Display Chrome

What makes a readout look like hardware instead of like text: nine panel skins (LED red/amber/green/blue, VFD, plasma, and the backlit and reflective LCDs) plus the pure string builders that draw them — a recessed pane with the bezel's overhang along its top edge and a vignette to the corners, a bloom radius that is zero on reflective screens because a halo round a dark LCD character is the giveaway of a fake one, ghosts derived from the ink so a colour override drags the unlit elements with it, and a spill shadow that washes the panel around the window in proportion to how much of the display is lit.