Introducing Daltonism
March 5th, 2009Syntax highlighting makes writing source code easier by improving readability and making errors more obvious.
Pair programming aims to increase developer productivity by allowing each developer to concentrate on one aspect of writing source code.
There’s just one problem when these two innovations collide; some people can’t see all of those colors. They are color blind.
That’s where Daltonism comes in. Daltonism is a Textmate theme that helps pair programmers with different color perception work together on the same document, on the same screen, at the same time. There are broadly three main categories of color blindness (or Dichromacy), Deuteranopia, Protanopia, and Tritanopia. The principle design goal for the Daltonism theme was to provide good contrast for each of these color perceptions, along with what might be called normal human vision.
Textmate & Daltonism Viewed with Normal Vision
Textmate & Daltonism Viewed with Tritanopia
Daltonism is named after John Dalton, who—amongst other major achievements—wrote the first scientific paper on color blindness in 1794.