VIM 256 Color Support Config Xdefaults - Ubuntu 12.04

[airper]

Hi,

I'm trying to get a start with VIM, so I'm following Derek Wyatt's video tutorials. However I can't get colorschemes working in VIM for syntax highlighting.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong, or are too dumb to use VIM (The latter is a real possibility)!!!

I've figured out that Xterm is only running in 8 color mode, not 256 colors, so I found this HowTo which I've attempted to follow to get 256 colors working.

http://push.cx/2008/256-color-xterms-in-ubuntu

But even though I've installed 'ncurses-term' I don't have an Xdefault file or 'vimrc' as far as I can see.

~/.Xdefaults and ~/.vimrc report no files or directory.

If I run
$ tput colors

I get a response of 8

If I run

$ echo $TERM

I get xterm

It should be 'xterm-256color'

I'm stuck now, can anyone help?

[airper]

Okay,

You have to manually create the:

.Xdefaults
.vimrc
.xsession

files in your home directory. I did that and then edited them with:

Xdefaults

*customization: -color

Xterm*termName: xterm-256color

xsession

if [ -f $HOME/.Xdefaults ]; 

then   xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults 

fi

But I'm still getting

$ tput colors

8

$ echo $TERM

xterm

So, stuck again?

[itcotbtoemik]

Okay,

*customization: -color

Xterm*termName: xterm-256color

The class name is "XTerm", not "Xterm".

[airper]

Thanks and well spotted, but that still hasn't fixed the color system, I'm still in 8 color mode.

The answer it out there somewhere.

[itcotbtoemik]

Thanks and well spotted, but that still hasn't fixed the color system, I'm still in 8 color mode.

The answer it out there somewhere.

Is $TERM still "xterm"?

[airper]

Hi,

Yes, output from echo $TERM remain xterm and tput colors is 8

Of course what I'm trying to do here is get VIM to run with the Desert color scheme, it obviously won't do that until XTerm is running in 256 color mode.

As always with these little problems learning a lot though.

the more I read and understand about VIM the more I see how powerful it is. I can understand why people spend the time and effort learning to use it properly, really awesome software.

[itcotbtoemik]

Hi,

Yes, output from echo $TERM remain xterm and tput colors is 8

Probably your terminal database does not have xterm-256color then:

This option specifies the name of the terminal type to be set in the TERM environment variable. It corresponds to the termName resource. This terminal type must exist in the terminal database (termcap or terminfo, depending on how xterm is built) and should have li# and co# entries. If the terminal type is not found, xterm uses the built-in list “xterm”, “vt102”, etc.

[airper]

If I run;

find /lib/terminfo /usr/share/terminfo -name "*256*"

I get this list, so I'm assuming here I've got xterm-256color loaded okay?

/lib/terminfo/x/xterm-256color
/lib/terminfo/s/screen-256color
/lib/terminfo/s/screen-256color-bce
/usr/share/terminfo/x/xnuppc+256x96
/usr/share/terminfo/x/xnuppc-256x96-m
/usr/share/terminfo/x/xnuppc-256x96
/usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm+256color
/usr/share/terminfo/s/screen-256color-bce-s
/usr/share/terminfo/s/screen-256color-s
/usr/share/terminfo/d/darwin-256x96
/usr/share/terminfo/d/darwin-256x96-m
/usr/share/terminfo/g/gnome-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/p/putty-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/m/mlterm-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/m/mrxvt-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/r/rxvt-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/r/rxvt-unicode-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/v/vte-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/E/Eterm-256color
/usr/share/terminfo/k/konsole-256color

[miggys]

Are you able to set it manually?

export TERM=xterm-256color

If that worked then your current xterm should have $TERM of xterm-256color.
You don't want to do this all the time, but this is just to find out where the issue is...

If that works, does manually loading your resources file work? ie open a new xterm and run this:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

now during this session, all newly started xterms should have xterm-256color. If that worked then probably ubuntu is not sourcing .xsession on log-in. Maybe you can make .xsession autorun on start up?

[itcotbtoemik]

Are you able to set it manually?

export TERM=xterm-256color

Actually

infocmp xterm-256color

is a more direct way of checking if the
description exists (for most systems - there are still some that use termcap).

The hint about .xsession sounds plausible - I generally don't use xrdb
but rely upon setting $XAPPLRESDIR for private resource settings.