Adapt colours from themes to Vim

[lunacookies]

Hi,

Having seen your previous Vim colourschemes, do you believe that the colours you’ve used throughout the themes here might be applicable to Vim?

Thanks.

[karoliskoncevicius]

Hello,

Hmm interesting question, I haven't thought about it. Typically with vim when I create a colorscheme a lot of tuning has to be made for the colors to work together. I was never able to simply copy a color palette, add it to vim, and get a satisfying result. So I am a bit sceptical that a simple transfer of color codes would work.

But if I were to try adapting one of themes here to vim I would try either the royal theme or the deepblue theme. Both of them are dark themes, as this repository as of yet doesn't have a nice light theme. For royal - maybe using the red/pink/purple for functions/strings/numbers could produce a nice result. Blue can be added as well. But can't guarantee it would work without trying first.

If you wish to give it a try - please do go ahead. It might be some time before I can try it myself.

By the way - saw your work with rebuilding "oldbook" - nice result. I myself started using a light custom made theme with no syntax highlighting a while ago (after publishing distilled-vim), and stopped producing new vim themes since then...

[lunacookies]

I was never able to simply copy a color palette, add it to vim, and get a satisfying result.

Does this mean you’ve tried something like this before?

I would try either the royal theme or the deepblue theme

Thanks for the hint :)

nice result

Glad you liked it!

I myself started using a light custom made theme with no syntax highlighting a while ago (after publishing distilled-vim), and stopped producing new vim themes since then...

Interesting. When I first started Vim I used seould256-light, which uses a light grey for the background. I’ve also seen some light themes with a cream/warmer background. What does your unreleased theme do in this regard?

If you think your theme is complete enough (i.e. has highlighting for all common groups) I would encourage you to publish it – I think that the more choice and inspiration everyone has with colourschemes, the better they become.

[karoliskoncevicius]

Does this mean you’ve tried something like this before?

I tried it with other palettes. Usually the result will not be great, but after adjusting the colors it can work.

What does your unreleased theme do in this regard?

I am using very light brownish color for the background. Similar to vim-two-firewatch. Here are a few screenshots:

1. Terminal

2. Regular editing

3. Vim diffsplit

The highlight groups are very similar to my last theme: distilled-vim, except that it's light.

I would encourage you to publish it – I think that the more choice and inspiration everyone has with colourschemes, the better they become.

I think very few people use these kinds of no-code-highlighting themes, so didn't share. But maybe I should share it and see how it goes. Also the background and comment colors, like I said, are very similar to two-firewatch, so a bit weird to release a theme that may look like a stripped down version of firewatch.

So not sure at the moment if I will share it or not, but thank you for the suggestion.

[lunacookies]

Wow – looks nice! Is that Roboto Mono? What OS are you using, since your home directory layout is so clean?

[karoliskoncevicius]

Yes, it is Roboto Mono, good eye :)

I am on a Mac. I went through some pain to set up the home directory to look like that. Basically I added this to my profile:

# hide default mac folders
alias ls=$(alias ls | sed "s/.*='\(.*\)'$/\1 -I Desktop -I Documents -I Downloads -I Library -I Movies -I Music -I Pictures -I Public -I Applications/")
export FIGNORE=Desktop:Documents:Downloads:Library:Movies:Music:Pictures:Public:Applications

So they are not visible with ls, and also ignored by bash auto-completion. Also I name all of my folders with lower-case names, so if I have a name like "desktop" somewhere - it will not be ignored.

It works quite well actually. I even forget the the default mac folders are there. On top of this I deleted Desktop and made it a soft link to my desk folder with ln -s desk Dekstop. Also I deleted Downloads and made it a link to Desktop. So whenever some app puts a file in either Desktop or Downloads on a mac - it will actually be placed in my own folder desk.

