{"id":130,"date":"2009-04-04T14:32:02","date_gmt":"2009-04-04T19:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elegans.uky.edu\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2009-04-04T14:32:02","modified_gmt":"2009-04-04T19:32:02","slug":"256-colors-in-vim-on-os-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/?p=130","title":{"rendered":"256 colors in vim on OS X"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terminal colors are broken out of the box in OS X terminals. In part due to a poor OS X terminal implementation, part due to problems with vim. I try new colorschemes and get strange, random looking results.<\/p>\n

After many fruitless searches I finally got 256 colors working in vim in a terminal. This post<\/a> and the GVim site were very helpful. It turns out that the included Terminal app in OS X only supports 16 colors. The terminal background can be set to any color which confuses the issue. The colortest Perl script<\/a> available on the Gvim site makes this clear.
\nOS X Terminal colortest:
\n\"colortest<\/a><\/p>\n

The free GNU licensed iTerm<\/a> terminal does support 256 colors.
\niTerm colortest:
\n\"colortest<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, now the terminal supports 256 colors. There are still some hoops to jump through to get vi to show colors though. Most colorschemes are built for gui (using 24-bit RGB colors), so vim needs to be built with gui support. This can be checked with :echo has(‘gui’). It reports 1 for yes, 0 for no. The vim I had (default or Fink installed) didn’t have gui support, so I downloaded GVim and copied it over the old vim:<\/p>\n

cp \/Volumes\/Vim-7.2.148\/Vim.app\/Contents\/MacOS\/Vim \/usr\/bin\/vim<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and now vim has gui support.<\/p>\n

I copied \/usr\/share\/vimrc to \/usr\/bin because the downloaded vim didn’t know to look in \/usr\/share and added a few configuration lines:<\/p>\n

\n” Doesn’t get set right.
\nset t_Co=256<\/p>\n

” Needed because the new vim doesn’t know to look in \/usr\/share
\nset runtimepath=~\/.vim,\/usr\/share\/vim\/vim72_2,\/usr\/bin\/vimfiles,\/usr\/bin,\/usr\/bin\/vimfiles\/after,~\/.vim\/after
\nlet $VIMRUNTIME=’\/usr\/share\/vim\/vim72_2′<\/p>\n

syntax on
\ncolorscheme LightTan\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, so now 256-color support works and I can set colorschemes. They still don’t look right because colorschemes made for the gui don’t look right on a 256-color terminal. There’s a great vim script called CSApprox<\/a> that converts gui colors to the closest of the 256 colors and makes gui colors look pretty good in a terminal. Download it, unzip it, and copy files to the vim directory:
\nsudo cp plugin\/CSApprox.vim \/usr\/share\/vim\/vim72_2\/plugin
\nsudo cp autoload\/csapprox.vim \/usr\/share\/vim\/vim72_2\/autoload<\/code><\/p>\n

and now when I load colorschemes they look pretty close to what the Vim colorscheme test<\/a> site shows, with the only difference due to font differences.<\/p>\n

To get full color support when I log into a linux machine I need to do some more setup. To get gui support in terminal:
\nyum install vim-X11
\nand then add to \/etc\/profile:
\nalias vi=’gvim -v’
\nand “source \/etc\/profile” to enable it.
\nand add:<\/p>\n

\nset t_Co=256<\/p>\n

if &t_Co == 256
\n colorscheme LightTan
\nendif\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

to \/etc\/vimrc to force 256-color mode and pick a colorscheme.<\/p>\n

I also copied the CSApprox files to \/usr\/share\/vim\/vim70 and now it works when I ssh to this machine as well!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terminal colors are broken out of the box in OS X terminals. In part due to a poor OS X terminal implementation, part due to problems with vim. I try new colorschemes and get strange, random looking results. After many fruitless searches I finally got 256 colors working in vim in a terminal. This post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}