Minsun Hong, a master student of Color Lab presented a poster entitled, “Color in Syntax Highlighting on Programmers’ Readability Assessment” on the AIC 2017 held in Jeju. In this study, she investigated the effect of color in programming language on readability. The study examined the influence of three color related attributes of text reading context, such as text-background polarity, text-background contrast, and text hue in programming language particularly focusing on text readability.  The study expects to be a starting point to provide further guidelines and text color themes of programming language based on human perception. 

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of color in programming language on readability. We examined the influence of three color attributes (text-background polarity, text-background contrast, and text hue) in programming language focusing on text readability by conducting a web-based survey. From this study, we discovered: (a) Unlike most text-readability of natural language on display, programming language in negative polarity (light text on dark background) has higher readability score than programming language in positive polarity(text on light background); (b) preferred text-background contrasts were differed by hue groups; (c) text hues ranging from yellow to green (45°~225°) are perceived as having better readability in negative polarity. This indicates a proper guide is necessary when a programming language forms sets of colored text in different polarities and text-background contrast levels. In this regard, the study is expected to be a starting point to provide further guidelines and text color themes of programming language based on human perception.