Customizing and Sharing Vim Color Schemes

'background' depending on the colorscheme selected, this autocmd might be useful: > autocmd SourcePre */colors/blue_sky.vim set background=dark Replace "blue_sky" with the name of the colorscheme. In case you want to tweak a colorscheme after it was loaded, check out the ColorScheme autocommand event. To clean up just before loading another colorscheme, use the ColorSchemePre autocommand event. For example: > let g:term_ansi_colors = ... augroup MyColorscheme au! au ColorSchemePre * unlet g:term_ansi_colors au ColorSchemePre * au! MyColorscheme augroup END To customize a colorscheme use another name, e.g. "~/.vim/colors/mine.vim", and use ":runtime" to load the original colorscheme: > " load the "evening" colorscheme runtime colors/evening.vim " change the color of statements hi Statement ctermfg=Blue guifg=Blue To see which highlight group is used where, see `:help highlight-groups` and `:help group-name` . You can use ":highlight" to find out the current colors. Exception: the ctermfg and ctermbg values are numbers, which are only valid for the current terminal. Use the color names instead for better portability. See `:help cterm-colors` . The default color settings can be found in the source file "src/nvim/highlight_group.c". Search for "highlight_init". If you think you have a color scheme that is good enough to be used by others, please check the following items: - Does it work in a color terminal as well as in the GUI? Is it consistent? - Is "g:colors_name" set to a meaningful value? In case of doubt you can do it this way: > let g:colors_name = expand('<sfile>:t:r') - Is 'background' either used or appropriately set to "light" or "dark"? - Try setting 'hlsearch' and searching for a pattern, is the match easy to spot? - Split a window with ":split" and ":vsplit". Are the status lines and vertical separators clearly visible? - In the GUI, is it easy to find the cursor, also in a file with lots of syntax highlighting? - In general, test your color scheme against as many filetypes, Vim features, environments, etc. as possible. - Do not use hard coded escape sequences, these will not work in other terminals. Always use #RRGGBB for the GUI. - When targeting 8-16 colors terminals, don't count on "darkblue" to be blue and dark, or on "2" to be even vaguely reddish. Names are more portable than numbers, though. - When targeting 256 colors terminals, prefer colors 16-255 to colors 0-15 for the same reason. - Typographic attributes (bold, italic, underline, reverse, etc.) are not universally supported. Don't count on any of them. - Is "g:terminal_ansi_colors" set to a list of 16 #RRGGBB values? - Try to keep your color scheme simple by avoiding unnecessary logic and refraining from adding options. The best color scheme is one that only requires: > colorscheme foobar The color schemes distributed with Vim are built with lifepillar/colortemplate (https://github.com/lifepillar/vim-colortemplate). It is therefore highly recommended. If you would like your color scheme to be distributed with Vim, make sure that: - it satisfies the guidelines above, - it was made with colortemplate, and join us at vim/colorschemes: (https://github.com/vim/colorschemes). vim: set ft=help :

This section details customizing color schemes, including using autocmd events like ColorScheme and ColorSchemePre. It explains how to load and modify existing schemes, find highlight groups, and identify current colors. It emphasizes using color names for portability and provides the location of default color settings. It offers guidelines for creating shareable color schemes: terminal and GUI consistency, setting 'g:colors_name' and 'background', visibility of search matches and window separators, cursor visibility, avoidance of hardcoded sequences, and usage of #RRGGBB for GUI. The section recommends using lifepillar/colortemplate and provides contribution guidelines for distribution with Vim.