10 ms·

Vim Colors

ghodss 11y ago
My personal favorite... great colors/contrast on a Macbook Pro. http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  It's my favourite dark colorscheme too.
synthmeat 11y ago
Can anyone recommend color schemes other than Solarized that have extensive support across board (not only vim, but all the plethora of terminal emulators, command-line applications, etc.)? Solarized is too low-contrast for me, so I have hacked-on support for hybrid (solarized syntaxes + tommorow color codes), but it's not really uniform. And, imho, well-balanced contrast is the most important thing. Non-exhaustive list of applications that I'd like to see supported - vim, emacs, tmux, weechat, vifm, newsbeuter, taskwarrior, mutt...
- Zardoz84 11y ago
  https://github.com/tpope/vim-vividchalk https://github.com/tpope/vim-vividchalk
- hjst 11y ago
  I use hybrid in vim and base16 in everything else and that's about the best I've found so far. The base16 "builder" seems like it supports the most things: https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Base16 is probably what you want: https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 There is a related project called Base16-Builder: https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder With Base16-Builder you can make a Yaml file of colours and it will build profiles for a zillion apps. It's pretty easy to hack to build other profiles as you just need to make an erb. Base16 is organized in pretty much the same way as Solarized colours, so if you have gotten used to Solarized and just want to adjust the colours to something easier to see (I suffer from the same problem you do), then I think it is the way to go. I hesitate to mention this because it isn't quite ready yet, but where I work we do a lot of remote pair programming over tmux. The problem is that everybody has their own idea of what colours look good. My buddy and I made a vim colorscheme that looks reasonable with many different palettes, called agnostic: https://github.com/ygt-mikekchar/agnostic https://github.com/ygt-mikekchar/agnostic So if you ever need to pair program over tmux and one person wants a light background, but another person wants a dark backgroun, you can do it it. If you do that kind of thing a lot, then I recommend working with agnostic. Otherwise I think Base16 is probably the way to go.
  - synthmeat 11y ago
    Base16 looks amazing. I'm gonna steal an hour or two of today and give it a whirl. Thank you!
- RVuRnvbM2e 11y ago
  This was always my concern too... I use noctu.vim: https://github.com/noahfrederick/vim-noctu https://github.com/noahfrederick/vim-noctu It takes colours from your .Xdefaults/.Xresources, and all terminal apps just use your configured scheme. See also: http://www.xcolors.net/ http://www.xcolors.net/
andrewguenther 11y ago
I wish I could choose a language to preview the schemes with. My biggest gripe with many of these themes is that is looks great in some languages and terrible for everything else.
- synthmeat 11y ago
  Slightly related, I don't like (mostly in OOP langs) when I have something like: import lang.native.api.Something; import third.party.api.Else; ...and syntax file goes to colorize Something, but Else is perceived as common text. I'm aware of limitations of vim, being text editor and not an IDE, but I'd rather syntax file to ignore the native API then to have me draw visual distinction between native and third-party classes when, effectively, I couldn't care less. The dissimilarity is just visual noise to me. :/
  - bergmann 11y ago
    I agree many of the default Vim syntax highlighting files leave a lot to be desired. You can improve it though and Vim highlighting is actually very powerful. I use a C syntax highlighting improvement plugin to add (among other things) highlighting to operators and function names in calls[1]. You can also quite easily customise syntax highlighting by placing your own additional syntax file in .vim/after/syntax for a language. I use this to add some more custom keywords. You could quite easily add highlight support for ".Else" in an after/syntax file. [1] https://github.com/justinmk/vim-syntax-extra https://github.com/justinmk/vim-syntax-extra
  - erikb 11y ago
    Why is something limited in highlighting because it's a text editor and not an IDE? Highlighting is about text so it's quite a core feature of an editor.
    - andrewaylett 11y ago
      Usually because the text editor is limited to regular expression and region matching, while the IDE parses the language into an AST so it knows what each bit actually means.
sebastianhoitz 11y ago
My personal favorite is the railscasts theme. Wide support for iTerm and other applications aswell.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
isomorphic 11y ago
This is great. I'd like the ability to live-filter over and above the ability to search. Also, more than 10 hits per page. It'd be wonderful to have some sort of voting or popularity metric to sort by. And, for pie-in-the-sky features it would be nice to have filters based upon contrast / hues / etc. other than just "dark" and "light."
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  Thanks, all great suggestions. I've been wanting live-filter for a while but decided to launch with basic filtering. Once I'm happy with core features I'll start looking at stuff like rating, favouriting, etc. (I meant to post this comment earlier but it was throttling me.)
