Danno: i can’t speak from experience, not having used it much, but at least when i operate within the context of the terminal window colors on black has been much less strain inducing.

Fraxas: amen, sir, amen. make things easy and attractive, and you’re off to a good start.

Edward: i suspect you’re right - Cote, for one, is an emacs user with a unique color scheme.

Today’s proved to be an exciting day so far: I caught with an old friend from the Mesa/FX days, John Arley Burns. It turns out he’s had a lot of experience in his current job testing out open source systems…

The very few applications out there that Actually Get that features are useless unless they are findable and usable are the immensely popular ones, and the rest of us developers still haven’t cottoned on to that. The same is true for standards: HTML took off because HTML parsers are incredibly tolerant of error. WS-* is dying the death because it’s insufficiently discoverable and its tools are not tolerant of error. Java’s ubiquitous, meaningful stack traces are *one of the languages most important features*.

You should change the black to a slightly dark gray. That really reduces eye-strain.

Alternatively, try changing your white background to a slightly yellowish color or a light grey, so it looks more like it’s paper instead of some unholy white field.

I have configured BBEdit to use the same basic color scheme, but where TextMate beats the pants off BBEdit is (as you noted) with the theme switching capabilities.

The most obvious practical application of this is when using my laptop outside. In the sunlight, it’s easier to see dark text on a light background than vice versa - and TextMate’s themes let me switch between these choices easily.