[lunacookies]

Nice – I also link Downloads to Desktop. In fact, I used to delete the standard folders, but they kept re-creating themselves no matter what I did, so I eventually gave up trying to automate it. I like your approach, I might actually steal it for myself :)

Also, how are you finding not having the PWD in your prompt? I like the look of it, but could never quite get used to it. I use zsh, which supports a right-aligned prompt too, so I put the PWD there to make it less prominent.

[karoliskoncevicius]

I might actually steal it for myself :)

Steal ahead :)

Also, how are you finding not having the PWD in your prompt?

I used to have host + pwd + github info in prompt. Now I only have github branch + the status showing when it's unclean + when it's not pushed to the remote.

A while ago (6 months or so) I got a bit fed up with customising so much of my shell and editor, so went with a more minimal approach. I am using those no-syntax-highlight themes since then. And also simplified prompts and every config file. Went from tmux to screen and from zsh to bash. And for me it was like a breath of fresh air. My rule of thumb became - start with absolute minimal configuration and only add things that you find useful, as opposed to my previous approach of adding things that I THOUGHT might become useful someday.

I do not miss PWD, when I need it it's always one command away. But also I aliased cd so it always calls ls after a change of directory, which helps me a lot with navigating and knowing where I am. I like my prompt clean, and I like using colors sparsely - to only highlight what is important:

However what is not important for me might be important for you and vice versa. If PWDs are important in your workflow then they should definitely stay in.

[lunacookies]

I know this is a bit of a strange question, but have you found any good strategies for matching a desktop background with a colour scheme? Do you use a picture with matching colours, or a solid colour, should this colour be lighter or darker than the colourscheme background etc.

[lunacookies]

Went from tmux to screen

Huh. I’ve never actually considered using screen – I thought tmux had supplanted it.

only add things that you find useful

Definitely agree with this philosophy.

I like my prompt clean

Me too. :) What does the :: mean? I believe it’s used to indicate ‘which has a type of’ in Haskell, and is used as a module path separator in Rust and C++.

[karoliskoncevicius]

Regarding the background picture - I used to do that in the past, but not so much anymore - I don't try to match it with the colorscheme. Mainly select something that is not too colorful, so that the things that are on the desktop can stand out.

My current background is THIS And before that I used THIS

[lunacookies]

Look really nice! How did you find them?

[karoliskoncevicius]

If you ever split windows into halves then tmux is better. For me - I always use separate windows ("panes") for multiplexing, so wasn't using anything tmux had to offer over screen.

The :: symbol doesn't stand for anything here really. I was thinking about the best-looking way to separate prompt from the git branch and after some tries settled with ::.

[lunacookies]

so wasn't using anything tmux had to offer over screen

Ah, I see.

after some tries settled with ::

What do you think of ligature fonts like Fira Code? They usually have a ligature for :: that moves the two characters slightly closer together so that the dots form the corners of a square. I personally find it looks quite aesthetically pleasing.

[karoliskoncevicius]

When searching for background, I typically use google image search. With terms like "minimal tree grey" or something of this sort. And then adjust the search, look over results, etc. Both of these images were found that way.

About ligatures: I think I tried (don't remember really) and the result didn't look much better. Plus - I try to avoid dependencies between different parts in the system as much as possible. And if my prompt were co-dependant with the font I use, that would be a step towards complexity. I would no longer be able to change the font without adjusting the prompt. And would always have to keep in mind what depends on what and worry that I will break something when changing things around.

[lunacookies]

I typically use google image search

Ah ok, I was expecting some kind of wallpaper site or unsplash.com :)

And if my prompt were co-dependant with the font I use

Just to clarify – the prompt would not depend on the ligature font. Instead, all the ligature would do is slightly change the ::’s spacing to look a little nicer. But even if you use the sequence of characters that forms one of the font’s more esoteric ligatures in your prompt, the absence of the font would just mean that these characters were rendered in their plain form – -> instead of a proper joined arrow, for example.

I can see though that the unligaturised version of the symbol in the prompt may not actually be the ‘second best’ (after the ligaturised version), causing you to change the prompt when the ligatures are unavailable. However, I think that’s beside the point.

