Solarized Colorscheme for Vim

Developed by Ethan Schoonover [email protected]

Visit the Solarized Homepage

See the homepage for the Solarized colorscheme for screenshots, details and colorscheme versions for Vim, Mutt, popular terminal emulators and other applications.

Screenshots

Downloads

If you have come across this colorscheme via the vim-only repository on github, or the vim.org script page see the link above to the Solarized homepage or visit the github repository for Solarized.

Installation

Option 1: Manual installation

1. Move solarized.vim to your .vim/colors directory. After downloading the vim script or package:

   $ cd vim-colors-solarized/colors
   $ mv solarized.vim ~/.vim/colors/
   

Option 2: Pathogen installation (recommended)

1. Download and install Tim Pope's Pathogen.

2. Next, move or clone the vim-colors-solarized directory so that it is a subdirectory of the .vim/bundle directory.

   a. Clone:

       $ cd ~/.vim/bundle
       $ git clone git://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized.git
   

   b. Move:

   In the parent directory of vim-colors-solarized:
   
       $ mv vim-colors-solarized ~/.vim/bundle/
   

Modify .vimrc

After either Option 1 or Option 2 above, put the following two lines in your .vimrc:

set background=dark
colorscheme solarized

or, for the light background mode of Solarized:

set background=light
colorscheme solarized

I like to have a different background in GUI and terminal modes, so I can use the following if-then. However, I find vim's background autodetection to be pretty good and, at least with MacVim, I can leave this background value assignment out entirely and get the same results.

if has('gui_running')
    set background=light
else
    set background=dark
endif

See the Solarized homepage for screenshots which will help you select either the light or dark background.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR TERMINAL USERS:

If you are going to use Solarized in Terminal mode (i.e. not in a GUI version like gvim or macvim), please please please consider setting your terminal emulator's colorscheme to used the Solarized palette. I've included palettes for some popular terminal emulator as well as Xdefaults in the official Solarized download available from Solarized homepage. If you use Solarized without these colors, Solarized will by default use an approximate set of 256 colors. It isn't bad looking and has been extensively tweaked, but it's still not quite the real thing.

If you do use the custom terminal colors, simply add the following line before the colorschem solarized line:

let g:solarized_termcolors=16

Advanced Configuration

Solarized will work out of the box with just the two lines specified above but does include several other options that can be set in your .vimrc file.

Set these in your vimrc file prior to calling the colorscheme. " option name default optional ------------------------------------------------ g:solarized_termcolors= 256 | 16 g:solarized_termtrans = 0 | 1 g:solarized_degrade = 0 | 1 g:solarized_bold = 1 | 0 g:solarized_underline = 1 | 0 g:solarized_italic = 1 | 0 g:solarized_style = "dark" | "light" g:solarized_contrast = "normal"| "high" or "low" ------------------------------------------------

Option Details

• g:solarized_termcolors

  The most important option if you are using vim in terminal (non gui) mode! See my diatribe above regarding terminal colors. This tells Solarized to use the 256 degraded color mode if running in a 256 color capable terminal. Otherwise, if set to 16 it will use the terminal emulators colorscheme (best option as long as you've set the emulators colors to the Solarized palette).

• g:solarized_termtrans

  If you use a terminal emulator with a transparent background and Solarized isn't displaying the background color transparently, set this to 1 and Solarized will use the default (transparent) background of the terminal emulator. urxvt required this in my testing; Terminal.app/iTerm2 did not.

• g:solarized_degrade

  For test purposes only; forces Solarized to use the 256 degraded color mode to test the approximate color values for accuracy.

• g:solarized_bold | g:solarized_underline | g:solarized_italic

  If you wish to stop Solarized from displaying bold, underlined or italicized typefaces, simply assign a zero value to the appropriate variable, for example: let g:solarized_italic=0

• g:solarized_style

  Simply another way to force Solarized to use a dark or light background.
  It's better to use set background=dark or set background=light in your .vimrc file. This option is mostly used in scripts (quick background color change) or for testing.

• g:solarized_contrast

  Stick with normal! It's been carefully tested. Setting this option to high or low does use the same Solarized palette but simply shifts some values up or down in order to expand or compress the tonal range displayed.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR TERMINAL USERS

If you are running vim in a terminal, Solarized will run in 256 color mode if the terminal supports it, but those 256 colors are (in all 256 color terminal emulators) limited to a "degraded" color palette. While the colors will all approximate the specific Solarized color values, if you prefer an accurate color palette you can set the ANSI colors in your terminal and use the 16 color terminal mode using the g:solarized_termcolors="16" option detailed below. The ANSI color map is specified in the table below and terminal color themes are available for download from the web page listed at the top of this file, including xorg defaul color values and themes for OS X Terminal.app and iTerm2.

Toggle Background Function

Here's a quick script that toggles the background color, using F5 in this example. You can drop this into .vimrc:

function! ToggleBackground()
    if (w:solarized_style=="dark")
    let w:solarized_style="light"
    colorscheme solarized
else
    let w:solarized_style="dark"
    colorscheme solarized
endif
endfunction
command! Togbg call ToggleBackground()
nnoremap <F5> :call ToggleBackground()<CR>
inoremap <F5> <ESC>:call ToggleBackground()<CR>a
vnoremap <F5> <ESC>:call ToggleBackground()<CR>

Code Notes

Use folding to view the solarized.vim script with foldmethod=marker turned on.

I have attempted to modularize the creation of Vim colorschemes in this script and, while it could be refactored further, it should be a good foundation for the creation of any color scheme. By simply changing the sixteen values in the GUI section and testing in gvim (or mvim) you can rapidly prototype new colorschemes without diving into the weeds of line-item editing each syntax highlight declaration.

License

Copyright (c) 2011 Ethan Schoonover

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.