a digital signal.


I know, but that has less to do with the types of monitors for lighting the display. I have it that way because my motherboard only has a VGA and an HDMI output (and I don't want to put a graphics card in). The other motherboard that would have allowed me two or 3 digital outputs blew out. I have it this way, so I can check up on things with my lesser VGA monitor, while I can watch TV. I could connect the HDMI cable to the smaller monitor, but it would make little difference in the glare, only in the resolution.


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## SirDice (Oct 14, 2019)

sidetone said:


> I know, but that has less to do with the types of monitors.


No, but it does mean VGA has crappier colors to begin with.


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## shkhln (Oct 14, 2019)

sidetone said:


> You know what I realized, that takes away from the background being black? Florescent LCDs have a backlight, and older LEDs don't have true darkness for black. The black on my screens have a minor bright glow to it.



All LCDs have backlight, the liquid crystals in the matrix are used to selectively block a certain amount of light per subpixel. The matrix can't block all light, so you in reality you are always looking at a rather gray background.

I don't know to what you refer as "older LEDs", but likely that's just LCDs with LED backlight. True LED displays such as OLED do not have this limitation, they are just very expensive to produce and currently have lifespan issues. There are some LED TVs on the market, though.



sidetone said:


> I noticed this from the glare of the dark parts of my screen, more on my LED monitor on a VGA port, than on the florescent LCD TV that I use as a monitor on HDMI. There's differences in the two, but I notice it on both of them. The glare from the black parts have more glare on the LED monitor.



If glare is moving when you move your head, that is the difference in matrix types or just angle of view, I doubt you look at _both_ monitors straight. If glare doesn't move, that is the difference in quality control and/or backlight position within display.


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## sidetone (Oct 14, 2019)

They both have glare glow anyway. Older LEDs are said to have glare as well. If I used the HDMI cable for the LED, it would probably make a difference, but a small one. The darkness and colors too on the LED screens is worse when looking at it from an angle.
I could compare the LCD on VGA, to the LED on HDMI. I don't think anyone would care for it, if they did, it would sound like a science project or an article by someone else.

I should have said glow, but the effect is like glare. It's that the glow varies. Even straight on, the LED monitor has glow, and perhaps glare from the light too. The angles can be discounted partially for that, but I think the glare and glow combine to show a shininess. It still had that glow with the lights off.

OLEDs have true darkness, so they're better in that aspect. Only the blue light LEDs degrade faster. You mentioned lifespan issues, which can go with that.


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## shkhln (Oct 14, 2019)

sidetone said:


> OLEDs have true darkness, so they're better in that aspect. Only the blue light LEDs degrade faster. You mentioned lifespan issues, which can go with that.



That's not the real issue. The actual problem with OLED and similar displays is that parts of the screen (or, rather, individual subpixels) degrade at different rates depending on usage.


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## sidetone (Oct 14, 2019)

I didn't say otherwise. If a blue part of an led degrades faster, it's likely other colors do to, but at different rates. Blue on OLED's is/was an issue by itself that it had to be specifically addressed.


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## eax.qbyte (Oct 15, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> It's fine. I am myself a fan of mcedit (misc/mc). It's not black (by default) but it's still text mode.
> Well, you could skin it black if you prefer to.


I only know 10%(or less) of Vi, but that 10% covers all I can do with mc edit.
One of Vi's greatness is when you do all the stuff without using function keys nor modifiers(Shift, CTRL ...).
You feel it when using Vi inside like splitted sysutils/screen. Vi's shortcuts does not conflict with sysutils/screen. My beautiful "scene of nature" is having www/lynx inside one split and editors/vim inside other one.



OJ said:


> I use green text on a black background and that's the clearest I've found.


I haven't researched about it, But really feel good with yellow on black.


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## tingo (Oct 16, 2019)

olli@ said:


> Or they used vi in open mode.


vi is from 1976...