stockninja 11y ago
Awesome post! I love the Tomorrow-Night theme: Vim: http://i.imgur.com/HBaCTAu.png http://i.imgur.com/HBaCTAu.png Zsh: https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure On Github: https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/blob/master/vim/colors/Tomorrow-Night.vim https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/blob/master/v...
- seren 11y ago
  This is unrelated, but in the first screenshot, how do you get a terminal windows inside vim ? ( git in the top right). I guess it is a neovim feature.
  - adamors 11y ago
    Yes, neovim has an integrated terminal.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Running a terminal inside an editor inside a terminal... What is the use case for this that tmux/screen does not solve?
      - Hates_ 11y ago
        Some more info here which might shed some light: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132352
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        OK that looks cool. I look forward to neovim being in my systems package manager!
      - Touche 11y ago
        For me tmux requires too much configuration up-front. It's just not worth my time.
nabn 11y ago
I quite like FukurokujoPro https://github.com/nemesit/vim-colors-fukurokujopro https://github.com/nemesit/vim-colors-fukurokujopro
aequitas 11y ago
Could you add a preview for diff mode? It always disappoints me how (even the default) themes make vimdiff as hard to read as possible.
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  Definitely possible - should be no more difficult than adding support for a different language. That said, I need to work through some other features first.
clemlais 11y ago
If you want to try a colorscheme quickly : https://github.com/flazz/vim-colorschemes https://github.com/flazz/vim-colorschemes
grindhold 11y ago
finally, beautiful themes that are sophisticated enough to work in both terminal and GUI. And all in one place. This link made me a very happy man.
bergmann 11y ago
When filtering by Light, some color schemes come through that are Dark. Is this a bug or do those color schemes have both light and dark versions? I looked at one of the dark "light" schemes and it didn't seem to have a light version on the github page.
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  You're correct, this is a bug - occasionally the app has trouble detecting which backgrounds a colorscheme supports. I'm working on a new capture engine which fixes this.
  - bergmann 11y ago
    Great, thanks!
ciroduran 11y ago
What's wrong with pablo and murphy? :-)
gitaarik 11y ago
I find myself often switching between dark/light colorschemes when I'm working inside/outside. However, this is a quite annoying task, I have to change the colorscheme of my terminal, and of Vim. Besides, I have multiple Vim sessions running in various tmux/terminal tabs, so when I switch to a different tab, I have to change the colorscheme of Vim again. Then when I go inside/outside again I have to switch it all back. Quite a hassle. Has anyone found any trick to automate this? For starters I wouldn't know how to change the colorscheme of all my Vim sessions. Can you send a signal to your Vim sessions maybe? Then changing the terminal colorscheme is of course dependent on the terminal app you're using.
- kolme 11y ago
  I use solarized, which has a light and a dark variant. So even when I'm in the terminal (which is always) I can easily switch between light and dark. The solarized vim plugin even has a key binding to do this.
- pablasso 11y ago
  Don't set the colorscheme on Vim, set it on your terminal and Vim will honor it. I do that with iTerm2.
  - gitaarik 11y ago
    But you'll have to restart the terminal for that, right?
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Use a modern terminal?
      - gitaarik 11y ago
        Using a more modern terminal won't make vim magically change it's color scheme.
irth 11y ago
When I was googling for Vim color schemes some time ago I've seen that webpage. It is really nice, I like that dark/light feature (but some themes were miscategorised as dark, at least when I last checked).
Dowwie 11y ago
WYSIWYG editors like Vivify (http://bytefluent.com/vivify/ http://bytefluent.com/vivify/) are helpful too. The greatest challenge for me with making vim look nice is in harmonizing the vim color scheme with that of my guake terminal emulator. I wasted too much time trying to synchronize terminal colors with vim colors, eventually giving up. Whoever solves that problem earns a raise
userbinator 11y ago
I'm probably in the minority, but I've always found that anything other than constant-coloured text on a constant-coloured background with a high contrast to be more distracting than helpful. It appears I'm not the only one: http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/ http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/
- Gracana 11y ago
  I have colors switched off in most of my editors, but I have found that having a distinction between code and comments (particularly multi-line comments) helps to avoid confusion.
- a3n 11y ago
  One thing I like with syntax highlighting is when a string or other delimited expression hasn't been closed (e.g. as I'm writing it), the following code looks like it's part of the string or expression. It creates just the slightest tension in me: "close it ... close it ... close it ... It's a similar feeling to when I haven't saved my editing in the last minute. :)
