black
black
- Subject: black
- From: "Simson Garfinkel" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 00:32:56 -0500
Am I the only person who misses the color black?
I have a considerable background in usability and human factors issues. It's
my understanding that high-contrast type is easier on a computer screen to
read than low-contrast type, especially when you consider that screens are
basically low-contrast devices to begin with.
I have been trying to figure out why the screen of my G4 powerbook is so
much more readable when it is in System 9 than in System 10. Then I started
playing around with DigitalColor Meter. It turns out that OSX rarely, if
ever, actually displays black-on-white text.
Instead of displaying black-on-white text, it uses these wonderful soft
fonts. I guess people like them. But they are not black. They are
light-to-dark-grey. Using Digital Color Meter, for instance, I've determined
that the number "1" that is displayed with the default Finder fonts and
sizes has a vertical segment that is two pixels wide, and these pixels each
have the value of 0x7b7b7b. Black is 0x000000, white is 0xffffff.
It turns out that when you have a line that is 2 pixels wide, each pixel
being 7b7b7b, this is simply not as sharp a line as a line that is 1 pixel
wide, 0x000000.
In fact, soft fonts are usually a mistake for small type, for precisely this
reason. I've sent email to the folks at Apple about this and I have gotten
back various responses which indicate that there is no problem --- this is
the way it is supposed to work.
One of the results of this is that I find it much easier to do my writing on
my Windows XP computer than my OSX computer, because the XP computer still
has black-on-white type, and not grey-on-white type (although you can make
it grey-on-white by asking for Microsoft's "Clear Type" which is almost as
bad as OSX's built-in anti-aliased fonts.)
So I'm asking --- am I the only person who misses the color black?
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: black
- From: Nat! <email@hidden>
- Re: black
- From: Enigmarelle Development <email@hidden>