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## rufwoof (Oct 17, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> I only know 10%(or less) of Vi, but that 10% covers all I can do with mc edit.


I use vi in a very lean manner also (I don't use vim), but those handful of basic commands generally cover my needs. I also use mc/mc edit; Or geany. Collectively those three are all I need/use. Do have distant memory of using ed single line editor.

:wq


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## D-FENS (Oct 17, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> I only know 10%(or less) of Vi, but that 10% covers all I can do with mc edit.
> One of Vi's greatness is when you do all the stuff without using function keys nor modifiers(Shift, CTRL ...).
> You feel it when using Vi inside like splitted sysutils/screen. Vi's shortcuts does not conflict with sysutils/screen. My beautiful "scene of nature" is having www/lynx inside one split and editors/vim inside other one.
> 
> ...


I use text editors for very basic stuff - to change a value in a configuration file, etc. To accomplish this effectively, the text editor must be simple and intuitive.

If I need an IDE, I would use something that understands the structure of my code - like Eclipse.
So vi is neither nor. It's way to complex for simple tasks, and it does not understand my source code for complex tasks. I cannot imagine refactoring Java code with vi....


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 18, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> So vi is neither nor. It's way to complex for simple tasks


vi is as complex as an on/off switch. Such statements remind me of reddit posts which claim they can't figure out how to quit out of vim. That, too, is as simple as an on/off switch but I can understand why it's waaaay over the head of anyone on reddit.


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## D-FENS (Oct 18, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> vi is as complex as an on/off switch. Such statements remind me of reddit posts which claim they can't figure out how to quit out of vim. That, too, is as simple as an on/off switch but I can understand why it's waaaay over the head of anyone on reddit.


Ctrl-Z is the fastest 
:q! is the proper one. I figured early on - that's probably all I should know about vi.

By the way, something vi might be good at (I suspect): writing documentation. That's not my main use case though.


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## Geezer (Oct 18, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> vi is as complex as an on/off switch.


Yes. The difficulty is finding the on/off switch.


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## olli@ (Oct 18, 2019)

tingo said:


> vi is from 1976...


Yes, of course. So?


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## sidetone (Oct 18, 2019)

The mistake I made with vi and desktop note applications is using the wrong command to save a text file. I would press ctrl-s in vi, then, it would lock up the vi screen. I believe I used ctrl-c to get out of it, but I would have to be careful to only do it once, or maybe use `pkill`. Then I would harmlessly press Esc, then type :wq! to try to save a text file on Leafpad.

A problem I have with vi is I have a difficult time telling the status of the command. If it's in insert or on escape mode. I have to memorize which mode I'm in, or keep typing to find it out.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 18, 2019)

At the moment, I'm writing a C program with three instances of vim open. The way I've written code for 15 years. I update or configure all our servers using vi. I never understand why people have issues with such a simple editor.


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## Geezer (Oct 18, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I never understand why people have issues with such a simple editor.



Simplicity and ease of use are different.


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## Geezer (Oct 18, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> LOL, prepare to be met with a lot of hate by the vi army.



Yeah.


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## Maxnix (Oct 18, 2019)

sidetone said:


> A problem I have with vi is I have a difficult time telling the status of the command. If it's in insert or on escape mode. I have to memorize which mode I'm in, or keep typing to find it out.


Just put this in your ~/.nexrc:

```
set showmode
set verbose
```
With the former vi(1) will tell you in which mode you are, with the latter it will print more explicit error/info messages.


roccobaroccoSC said:


> :q! is the proper one. I figured early on - that's probably all I should know about vi.


I suggest you to do not use this after writing a long and/or important document.  A `:wq` will definitively be more appropriate.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 18, 2019)

Geezer said:


> Simplicity and ease of use are different.


In this case, they are the same but vim makes things even easier.


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## Geezer (Oct 18, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> In this case, they are the same but vim makes things even easier.


Good for cleaning drains too.


