[flockonus]

Traditional normal is not an absolute statement. Sure DOS / Unix back in the early days of PC displayed black backgrounds due the display's at the time working better this way.

Before that, people shared information in white paper; and the beginning of the internet brought it back with black text over white background.

Therefore there is no canonical traditional normal, it all depends when one joined.

[1000100_1000101]

Paper and paper-like writing surfaces were non-white for a long time before we got bleached white paper.

We haven't yet had a glowing-white paper.

Traditional-normal for computing was a dark background.

There was likely a technological limit in the use of pure white at the start when "emulating" paper. VGA 16-color mode likely meant that the choice was between bright white and medium grey, which was too dark. Configurability has lagged behind though.

[markhahn]

no, if you think trad-norm is dark mode, it just identifies when you started using computers.

[qwerty456127]

DOS notably used eye-friendly grey text, not bright white.