Re: screenblank, and inverse video

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> Speaking of which, is there a technical reason why the console is
> black-on-white instead of white-on-black?

It's been a while since I dragged out my mac68k, but as I recall the
answer is "no".  (Fixing that, in cases where it's relevant, is one of
the first things I do, part of building my own kernel.)

> I assume so, and that it is nontrivial to change, because I imagine
> someone would have done so already if it were easy, because of the
> factor I just mentioned.

I actually suspect not.  Years of black-on-white indoctrination has a
lot of people thinking that that's the normal way to do it; I suspect
that, in one form or another, is what's behind NetBSD's defaulting that
way these days.  (This is probably reinforced by the peecee world,
which by now almost invariably uses flatscreens, and most flatscreens
are fundamentally transmissive.  This means their "no action" state
displays white, in contrast to a CRT's emissive technology, which
defaults to black.  You want true black out of a transmissive
flatscreen, you have to turn off the backlight.  Now that emissive
flatscreens are beginning to show up, this may start to change...but
maybe not, too, since black-on-white made substantial inroads before
flatscreens became widespread.)

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