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## SirDice (Oct 18, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> Ctrl-Z is the fastest


This doesn't exit anything, it stops the current process and puts in the background. 

```
If you are running a job and wish to do something else you may hit the
       suspend key (usually `^Z'), which sends a STOP signal to the current
       job.  The shell will then normally indicate that the job has been
       `Suspended' and print another prompt.  If the listjobs shell variable
       is set, all jobs will be listed like the jobs builtin command; if it is
       set to `long' the listing will be in long format, like `jobs -l'.  You
       can then manipulate the state of the suspended job.  You can put it in
       the ``background'' with the bg command or run some other commands and
       eventually bring the job back into the ``foreground'' with fg.  (See
       also the run-fg-editor editor command.)  A `^Z' takes effect
       immediately and is like an interrupt in that pending output and unread
       input are discarded when it is typed.  The wait builtin command causes
       the shell to wait for all background jobs to complete.
```



sidetone said:


> I would press ctrl-s in vi, then, it would lock up the vi screen.


It's not vi that "locks up", it's your TTY that's been paused. You've sent it an XOFF. Give it an XON (ctrl+Q) to "unlock" it. 





__





						Software flow control - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## Deleted member 30996 (Oct 18, 2019)

sidetone said:


> Then I would harmlessly press Esc, then type :wq! to try to save a text file on Leafpad.



Oh, you're in trouble now... You admitted to using editors/leafpad.

I can use editors/vim but can get a lot more work done quicker on Leafpad.


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## Deleted member 48958 (Oct 18, 2019)

sidetone said:


> The mistake I made with vi and desktop note applications is using the wrong command to save a text file. I would press ctrl-s in vi, then, it would lock up the vi screen. I believe I used ctrl-c to get out of it, but I would have to be careful to only do it once, or maybe use  pkill. Then I would harmlessly press Esc, then type :wq! to try to save a text file on Leafpad.


Add

```
# not to be disturbed by ctrl+s ctrl+q while using terminals
stty -ixon
```
to your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc.


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## Deleted member 48958 (Oct 18, 2019)

Trihexagonal said:


> I can use editors/vim but can get a lot more work done quicker on Leafpad.


It is only true if you know only some of its basic commands and features,
but when you know some of its advanced commands, keybindings and functionality,
then you're able to do things with editors/vim 100 times quicker
than with any regular editor, because where you need to spend some time editing
using leafpad, for example, it's possible to do same tasks in vim with few key presses,
that's why it is one of most popular editors, because some of vim features are unique.
For example, it is possible to record actions in vim and then to repeat this action so many
times you need using few key presses. Also its functionality may be heavily extended even more using custom vimrc file.


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## D-FENS (Oct 19, 2019)

Maxnix said:


> I suggest you to do not use this after writing a long and/or important document.  A `:wq` will definitively be more appropriate.


Now, that's a hypothetical scenario really unlikely to happen 
If I were forced to write a long and important document on vi, I would have probably killed myself long before it's worth to save it. Let me clarify - it's just that I am incapable of using vi. I know it's a fine editor for the right people.


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## D-FENS (Oct 19, 2019)

SirDice said:


> This doesn't exit anything, it stops the current process and puts in the background.


Yeah, I know. When I am in vi the struggle is mostly how do I get out of it and into a console where I can kill the process. 
Well, that was before knowing the command :q! It was a lot of keyboard shortcut trying and hair pulling.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Oct 19, 2019)

ILUXA said:


> It is only true if you know only some of its basic commands and features...



I do a lot of copy&paste from pages I've already typed by hand when working on my website and can normally have 10 or more open instances of Leafpad and Gimp to work from as I go. I have to think about what I'm doing with vim.

I seriously doubt I would ever become anywhere near as fast at vim as I am Leafpad no matter how much I studied or used it. A text editor is all I've ever used for everything and before it was Leafpad it was Notepad or what ever clone Linux offered. There's not much difference in them so have 20 years experience using it.


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## sidetone (Oct 19, 2019)

Vi is my preferred text editor for the console.

