From: Conrad Schneiker <schneik@...>
Date: 2000-12-02T02:42:47+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6706] Re: Syntax highlighting in XEmacs

Hugh Stasse writes:

# On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Conrad Schneiker wrote:
# 
# > differs from the 2 Vim schemes. Is there any chance of a common 
# > consolidated scheme? As color slowly becomes ever more seemingly 
# 
# Jim Weirich wrote:
# 
# J> I get green strings and red comments. [...]
# 
# About a quarter of males are red-green colour blind. (In Western
# populations, anyway, from what I have read.)  I heard recently
# that there is a fairly common yellow-blue colour blindness too
# (I think it was in "New Scientist" that I read about it).

Ah, the National Enquirer of science. :-) 
Which I still subscribe to, in addition to Science, Nature, and so on.

# Why do we *need* a standard for this?

For simple, human-friendly consistency. As color illustrations become 
increasingly inexpensive and convenient to produce in print and on the web 
(e.g. screen shots and textual similes thereof), we are increasingly 
likely to see color syntax highlighting, whether or not we make personal 
use of it in our editors. (Unless exchanges such as this dissuades most 
people from producing such things in significant quantities.) Likewise, 
some people may use various Ruby IDEs or editors that support syntax 
highlighting. It might be nice if these all followed the same (default) 
syntax coloring convention. (Although the Emacs OS may thwart this.)
 
# > Finally, out of curiosity, do most people that use syntax highlighting 

# > also normally use dark text on a light background, or light text on a 
dark 
# > background?
# 
# The two things are independent (syntax highlighting,
# background choice).

Although the subjective readability for many people might not be. Hence 
the question about the (mutually independent) selections (individual) 
people make. Although Dave accuses me of being a Luddite (even though I 
don't see syntax highlighting as a threat to my livelihood, and even 
though I've never gone around smashing other programmer's color CRTs :-), 
the main reason I don't use syntax highlighting is that I've found the 
"out of the box" schemes reduce readability (for me) for my favorite (CRT, 
not print) mode of light text on a dark background.

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)