Mac OS X vim colors mangled

Question

Here's my setup

• Mac OS X 10.6
• VIM (default version that comes with OSX 10.6)
• rails.vim (installed in .vim/autoload)
• ir_black.vim (installed in .vim/colors)
• i have "colorscheme ir_black" and "syn on" in ~/.vimrc

Now when I go into terminal and edit a ruby file with vim my colors are messed up. There are only a few colors showing up and some text is even blinking. I'm wondering if there's a conflict between rails.vim syntax highlighting and the ir_black color scheme? Can anyone help me fix this? I would like to use the ir_black color scheme.

Conversation

The general solution to something like this in linux is to install the appropriate terminal specifications (generally in a package like ncurses-term). It can also happen if your colorscheme is (carelessly) trying to use 256 colors when the terminal doesn't support it, I believe. – Nalepka

Answer 1

The Mac OSX Terminal.app in Snow Leopard does not support 256 colors, which is required for the ir_black theme (this is the theme I use).

Download and try something like iTerm.app (http://iterm.sourceforge.net/), and you shouldn't have a problem with colors.

Or you could use MacVim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/)

Edit: As of OSX 10.7 Lion, the built in Terminal.app now supports 256 colors. See the comment below by Chris Page for how to achieve this.

Primer

Thank you for the answer. Is there a terminal command to see how many colors the current terminal supports? I googled but can't find anything. – Conversation

I can't find one either. I did find infocmp, however, that reports 256 colors in Terminal.app, which is incorrect. – Primer

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal now supports 256 colors. The most direct way to see the number of colors supported by the current terminfo ($TERM) is tput colors. @Bryan Ross, either you're using Lion or a custom terminfo is selected. Check Terminal > Preferences > Settings > [profile] > Advanced > Declare terminal as. This sets the value of $TERM (in fact, that's all it does). Prior to Lion the default value is xterm-color, which declares 8 colors as shown by TERM=xterm-color tput colors, although most programs seem to assume 16 are supported if 8 are. – Kimberly

I have the same issue with the Mac terminal on El Capitan. Even though it's configured to xterm-256color. I've also tried using that Base16-Shell fixer but that made no difference for me – Manslayer

Answer 2

I've been using a nearly identical setup, except for vim, which I grab from Macports. A few years ago I found ir_black and loved it. I now use it for all vim sessions, Terminal.app, and TextMate. Getting it to work with Leopard, and then Snow Leopard was a tad hokey. But things have improved. Follow the instructions here, Making Terminal.app look great in Snow Leopard.

Gerund

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal now supports 256 colors. So using SIMBL is no longer necessary. – Kimberly

Answer 3

As mentioned by others, ir_black requires 256 colors, which is not supported by Terminal on 10.6.x and earlier.

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal now supports 256 colors and the default $TERM value is xterm-256colors. ir_black should work fine for you if you upgrade to Lion.

Kimberly

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal now supports 256 colors. – Kimberly

Answer 4

on testing which colors can be displayed in your terminal of choice: i just found this perl script on vim.org which dumps a list of 256 colors your terminal could possibly display... http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1349

Retrieve

Answer 5

I have been using iTerm and was shocked to find out Terminal.app doesn't support 256 colors! I recommend Bryan's answer.

However, if you ever get in a bind like this, you can change $TERM to vt100 and vim won't try to use colors. In bash (the default MacOSX shell) you set this with:

export TERM='vt100'

Lisp

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal now supports 256 colors. – Kimberly

Answer 6

I use ir_black in Terminal.app but in 16 color mode, and it looks great. If you really prefer 256 color, I recommend iTerm2. The settings allow you to have the terminal report itself as "xterm-256" which is what's needed to use 256 colors in Vim.

Check this website for the procedure: http://kevin.colyar.net/2011/01/pretty-vim-color-schemes-in-iterm2

There is a ir_black-based Vim theme called tir_black which is better suited for 256 colors: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2777

Looks awesome!

iTerm2 also has loads of nifty features.

I hope this helps.

Printing

As of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Terminal now supports 256 colors. – Kimberly

Thanks Chris. Indeed my comment applies to Snow Leopard. Anyhow I hope some find it useful. – Printing

Yes, I understand. I was just trying to provide an update, since the answer is now different on Lion. – Kimberly

Answer 7

I had the same issue with iTerm and solved it by going to Settings > Profile > Terminal > Report Terminal Type and setting it to xterm-256color.

Cultigen