- nakkiel 11y ago
  Here's the vim colorscheme I use: http://vimcolors.com/?utf8=✓&order=relevance&query=monochrome http://vimcolors.com/?utf8=✓&order=relevance&query=monochrom...
- lordfoom 11y ago
  Heh, I'd actually love to read syntax highlighted English :) To each their own.
- couchand 11y ago
  I find syntax highlighting is particularly useful in tightly-packed constructs. Consider this function returning a string interpolation in CoffeeScript: (d) -> "id-#{d[@id]}" In my default color scheme, the #{} (string interpolation), @ (this pointer), and () (function parameter delimiter) are muted, since they're syntactically critical but not helpful to my understanding. The "id-" is more subtle than code but more visible than the muted syntax, because I only sometimes care about the string literal, and the array indexer [] is about the same. The identifiers d and id are the regular typeface, since those are the code items. The -> which creates a closure is brightest, because creating a closure is a relatively heavy operation and it's useful to be able to pick them out at a glance. I understand that you CAN read it without highlighting, but the signal-to-noise ratio is much worse. In particular, the hash mark and atpersand stand out much too prominently. The linked article is concerned about breaking up the "natural flow of the text", but I think that misses a critical observation. While prose text flows from left to right, line by line, that's not how code flows. Code's flow is in its structure.
anantzoid 11y ago
Have been using solarized since a long time. Just love it.
laichzeit0 11y ago
So the Solarized home page starts off with this paragraph: > Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. It has several unique properties. I designed this colorscheme with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays (as well as uncalibrated/intentionally miscalibrated displays) and in a variety of lighting conditions. I'm assuming this means it's giving a criterion to "measure" how good it is in a not-entirely-subjective-way. That always bothers me about selecting a theme. I have no idea if it's good or bad in any standard measurable way. I look at these themes and can't really tell what it's "unique properties" or anything interesting about it just by looking at it.
- cbaleanu 11y ago
  First it was monokai then solarized; these days seti is pretty popular too. No matter how advanced colour matching engineering was needed for solarized, there will always be a colour scheme that just looks more beautiful... in the eyes of the beholder :) To me changing colour schemes is like changing your car - after a few years you feel it just does not shine like it used to, so you change it.
  - allendoerfer 11y ago
    > To me changing colour schemes is like changing your car - after a few years you feel it just does not shine like it used to, so you change it. That is why we cannot achieve perfection.
DiabloD3 11y ago
I just use Base16 ( https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 ), so I have the same colorscheme in all relevant apps. It can emulate almost all of the popular schemes, plus has a lot of others.
- dominotw 11y ago
  base16 is so awesome that I ended up coding whole day on a idle sunday because I wanted to keep looking at the beauty of my screen.
a1b2c3 11y ago
Can we do more than 10 per page? I hate having to click next, next, next in between scrolling. If I could just flick the scroll wheel and let my eyes pick out the ones I like it would be so much easier!
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  I'll look into infinite scroll, thanks for the suggestion.
ashmud 11y ago
See also: https://code.google.com/p/vimcolorschemetest/ https://code.google.com/p/vimcolorschemetest/ Aside: The pages are also a good browser stress test with the large number of iframes.
alxndr 11y ago
Anyone have experience with a scope/context-based highlighter, like this? https://github.com/daniellmb/JavaScript-Scope-Context-Coloring https://github.com/daniellmb/JavaScript-Scope-Context-Colori...
glitchyme 11y ago
My favourites: asu1dark, distinguished, guardian, h80, candycode, wood
gosukiwi 11y ago
Oh wow my theme magically appeared there, ha.
dpacmittal 11y ago
I find myself constantly switching colorschemes. One I've stuck with for the longest time is https://github.com/zeis/vim-kolor https://github.com/zeis/vim-kolor. One of the best, IMO.
superkvn 11y ago
I love vim.
scelerat 11y ago
Thumbnails would be great. A gallery view of thumbnails, possibly accompanied by a palette of the main colors in the scheme, would greatly assist the browse-ability of the site. This is great.
paulannesley 11y ago
Very cool. I'd love to see the ability to tag and filter 256-color schemes, for `TERM="xterm-256color"`. And some ranking metric (e.g. stars on the GitHub repo) would help surface the good ones that a lot of people use. Personally I use a slightly tweaked version of http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark … the id of 1 in the URL suggests the author might too.
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  Heh, you're on the money, jellybeans is my favourite dark colorscheme.
nitin88g 11y ago
unlike most of the people, I prefer light background instead of dark (black) background. anyone else feel the same? and most of the themes are with black background
- nathanaelkane 11y ago
  I prefer light colorschemes when I'm using a glossy screen.

