Reducing tab size

[Lukas Barth]

Luke Schierer schrieb:
> On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 01:18:02AM +0200, Hylke Bons wrote:
>> That with the (grayed out) italic text sounds like a good idea, and is
>> not to hard to get used too.
>> The strikethrough really bothers me, it looks really weird and makes
>> text harder to read..
>>
>> Hylke
> 
> Strike through text *is* harder to read.  But then, its also a heck of a
> lot harder to talk to someone who is offline ;-)
> 
> The (silly) correleation aside, it being harder to read is Okay because
> its telling you that the tab doesn't matter as much, since the person is
> no longer around.

Again, I'm no biologist, but watching myself I think if I see a word 
somewhere (may it be a buddy's name on a tab), my eyes will 
automatically read it. So, if you are writing a software, you should try 
to make all the text as readable as possible, because this will prevent 
your user's eyes from becoming tired (just consider all the effort 
typesetters are putting on this) and because it will increase your users 
productivity (because their eyes will be done with reading the word 
faster and therefore can do something else).

I know this sounds nitpicking here, about all the tired eyes and 
microseconds wasted reading striked through text, but if you're using a 
monitor a lot this really matters. For example right now my pidgin is 
showing a nick grayed out, italics, striked through. I can only guess 
which user this is, trying to read the username is a pain for the eyes. ;)

In conclusion, I don't think "make unimportant text hard to read" is a 
good idea, because your eyes will try to read it anyway.

Lukas