Many of us tend to stare at a console / terminal screen for much of the day.
What set of colors do you use on your terminal? Which do you find cause more eye strain / fatigue?
I tend to find grey on black to be easiest on the eyes, but are there other color choices that may be more eye friendly?
White on black is the default, but I prefer black on white because it's easier to read and thus causes less eye fatigue.
I think it's no coincidence that black font on white background is most common set.
I'm also pretty sure, that I read about that being best in an article.
I found an article, although it is german.
In short: No colors if possible. Black text on white screen, due to high contrast and the eye does not have to adapt (i.e. reading in a book usually also black on white ).
There probably are other articles in english. Like this one from the WHO for their regional office in South-East Asia.
And an article that considers also placement of display (colors also!): here (is pretty old though)
I prefer high contrast, but not extreme. Generally black text on a light gray background.
When I re-configure my cmd.exe windows in Windows to look like this, most people (including fellow developers) fail to recognize the window as a normal terminal.
The default mac terminal colors are difficult to read. The main black on white or white on black is fine, but don't forget about the other colors: they're important too! I've found these colors particularly easy to distinguish in long editing sessions... the link's specific to mac, but I ended up copying the colors for other platforms too.
Don't forget that in colourized terminals, the primary contrast isn't the only important feature - the other colours are important too!
Basic ergonomy rules tells us that we should keep the background of the console the same color as the surrounding environment, and text in as high contrast as possible.
Scientific evidence is harder, but there have been articles posted around over the years.. hopefully some web posts will turn up.
Some of the above are suggesting super high contrast -- but in my experience (and I'm thinking I recall it from some of the articles I've read) that this leads to eye strain. You don't want high contrast, you want easy to read .. which may not be the same thing.
Theres also 'fun' and easy to read; I often like to go with the old Amiga style say (white on blue -- good contrast, but not so harsh; it doesn't have to be black and whites.) Also, a variation of that that I've used on Xterms for years is 'white on brown', or really 'white on neutral colour'. The backgtround shoudl not be too light for a lighter colour text, but you can switch to maroon, brown, etc, no problem.
(Years ago in sawfish and other easily configurable window manages, I had them scripted to launch eavh new xterm with a slightly different background colour and minimal frame widgets; minimize distractions, maximize working space in a terminal say, and using white on maroon at the time; the darkness of the background would increase every time a new terminal was opened, so sliding two against each other you could still see the different even without much window decoration or frame width.)
So not scientific, but there are many options open to you. (Doubly important as your eyes age..)
jeff
light grey on black background. When I code I don't want to look into a lamp.