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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

No. It’s stupid. There’s a reason we don’t write white text on black paper. There’s a reason the first Mac showing black text on a white background was such an improvement.

I don’t get the point at all (and don’t want to hear it, I’ve seen the arguments before).

It’s nice it’s there for people who want it but it baffles me it’s constantly treated like the greatest thing ever.

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> There’s a reason we don’t write white text on black paper.

Because wood is bright and you can’t really print white ink on a black paper?

There might be a usability advantage but using black ink on white paper doesn’t really prove that, that’s just the easier option of the two possible choices.

It’s easier, sure. Especially at first. But we’ve had paper for a while now. Different colors of ink too. If light text on dark background was superior, we would be using it. And could have for hundreds of years for anything considered important.

The playing field isn't level.

I can't buy a white pencil or ballpoint pen that works as reliably as something from Ticonderoga or Bic. White Sharpie markers do not exist. White inkjet cartridges do exist, but they're specialized items that have a high ratio of solids and this produces far worse clogging issues than the CMYK we're used to using.

I disagree, white on black could hypothetically be 5% better for the eyes and it wouldn’t be worth it to switch. If black on white were horrible for the eyes and the inverse was 10 times better, sure.

> There’s a reason the first Mac showing black text on a white background was such an improvement

Apple soon started offering a dark mode as an accessibility feature https://kalleboo.com/linked/mac_closeview_control_panel.png

That’s an accessibility feature.

It was not an intended way to use things all the time for a large chunk of the user population.

Not the same.

Accessibility features are often the bellwether of the needs of abled users as well.

When Apple introduced Liquid Glass, "reduce transparency" was also an accessibility feature.

I use some accessibility features. I know they’re “not just for the disabled”.

But that’s still quite different to me to how people treat dark mode.

I promise you 20/30/40% of people or whatever were not using invert colors on the Mac or Windows.

Yeah, just wait until you are not the target market.

Notably, also the Xerox Alto was black on white already.

> No. It’s stupid. There’s a reason we don’t write white text on black paper.

That being that black paper is more expensive than white and that we're stuck with historical precedence?

Reading white text on a black background is much, much easier for me, and the few times I've had the pleasure of doing the same with paper, I still found it to be better. I haven't tried longer texts, since nobody's publishing actual books with black paper, but I'm willing to bet it I'd feel the same about those.

This just reads to me the 'serifs are important because they make reading easier (when reading of paper)', which doesn't reflect my lived experience at all. The only reason these phenomena seem to exist are historical accident and people being used to them.

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