A Vim of a Different Color

by
Annika Backstrom
in misc, on 26 March 2009. It is tagged #Linux, #Mac OS X, #iterm, #screen, and #Vim.

After one too many compilation errors due to a missing quote/brace/bracket/etc., I finally enabled Vim syntax highlighting. The rabbit hole:

  1. :syn on. These colors suck. Look for themes.
  2. 4 bit themes suck. Let's set up an 8 bit color terminal.
  3. Leopard's Terminal.app fails, install iTerm 0.9.6.
  4. iTerm works, but I use GNU screen all day. Recompile screen with --enable-colors256.
  5. screen wins, but doesn't play nice with the delete key in iTerm. Fix it.
  6. Compile Vim 7.2 for 8 bit support.
  7. Get an 8 bit theme. set t_Co=256 in .vimrc.
  8. " syntax highlight html files using the php highlighter
    autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.html set filetype=php
  9. Install FuzzyFinder for good measure now that we're out of Vim 6.3 territory.
  10. Start saving seconds/minutes/hours of my life that before were consumed by syntax errors.

vim-color