Re: switching to vim-tiny for standard vi?

[Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>]

On 20-Dec-05, 09:56 (CST), Gabor Gombas <gombasg@sztaki.hu> wrote: 
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 08:57:08AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote:
> 
> > [1] Dark blue on black. Need I say more?
> 
> That's not vim's fault:
> 
> 	$ echo $TERM
> 	xterm
> 
> But this is gnome-terminal, and _not_ xterm. xterm used a white
> default background since prehistoric times, so when vim detects xterm,
> it uses colors that look good with the traditional xterm colors.

No it doesn't. I use a white terminal background, and the default vim
syntax colors are unreadable there, too. (Yellow and cyan on white, in
shell scripts.)

> If it detects the Linux console, it uses colors that look good on the
> console.

Nope, because that's where I noticed the blue-on-black problem. For
example, evaluated environment variables in shell scripts.

> Now, if your terminal pretends to be xterm but does not use the color
> scheme of xterm, how should vim know that?

Well, since in fact gnome-terminal and xterm and rxvt and pretty much
every other x terminal emulator lets you configure the background and
foreground colors, basing color choices on the value of TERM is bogus
anyway.

The reality is that visibility of color combinations is heavily
dependent on all kinds of things that vim can't determine, from the font
being used and the default background color, to the ambient lighting
of the room and the vision capability of the user (not just color
blindness, but very fine variances in the color sensitivity of the user,
or even how tired the person is, which can affect their ability to
focus.) Color really needs to be tuned to the needs of the individual
user.

The problem is that there are really enough distinct colors to
complicated syntax highlighting that works with a variety of backgrounds
and lighting. I use syntax highlighting in emacs under X, because I can
set the actual fonts and styles to vary in readable (for me) ways. With
only color to work with, it becomes (IMO) pretty useless.

All of which is irrelevant if the default is "syntax off". Stefano (I
think) pointed out that it was, and I just confirmed. Maybe it used
to be on? Or maybe I'm just confused - I have to work on a lot of RH
machines, too, where vim is installed by default, definitely with
"syntax on".

Steve
-- 
Steve Greenland
    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net