My personal favorite... great colors/contrast on a Macbook Pro. http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark

nathanaelkane 11y ago
It's my favourite dark colorscheme too.

synthmeat 11y ago

Can anyone recommend color schemes other than Solarized that have extensive support across board (not only vim, but all the plethora of terminal emulators, command-line applications, etc.)? Solarized is too low-contrast for me, so I have hacked-on support for hybrid (solarized syntaxes + tommorow color codes), but it's not really uniform. And, imho, well-balanced contrast is the most important thing. Non-exhaustive list of applications that I'd like to see supported - vim, emacs, tmux, weechat, vifm, newsbeuter, taskwarrior, mutt...

Zardoz84 11y ago
https://github.com/tpope/vim-vividchalk https://github.com/tpope/vim-vividchalk
hjst 11y ago
I use hybrid in vim and base16 in everything else and that's about the best I've found so far. The base16 "builder" seems like it supports the most things: https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder
mikekchar 11y ago
Base16 is probably what you want: https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 There is a related project called Base16-Builder: https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder https://github.com/chriskempson/base16-builder With Base16-Builder you can make a Yaml file of colours and it will build profiles for a zillion apps. It's pretty easy to hack to build other profiles as you just need to make an erb. Base16 is organized in pretty much the same way as Solarized colours, so if you have gotten used to Solarized and just want to adjust the colours to something easier to see (I suffer from the same problem you do), then I think it is the way to go. I hesitate to mention this because it isn't quite ready yet, but where I work we do a lot of remote pair programming over tmux. The problem is that everybody has their own idea of what colours look good. My buddy and I made a vim colorscheme that looks reasonable with many different palettes, called agnostic: https://github.com/ygt-mikekchar/agnostic https://github.com/ygt-mikekchar/agnostic So if you ever need to pair program over tmux and one person wants a light background, but another person wants a dark backgroun, you can do it it. If you do that kind of thing a lot, then I recommend working with agnostic. Otherwise I think Base16 is probably the way to go.
- synthmeat 11y ago
  Base16 looks amazing. I'm gonna steal an hour or two of today and give it a whirl. Thank you!
RVuRnvbM2e 11y ago
This was always my concern too... I use noctu.vim: https://github.com/noahfrederick/vim-noctu https://github.com/noahfrederick/vim-noctu It takes colours from your .Xdefaults/.Xresources, and all terminal apps just use your configured scheme. See also: http://www.xcolors.net/ http://www.xcolors.net/

andrewguenther 11y ago

I wish I could choose a language to preview the schemes with. My biggest gripe with many of these themes is that is looks great in some languages and terrible for everything else.