One inconvenience I have with vi, is when I want to edit the first position of the comment, for instance to add a # to comment out text, vi becomes no longer in insert mode. The indicator of which mode in vi is in helps.

Using `grep` on the terminal is better to compare files, than to manually compare them using leafpad. `cat` with >> is also useful to merge files. It depends on what I need, or what is more convenient at the moment.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Oct 20, 2019)

sidetone said:


> Vi is my preferred text editor for the console.



Now we're talking `ee`. I know the file hierarchy and if I do have a question another laptop always running to check.

I'm more interested in disk space when it comes to file size than comparing files and `df -h` what I use most. I used `grep` and `wc` to see how many Categories and Responses were in Demonica's Language Center.

Sitting at a terminal of text with a keyboard is what I always envisioned to be "real" computer usage before I ever used one so `ee` has an attraction for me. The AT&T and Bell Labs connection what first impressed me about UNIX then interested me in FreeBSD. This is really something I idolized a long time ago and made it happen. When Windows users ask what kind of computer I use I ask if they've seen Wargames or The Matrix and say like that.


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## eax.qbyte (Oct 20, 2019)

Trihexagonal said:


> I seriously doubt I would ever become anywhere near as fast at vim as I am Leafpad no matter how much I studied or used it.





Trihexagonal said:


> A text editor is all I've ever used for everything


I can agree when you working with GUI apps and get used to working with their menus and mouse and ..., it becomes hard too keep switching between them and terminal. Since terminal is  text only no menu, no mouse, ... . So choosing an editor like Leafpad seems reasonable.
That comes true specially if your desingings are *near* GUI level mostly.
But for many people specially low level programmers, long document editors, Vi(and Vim) has capablities hardly any other editor has.
One of those capablities is the Black Background!!!


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## Deleted member 30996 (Oct 20, 2019)

Markup Languages are all I write. XHTML and CSS and have written AIML and XML. I've always used a plain text editor and don't need anything with syntax highlighting or other features. I keep Leafpad fullscreen and minimized when working on my site and work from the taskbar to pull up what I need.

They used to have little "Made with Notepad" buttons for your web site and might have had one at GeoCities myself. I took pride in writing valid code by hand and learned at W3Schools, who I still patronize with a "I Love Validator" donation button.


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## Deleted member 48958 (Oct 20, 2019)

eax.qbyte said:


> That comes true specially if your desingings are *near* GUI level mostly.
> But for many people specially low level programmers, long document editors, Vi(and Vim) has capablities hardly any other editor has.
> One of those capablities is the Black Background!!!


Personally I see only advantages when using console version of editors/vim under X11, I like it much more than gvim, because, for example, it is possible to select text with two different types of selection, when using vim in xterm or urxvt, and it's quite handy, because sometimes you need to select text without moving vim cursor, to do this, just hold shift key and select required text, then you're able to paste it with shift+insert or middle mouse click. To enable vim mouse support add "set mouse=a" to your vimrc, so there is really no advantages of using GUI version of vim like gvim, just disadvantages.
 I'm using also black background in vim , but also I like terminal emulators with transparency support.


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## Deleted member 48958 (Oct 20, 2019)

Trihexagonal said:


> I do a lot of copy&paste from pages I've already typed by hand when working on my website and can normally have 10 or more open instances of Leafpad and Gimp to work from as I go. I have to think about what I'm doing with vim.


Vim also has tab support, to open files in tabs using vim, it is possible to use
`%  vim -p file1 file2 file3`… or `%  vim -p file*`



To switch tabs use ctrl+pageup/pagedown (or mouse click). To move tabs I'm using 
	
	



```
" ctrl+shift+alt+pgup/pgdn to move tabs
map <C-S-M-PageUp> :tabmove -1<CR>
map <C-S-M-PageDown> :tabmove +1<CR>
```
in vimrc. My full vimrc file may be found here.


