Re: White Text
The controlling factors with regards to practicality are the default colors of the media and pigments that are mostly readily obtained.
Paper, owing to its physical composition, is naturally light in color. And, the bleaching required for deriving uniformity from a non-uniform stream of input material, drives the color of the end product toward the white end of the scale. At the same time, dark pigments for use as inks are more easily derived from natural elements than is white.
Were we to live in world which provided us with an easy and ready source of the opposite, we would most likely be accustomed to printed material comprised of white ink on dark paper.
Slate boards, naturally derived, are an obvious common usage of white images on a black background, one that works eminently well.
Electronic displays, be they CRTs, LEDs, LCDs, etal. have a default state of being "off," or black; the generation of light requires an input of energy. Light text or images on a dark background are therefore both natural and less consuming of power.
Even the eye functions with its default state being the absence of light; photoreceptors are triggered only by the presence of light. And, given that rods predominate over color sensing cones, which are operative only above a minimum threshold level of light, white on black is more easily detected than is any other combination.
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