synthmeat 11y ago
Slightly related, I don't like (mostly in OOP langs) when I have something like: import lang.native.api.Something; import third.party.api.Else; ...and syntax file goes to colorize Something, but Else is perceived as common text. I'm aware of limitations of vim, being text editor and not an IDE, but I'd rather syntax file to ignore the native API then to have me draw visual distinction between native and third-party classes when, effectively, I couldn't care less. The dissimilarity is just visual noise to me. :/
- bergmann 11y ago
  I agree many of the default Vim syntax highlighting files leave a lot to be desired. You can improve it though and Vim highlighting is actually very powerful. I use a C syntax highlighting improvement plugin to add (among other things) highlighting to operators and function names in calls[1]. You can also quite easily customise syntax highlighting by placing your own additional syntax file in .vim/after/syntax for a language. I use this to add some more custom keywords. You could quite easily add highlight support for ".Else" in an after/syntax file. [1] https://github.com/justinmk/vim-syntax-extra https://github.com/justinmk/vim-syntax-extra
- erikb 11y ago
  Why is something limited in highlighting because it's a text editor and not an IDE? Highlighting is about text so it's quite a core feature of an editor.
  - andrewaylett 11y ago
    Usually because the text editor is limited to regular expression and region matching, while the IDE parses the language into an AST so it knows what each bit actually means.

sebastianhoitz 11y ago

My personal favorite is the railscasts theme. Wide support for iTerm and other applications aswell.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

isomorphic 11y ago

This is great. I'd like the ability to live-filter over and above the ability to search. Also, more than 10 hits per page. It'd be wonderful to have some sort of voting or popularity metric to sort by. And, for pie-in-the-sky features it would be nice to have filters based upon contrast / hues / etc. other than just "dark" and "light."

nathanaelkane 11y ago
Thanks, all great suggestions. I've been wanting live-filter for a while but decided to launch with basic filtering. Once I'm happy with core features I'll start looking at stuff like rating, favouriting, etc. (I meant to post this comment earlier but it was throttling me.)

stockninja 11y ago

Awesome post! I love the Tomorrow-Night theme: Vim: http://i.imgur.com/HBaCTAu.png http://i.imgur.com/HBaCTAu.png Zsh: https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure On Github: https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/blob/master/vim/colors/Tomorrow-Night.vim https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme/blob/master/v...

seren 11y ago
This is unrelated, but in the first screenshot, how do you get a terminal windows inside vim ? ( git in the top right). I guess it is a neovim feature.
- adamors 11y ago
  Yes, neovim has an integrated terminal.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Running a terminal inside an editor inside a terminal... What is the use case for this that tmux/screen does not solve?
    - Hates_ 11y ago
      Some more info here which might shed some light: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132352
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        OK that looks cool. I look forward to neovim being in my systems package manager!
    - Touche 11y ago
      For me tmux requires too much configuration up-front. It's just not worth my time.

nabn 11y ago

I quite like FukurokujoPro https://github.com/nemesit/vim-colors-fukurokujopro https://github.com/nemesit/vim-colors-fukurokujopro

aequitas 11y ago

Could you add a preview for diff mode? It always disappoints me how (even the default) themes make vimdiff as hard to read as possible.

nathanaelkane 11y ago
Definitely possible - should be no more difficult than adding support for a different language. That said, I need to work through some other features first.