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## olli@ (Oct 21, 2019)

I'm using editors/joe for 25 years. It's a fully configurable text editor with the usual modern features: programmable macros, syntax highlighting, binary/hex mode, auto-indent/-dedent, …(*) The default key bindings resemble those editors common in old DOS days (e.g. WordStar, Turbo Pascal, Borland C) that I used 35 years ago, so my fingers are pretty quick with those. 

I _can_ use vi if I have to. Thankfully that doesn't happen very often.

(*) The only feature missing is function folding, but apparently the developers are working on that.


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## CraigHB (Nov 10, 2019)

roccobaroccoSC said:


> If I were forced to write a long and important document on vi, I would have probably killed myself long before it's worth to save it.



Got a bit of a chuckle out of that, but I don't think I'd fare much better.  I only use vi/vim for system admin stuff, usually scripts or config files which generally aren't too  long.  I sometimes get confused and q! out of a text file to start over.  I can get the command and input modes confused and make a mess.  For a really long document that would make things very difficult for me.


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## sidetone (Dec 9, 2019)

I read that blue light from LED's can damage the eyes. It also damages the LED emitting the light itself. Sunlight full spectrum LED's also harm the eyes, perhaps more so, because these are for lighting up a room, not just a smaller space from a screen.

It would make more sense to change the spectrum of the LED to be limited to that of the needed color from the spectrum of sunlight at dawn or dusk. Most harmful sunlight at dusk/dawn is filtered, and everything lighted by it still has the identifiable color. A minor difference of blue/green contrast would be suitable, than a near perfect representation of blue. It will last longer, not be hard on the eyes, and the color of the closet represenation of the current blue degrades anyway. It's probably not even the blue itself, but the color near it, that is ultraviolet that we can't see.


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## eax.qbyte (Feb 10, 2020)

OJ said:


> I use green text on a black background and that's the clearest I've found. I did like the old IBM 5151 with the warm and slow phosphor, but nobody is using TTL these days. The nice thing about setting those colours in a GUI is that one can add a little more clarity, via coloured prompts etc. Also, green is at the centre of our light sensitivity and is generally fairly clean so that we avoid chromatic aberation and the slightly fuzzy image resulting from lack of common focus with multiple frequencies.





eax.qbyte said:


> I haven't researched about it, But really feel good with yellow on black.


Seems like you said my final choice at very first begining. Since I work with PC for long hours per day, I found out too shinny yellow is making me neurotic. I feel a lot homie with forestgreen text on black right now. steel blue could be my secondary choice.
So I bumped this thread because I think only colors of display are really spreading sensation into your mind. Since eyes are a direct way through brain and  staring at display which is neccessary, makes "direct way" a direct highway, this makes situation like hypnotism. Since hypnotism is known as psychological cure, harm, drug, or even food! with a good diet you can have a happy life and emit to people around you. Or even neutralise a lot of pscychological attacks to your family.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 10, 2020)

It's much easier than "hypnotism" and "direct highway". The human brain takes light brightness and color as an indicator of daytime. Which makes sense, for hundreds of thousands of years bright blue light meant day (time to hunt, gather, ...) and dark and reddish meant morning/evening (time to eat, sleep, and a few other tasks). By overloading our brain with bright and blue-ish colors (like good laptop screens) in the evening hours, our brain get confused, leading to lack of sleep, and a whole host of behavioral / psychological / psychiatric issues.

If you look at modern user interfaces and cell phones, you'll notice that depending on daytime, they dim the white screen background, they switch applications to "night mode" or "dark mode" (black background), and they remove blue from the palette. One can make the same choice manually by configuring terminal emulators.


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## kpedersen (Feb 10, 2020)

I like to keep my terminal grey on black and use the real world around me to provide for my pretty colour needs 

A computer is effectively a tool, I don't really feel that it should provide such a "wonderful graphical experience" as some others do. I personally find that any colors are a tad pointless.

Perhaps get a plant and stick it next to your monitor XD


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