Filed under: Python
Kudos to anyone who has tried to code on plane or in an airport without noise canceling earphones. Not only is it way too noisy but the lighting can really mess with your eyes after a short time. My main issue when trying to accomplish something while in transit is finding enough space to open up my laptop fully, which means my viewing angle is far less than optimal.
On my last journey to the south I took some time to read up on colors and fonts used in IDE’s. There are a bunch of good sites out there with solid suggestions on programming fonts. For me I initially used Courier New (come on, who hasn’t accepted the defaults at one time or another) but soon switched over to Consolas when changed over to Vista — enjoyed Consolas for a while but then fell in love with Bitstream Vera Sans Mono after a stint working on one of my Ubuntu laptops.
For most (but not all) of our Python development we use Komodo IDE, this IDE allows full control (although the granularity of control could be better with respect to the categories of language Element Types) over the fonts and colors used. Here is the first scheme that we used (and some still use) in our shop when developing:
This one worked for quite some time for me but it was too harsh on my eyes when working on my laptop screen (using 1920×1200 resolution) but was OK when on my external display (24" Widescreen LCD). Fiddling with the various settings I’ve come up with these two schemes that really help reduce eye strain for me on my laptop screen and external display, even when surrounding light and viewing angles are sub-optimal.
This last one is the scheme that I’m presently using, it seems to work great on the plane — a subtle change is that the operators are bold, subtle but makes a difference.