clemlais 11y ago

If you want to try a colorscheme quickly : https://github.com/flazz/vim-colorschemes https://github.com/flazz/vim-colorschemes

grindhold 11y ago

finally, beautiful themes that are sophisticated enough to work in both terminal and GUI. And all in one place. This link made me a very happy man.

bergmann 11y ago

When filtering by Light, some color schemes come through that are Dark. Is this a bug or do those color schemes have both light and dark versions? I looked at one of the dark "light" schemes and it didn't seem to have a light version on the github page.

nathanaelkane 11y ago
You're correct, this is a bug - occasionally the app has trouble detecting which backgrounds a colorscheme supports. I'm working on a new capture engine which fixes this.
- bergmann 11y ago
  Great, thanks!

ciroduran 11y ago

What's wrong with pablo and murphy? :-)

gitaarik 11y ago

I find myself often switching between dark/light colorschemes when I'm working inside/outside. However, this is a quite annoying task, I have to change the colorscheme of my terminal, and of Vim. Besides, I have multiple Vim sessions running in various tmux/terminal tabs, so when I switch to a different tab, I have to change the colorscheme of Vim again. Then when I go inside/outside again I have to switch it all back. Quite a hassle. Has anyone found any trick to automate this? For starters I wouldn't know how to change the colorscheme of all my Vim sessions. Can you send a signal to your Vim sessions maybe? Then changing the terminal colorscheme is of course dependent on the terminal app you're using.

kolme 11y ago
I use solarized, which has a light and a dark variant. So even when I'm in the terminal (which is always) I can easily switch between light and dark. The solarized vim plugin even has a key binding to do this.
pablasso 11y ago
Don't set the colorscheme on Vim, set it on your terminal and Vim will honor it. I do that with iTerm2.
- gitaarik 11y ago
  But you'll have to restart the terminal for that, right?
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Use a modern terminal?
    - gitaarik 11y ago
      Using a more modern terminal won't make vim magically change it's color scheme.

irth 11y ago

When I was googling for Vim color schemes some time ago I've seen that webpage. It is really nice, I like that dark/light feature (but some themes were miscategorised as dark, at least when I last checked).

Dowwie 11y ago

WYSIWYG editors like Vivify (http://bytefluent.com/vivify/ http://bytefluent.com/vivify/) are helpful too. The greatest challenge for me with making vim look nice is in harmonizing the vim color scheme with that of my guake terminal emulator. I wasted too much time trying to synchronize terminal colors with vim colors, eventually giving up. Whoever solves that problem earns a raise

userbinator 11y ago

I'm probably in the minority, but I've always found that anything other than constant-coloured text on a constant-coloured background with a high contrast to be more distracting than helpful. It appears I'm not the only one: http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/ http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/

Gracana 11y ago
I have colors switched off in most of my editors, but I have found that having a distinction between code and comments (particularly multi-line comments) helps to avoid confusion.
a3n 11y ago
One thing I like with syntax highlighting is when a string or other delimited expression hasn't been closed (e.g. as I'm writing it), the following code looks like it's part of the string or expression. It creates just the slightest tension in me: "close it ... close it ... close it ... It's a similar feeling to when I haven't saved my editing in the last minute. :)
nakkiel 11y ago
Here's the vim colorscheme I use: http://vimcolors.com/?utf8=✓&order=relevance&query=monochrome http://vimcolors.com/?utf8=✓&order=relevance&query=monochrom...
lordfoom 11y ago
Heh, I'd actually love to read syntax highlighted English :) To each their own.
couchand 11y ago
I find syntax highlighting is particularly useful in tightly-packed constructs. Consider this function returning a string interpolation in CoffeeScript: (d) -> "id-#{d[@id]}" In my default color scheme, the #{} (string interpolation), @ (this pointer), and () (function parameter delimiter) are muted, since they're syntactically critical but not helpful to my understanding. The "id-" is more subtle than code but more visible than the muted syntax, because I only sometimes care about the string literal, and the array indexer [] is about the same. The identifiers d and id are the regular typeface, since those are the code items. The -> which creates a closure is brightest, because creating a closure is a relatively heavy operation and it's useful to be able to pick them out at a glance. I understand that you CAN read it without highlighting, but the signal-to-noise ratio is much worse. In particular, the hash mark and atpersand stand out much too prominently. The linked article is concerned about breaking up the "natural flow of the text", but I think that misses a critical observation. While prose text flows from left to right, line by line, that's not how code flows. Code's flow is in its structure.

anantzoid 11y ago

Have been using solarized since a long time. Just love it.

laichzeit0 11y ago

So the Solarized home page starts off with this paragraph: > Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications. It has several unique properties. I designed this colorscheme with both precise CIELAB lightness relationships and a refined set of hues based on fixed color wheel relationships. It has been tested extensively in real world use on color calibrated displays (as well as uncalibrated/intentionally miscalibrated displays) and in a variety of lighting conditions. I'm assuming this means it's giving a criterion to "measure" how good it is in a not-entirely-subjective-way. That always bothers me about selecting a theme. I have no idea if it's good or bad in any standard measurable way. I look at these themes and can't really tell what it's "unique properties" or anything interesting about it just by looking at it.

cbaleanu 11y ago
First it was monokai then solarized; these days seti is pretty popular too. No matter how advanced colour matching engineering was needed for solarized, there will always be a colour scheme that just looks more beautiful... in the eyes of the beholder :) To me changing colour schemes is like changing your car - after a few years you feel it just does not shine like it used to, so you change it.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  > To me changing colour schemes is like changing your car - after a few years you feel it just does not shine like it used to, so you change it. That is why we cannot achieve perfection.

DiabloD3 11y ago

I just use Base16 ( https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 https://github.com/chriskempson/base16 ), so I have the same colorscheme in all relevant apps. It can emulate almost all of the popular schemes, plus has a lot of others.

dominotw 11y ago
base16 is so awesome that I ended up coding whole day on a idle sunday because I wanted to keep looking at the beauty of my screen.

a1b2c3 11y ago

Can we do more than 10 per page? I hate having to click next, next, next in between scrolling. If I could just flick the scroll wheel and let my eyes pick out the ones I like it would be so much easier!

nathanaelkane 11y ago
I'll look into infinite scroll, thanks for the suggestion.

ashmud 11y ago

See also: https://code.google.com/p/vimcolorschemetest/ https://code.google.com/p/vimcolorschemetest/ Aside: The pages are also a good browser stress test with the large number of iframes.

alxndr 11y ago

Anyone have experience with a scope/context-based highlighter, like this? https://github.com/daniellmb/JavaScript-Scope-Context-Coloring https://github.com/daniellmb/JavaScript-Scope-Context-Colori...

glitchyme 11y ago

My favourites: asu1dark, distinguished, guardian, h80, candycode, wood

gosukiwi 11y ago

Oh wow my theme magically appeared there, ha.

dpacmittal 11y ago

I find myself constantly switching colorschemes. One I've stuck with for the longest time is https://github.com/zeis/vim-kolor https://github.com/zeis/vim-kolor. One of the best, IMO.

superkvn 11y ago

I love vim.

scelerat 11y ago

Thumbnails would be great. A gallery view of thumbnails, possibly accompanied by a palette of the main colors in the scheme, would greatly assist the browse-ability of the site. This is great.

paulannesley 11y ago

Very cool. I'd love to see the ability to tag and filter 256-color schemes, for `TERM="xterm-256color"`. And some ranking metric (e.g. stars on the GitHub repo) would help surface the good ones that a lot of people use. Personally I use a slightly tweaked version of http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark http://vimcolors.com/1/jellybeans/dark … the id of 1 in the URL suggests the author might too.

nathanaelkane 11y ago
Heh, you're on the money, jellybeans is my favourite dark colorscheme.

nitin88g 11y ago

unlike most of the people, I prefer light background instead of dark (black) background. anyone else feel the same? and most of the themes are with black background

nathanaelkane 11y ago
I prefer light colorschemes when I'm using a glossy screen.