fisher@star.dec.com.UUCP (04/17/87)
>>In article <8704150210.AA21650@mitre-bedford.ARPA>, jhs@mitre-bedford.ARPA writes: >> I reiterate that OMNIVIEW looks best in dark letters on light background. >> It appears to me that in this mode, the eye "fools" the brain into seeing the >> letters as having a rounded shape, seen in silhouette against the bright scan >> lines of the raster.... >> >> -John Sangster / jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa > >Dark letters on a light background may look better to you, John, but I don't ... >You may have something there about the brain perceiving the characters as >being more rounded than they are, even more so in the dark-on-light mode. >I just can't use the latter. ... > >Nick DiMasi ...!ihnp4!ihlpm!njd A few comments: I think that color is a *really* *important* factor in how good people think that Omniview looks. I went into a store in MA looking for an Omniview demo: the people said that they did not have any in stock but they would show me a demo and then see if I still wanted it. They did show me a demo and indeed it looked *really* *terrible*. To the point of illegible. I was bummed and went home wondering how anyone (like jhs) could possible praise this thing. Then I got ahold of VT10**2 and tried it at home. Essentially the same results. Characters running into each other, rainbows, blurry uck, etc. Finally I tried a different version of VT10**2 (I'm a glutton for punishment) and VOILA! I could not believe how good it looked. At first I had to count the characters to really believe that I had 80 columns. Just for the heck of it, I unplugged my monitor and hooked it up to a regular old color TV. Still not bad! (BTW I have an 800XL and a Commodore 1702 monitor). Anyway, I started looking at the differences, and noticed that the good looking one was running black characters on a white background. The ukky one was light (white? I don't remember) on black. I don't remember what the Omniview demo colors were, but it was not black on white. Anyway, my theory is that if you choose the wrong colors, you get all sorts of artifacting causing color stripes across the characters. These stripes then screw up your eye's edge-detection algorithm. My continuing theory is that Omniview is probably as good as VT10**2 (in looks, that is), but I just have not seen it with the right colors. JHS uses an amber monochrome monitor, so he is immune from these problems. Perhaps David Young or someone can comment on bad and good color combinations? I'd be interested in knowing how rare good combinations are. Burns fisher@star.dec.com