Legibility

[wizwho]

The current fad of using small, light grey or other light colored text makes it near impossible for my aging eyes to read anything without magnifying my display to ridiculous sizes—a real pain. Could you at least provide some text size and color options in Progress and and on your website?

Thanks

[sergiomajluf]

Hello Wizwho I think you are right on complaining about the colors (actually both, the font size and the font color in the editor are adjustable. The first, in the preferences, the latter, through preferences.txt). In fact, I had just prepared a small sample page to try different color schemes. The attached image proves what you are saying; it's a grayscale screenshot of current color scheme, where you can indeed see the different weight for each color. I'm proposing either a more balanced version, or even a new colord scheme derived from that.

Please take a look at http://basa.cl/processing-code-color/ and give me feedback so I can try to improve the color balance and propose a different/better color scheme for Processing.

[REAS]

@wizwho You can increase the size of the type in the Preferences. I'll look into making the colors darker in the IDE. With the website, I think the gray is dark enough to be very legible.

@sergiomajluf Color is subjective. The current colors are pleasing to me and your suggestions aren't. I can read that you have the opposite opinion; we see color differently. Based on these requests, I'm going to look into normalizing the values to make them stronger. The gray comparison is only valid for creatures who can't see color. Saturation and hue have a strong affect on perception, it's not all about brightness/value.

[sergiomajluf]

Hi Casey, thanks for the prompt feedback. Indeed color is very subjective, and I'm not complaining about the colors per se, rather pointing the relationship between their saturation and brightness. In fact, I do like the current theme (can I call it that way?), but I think it would benefit from some extra normalizing.

What I was trying to achieve with this as an exercise, was a way to evaluate which combinations would provide a better experience for people like @wizwho and others. If you look closely (I'm sure you did) all of the colours I used were based on the originals. Only the first one is a really different hue, and I also agree it's probably not the best one. The idea of changing that specific one, though, is to avoid having two blue colours being too close to each other.

[REAS]

@sergiomajluf Yes, and I appreciate the effort you took in trying to improve and document it. I will evaluate this again and confer with @benfry and I'll report back.

[REAS]

Here you can see two comparisons of the Processing 2.0 beta 8 (2b8) release compared to a proposed new color palette for the upcoming 2b9 release. As suggested, I've made the colors darker. I can see that the teal color is too close to the blue, but at the moment, I think having a "rainbow" in the text editor is potentially more of an issue. I'll continue to think about it and I'm listening.

[wizwho]

Thanks Sergio and Casey for including me in the loop. As a digital design and software engineer I find useful the monospaced font and color coding, and the generally clean, precise, organized tone of traditional coding layouts.

My problem is that my 70 year old eyes aren't what they used to be. I have floaters, incipient cataracts, astigmatism, and can no longer read the instructions on food packages without a magnifying glass. I have compensated online by enlarging the screen text as needed, but grey text is just too much to deal with. I need contrast to focus. Thin lines tend to disappear, and if they are grey it's much worse. Your latest proposed scheme is better, but for folks like me the darker and heavier the better.

I refer you to BBedit and the Mac Terminal apps pref panes for examples of how you could make the color scheme a user preference, which would satisfy everybody I think. In any case, both these pref panes have some default colors which might be useful for your next release to resolve the Teal/Blue collision.

Even better, create prefs for typeface and weight as well. I know that's a big job, but it sure would be nice.

I am also a web designer, photographer, and videographer. A couple of things I have learned that may be helpful:

Stark white screens are too bright and too blue which causes eye strain, fatigue, and even headaches in many who have to stare at them all day. This has been confirmed by my architect friends who always operate with white and colored text/lines on a black background. I also routinely color-invert my screen (cmd-opt-ctrl-8) when I get a white page. You might give that some thought.

Studies have shown that blue light at night before bed and especially in bed can interfere with sleep which can lead to serious health consequences. In my websites I do my best to persuade my clients to at least knock down the blue a little bit by using a warmer background, say a pale yellow or tan. I love parchment, but that might be a little too steampunk for your project. Then again, lots of steampunk fans out there and going in that direction would sure make your project stand out.

Hope this helps,

wizwho

On Feb 26, 2013, at 10:57 AM, Casey Reas notifications@github.com wrote:

Here you can see two comparisons of the Processing 2.0 beta 8 (2b8) release compared to a proposed new color palette for the upcoming 2b9 release. As suggested, I've made the colors darker. I can see that the teal color is too close to the blue, but at the moment, I think having a "rainbow" in the text editor is potentially more of an issue. I'll continue to think about it and I'm listening.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[sergiomajluf]

Thanks @REAS, I think this is great

[REAS]

Color tweaks have been implemented for 2.0b9. @wizwho I'm sorry, but the scope of change that you're suggesting is beyond what we can do right now. Color coding the text can be edited manually in the "preferences.txt" file. Making a tool for the environment is the best way to add color coding. This is on our current list of desired Tools: http://wiki.processing.org/w/Create_Tools. It's in the "Environment Tweaks and Improvements" section.

[sergiomajluf]

Excellent! Thank you very much for making all of this possible

[wizwho]

Ok, thanks for the feedback and the preferences.txt tip. Making the tool sounds like the way to go. Best, r

On Mar 5, 2013, at 3:04 PM, Casey Reas notifications@github.com wrote:

Color tweaks have been implemented for 2.0b9. @wizwho I'm sorry, but the scope of change that you're suggesting is beyond what we can do right now. Color coding the text can be edited manually in the "preferences.txt" file. Making a tool for the environment is the best way to add color coding. This is on our current list of desired Tools: http://wiki.processing.org/w/Create_Tools. It's in the "Environment Tweaks and Improvements" section.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.