Re: Off Topic, Part 2 (Avant Stellar keyboards)

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Carlo Caballero wrote:

> Beautiful flat-screen B & W monitors? Gee, I wish you had pitched some of
> those my way! Especially if they were true black-and-white, sometimes
> called "paper-white," to distinguish them from the amber-on-black or
> green-on-black types. Surely my original black-and-white monitor, circa
> 1992, is going to blink out soon (it was twice repaired, though, curiously
> the last time was 1994), and I fear that I'm not going to have any choice
> but to replace it with a color monitor.

Quite probably.

> My computer is a writing machine,
> pure and simple (hence XyWrite). I use the Macintosh in my office for the
> Internet, etc. I LIKE colors, and they're useful or even necessary in
> some applications, but I find that looking at color monitors wearies my
> eyes much more quickly, even if the screen is set all in grays. And if
> I'm writing in XyWrite, I don't NEED colors.
>
The problem, at least for my eyes, is that bright white screen that Bill
Gates thinks you want. I have customized my colors to navy blue on ice
blue, which works well for me. Another thing: I have a special
prescription written for computer work, with the distance corrected for
the distance between my eyes and my computer screen, etc. etc. They've
got a slight brown tint, too.

> Does anyone else share this optical prejudice?

But no, I don't share Carlo's predjudice. Colors are too useful for
items such as redlining, italics, boldface, etc. I used XyDos 4.017. My
basic colors are standard-issue light grey on blue. My italics are coded
for light grey on lavender; my boldface for white on green. Redline
deletes are black on red; redline inserts are black on green.
Superscripts are light grey on red.

In short, I couldn't work w/o colors.

--
Leslie Bialler
Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx