Re: What Is The Point Of Dark Mode?

Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> wrote:

John:
 

What's the default framebuffer console background color on
a SPARCstation?
>
What's the default color scheme in a Plan 9 'terminal'
window? Or on a Lisp Machine window?
>
It seems like as soon as we started getting high-
resolution bitmap screens, the common response was to
mutter "thank God, finally!" and implement black text on
white background.

 
What is the connextion between resolution and light mode?

There is no direct connection.  The previous poster could simply have
said "started getting ... bitmap screens" -- as it was the "bitmaps",
not necessarily the "high resolution" that was the trigger.

I say light mode is more typical of GUI programs because it allows
for large areas of brightly-coloured interface elements and icons,

To get a good idea why 'light mode' came about you have to remember how
the first GUI's were 'advertised'.  As a "desktop" -- with most of the
UI elements styled to resemble a real world physical desktop (anyone
remember apple's 'waste basket' that looked like a typical office
desk side waste basket).

And at the time, what were "real world desks" covered in?  Loads of
sheets of paper.

And what 'color' were most of those sheets of paper?  With rare
exception, they were white paper with black typewriter ink for the text
(or black or blue ink for handwritten paper).

With this background, and the GUI 'artists' of the time trying
extremely hard to make their newfangled GUI look as much like a
physical desktop as possible, having everything be 'light colors'
(white background, black text) made the metaphor of a "desktop" seem to
more closely resemble an actual physical desktop.

whereas dark mode requires that most of the screen be dark, which
means window title bars and backgrounds cannot be so varied and
discernible.

The GUI artists likely took advantage of this fact, but this fact was
not likely 'why' they went "light mode" coloring.  That was much more
likely so that the virtual "desktop" they were creating would more
closely resemble a real world desk that they were (at the time) telling
everyone their system resembled, so it would be "soo easy" for everyone
to immediately begin using it with no training needed (or so they
thought).