VIM 6.1 and syntax coloring

[Dr.Evil]

Hey all,

I'm having trouble getting vim's syntax highlighting to use ANSI colors in Terminal.app. I never had a problem with it before reinstalling my System last week, but now I can't get it to work with 6.0 (standalone install from osxgnu.org and fink version) or 6.1 (via fink). Is there a setting that I'm missing in my .vimrc? I'm just using the standard one (/sw/share/vim/vim61/vimrc_example.vim). I know it's not a problem with my Terminal settings because both lsc and bash have no problem with using colors.

Any help would be great.

[sao]

In your vimrc file do you have

:syntax enable

or for the GUI version, check in the gvimrc file.

Cheers...

[Dr.Evil]

Quote: Originally posted by sao In your vimrc file do you have :syntax enable

Yes. All it uses are bold and underline sequences, not color like it did before my reinstall. Trying colorscheme commands doesn't do anything, either. Is there some kind of ncurses support that I'm missing? I doubt that, since as I said, lsc and bash escape sequences work without a problem.

[sao]

I don't know exactly what's going on with your settings, but you may want to try this suggestions from the manual :

There can be a number of reasons why you don't see colors:

- Your terminal does not support colors. Vim will use bold, italic and underlined text, but this doesn't look very nice. You probably will want to try to get a terminal with colors. For Unix, I recommend the xterm from the XFree86 project: |xfree-xterm|.

- Your terminal does support colors, but Vim doesn't know this.
Make sure your $TERM setting is correct. For example, when using an xterm that supports colors:

setenv TERM xterm-color

or (depending on your shell):

TERM=xterm-color; export TERM

The terminal name must match the terminal you are using.


or


Most color xterms have only eight colors. They should work with these lines in your .vimrc:

:if has("terminfo")
: set t_Co=8
: set t_Sf=<Esc>[3%p1%dm
: set t_Sb=<Esc>[4%p1%dm
:else
: set t_Co=8
: set t_Sf=<Esc>[3%dm
: set t_Sb=<Esc>[4%dm
:endif

[<Esc> is a real escape, type CTRL-V <Esc>]

You might want to put these lines in an ":if" that checks the name of your
terminal, for example:

:if &term =~ "xterm"
put above lines here
:endif

Note: Do these settings BEFORE doing ":syntax on". Otherwise the colors may be wrong.

Hope this helps. Let me know.


PS: What happens when you use Vim GUI and from the menu you select file and then color scheme?


Cheers...

[Dr.Evil]

Quote: Originally posted by sao Most color xterms have only eight colors. They should work with these lines in your .vimrc: :if has("terminfo") : set t_Co=8 : set t_Sf=<Esc>[3%p1%dm : set t_Sb=<Esc>[4%p1%dm :else : set t_Co=8 : set t_Sf=<Esc>[3%dm : set t_Sb=<Esc>[4%dm :endif [<Esc> is a real escape, type CTRL-V <Esc>]

Thanks. Adding those lines to my .vimrc took care of the problem without having to muck around with the TERM variable. I did specify initially that I was using Terminal.app.

[sao]

Glad it worked.



Cheers...

[osxpez]

I just put the following line in my .vimrc

let &t_Co = 8

Without any tests or anything. Should I ever use a terminal that doesn't support eight colors (like using my Palm device or some such) I only need execute

:let &t_Co = 2

from within vim.

[sao]

osxpez,

Yes,

let &t_Co = 8

works very fine.

Well, yours is short, mine is long.

Thanks.

Cheers...

[Dr.Evil]

I just upgraded to a newer iBook, so I had to go through all of this again.

let &t_Co = 8

doesn't work by itself, but sao's solution worked just fine, just as it did before. Just thought I'd report back on the issue.

Chad