[lunacookies]

I am on a Mac

Do you use (iTerm|Terminal.app|Kitty|Alacritty|Hyper) for your Vim & terminal? Or do you run MacVim?

[karoliskoncevicius]

I see, I probably mixed it with the icons added by "NerdFonts". Thank you for the explanation. In any case - I like how it looks now, so will not be changing. I also tried some unicode characters, but the way it looks now is quite pleasing (for me personally at least).

I use iTerm and NeoVim. I have a few machines I need to ssh into and I like being in the terminal. I do not use any of the "advanced" features of iTerm2 really, besides the hotkey drop-down terminal. Might actually transfer to Terminal.app some day :)

What are you using? Any screenshots?

[lunacookies]

Might actually transfer to Terminal.app some day

I used to use iTerm for my terminal needs until someone said that they switched to Terminal.app for simplicity. I did the same and enjoyed it for quite some time. However, Terminal.app still doesn’t support True Colour, so it’s basically out of the question if I am to continue using my current colourscheme. Speaking of colourschemes …

What are you using? Any screenshots?

… I am using Iceberg at the moment with a few tweaks related to Rust. My prompt is heavily inspired by Lean, and the font is IBM Plex Mono (scroll down a bit for Mono). Here are a few screenshots:

A small nicety I have enabled in zsh is that commands are coloured bright white, so that they stand out a little against the rest of the terminal. I believe this is possible in bash too.

[karoliskoncevicius]

I really got used to having no color in the code, so the colors are a bit confusing. But the font is nice! I like that slashes / are a bit higher than upper case letters. I always liked that in Iosevka fonts, but the font itself was a bit too weird in that case.

Also the effect of having commands stand out from the output is lovely. But it's harder to pull-off on light backgrounds. A slightly darker shade of black will not stand out...

[lunacookies]

slashes / are a bit higher than upper case letters

I’ve never noticed that before, but now that you mention it, it is quite nice.

Also the effect of having commands stand out from the output is lovely.

Thanks. :) It was inspired by Xcode’s console. (I’ve never actually used Xcode – just saw it while poking around its default colourscheme.)

A slightly darker shade of black will not stand out...

Maybe try putting commands in bold?

[karoliskoncevicius]

Maybe try putting commands in bold?

My directories are in bold, so I would start confusing directories from ls with the commands. I might try having them gray or something like that, will have to try.

[lunacookies]

having them gray

Directories or commands?

[karoliskoncevicius]

either commands or output. Maybe output hmm. Will try and see how it works, thanks for the idea :)

[lunacookies]

You're welcome :)

[lunacookies]

I’m actually really digging your custom colour scheme – would it be okay if I sample the colour values from the image and create it? Also, how did the command/output colouring experiment go?

[karoliskoncevicius]

Sure, and you don't need to sample, here are all the color codes:

202020 # foreground   
f9f7f3 # background   

555d64 # black        
db6c6c # red          
77bb77 # green        
e4af64 # yellow       
0096c8 # blue         
ae8fc1 # purple       
896724 # cyan         
b6ad9a # white        
8a9da7 # bright black 
f88379 # bright red   
a8ce93 # bright green 
ead042 # bright yellow
b2d1e5 # bright blue  
cc99cc # bright purple
c59534 # bright cyan  
e9e0d3 # bright white 

Also, how did the command/output colouring experiment go?

I only change my configs on weekends, when I have more free time, so sadly this will have to wait till Saturday...

[karoliskoncevicius]

I am using "brown" instead of "cyan" for this theme. So you should see something similar to this:

[lunacookies]

Sure, and you don't need to sample, here are all the color codes:

Thank you so much, you just saved me a ton of time!

so sadly this will have to wait till Saturday

Cool – I’m excited to see what the result will be :)

am using "brown" instead of "cyan" for this theme

Thanks for the tip – if you hadn’t mentioned that there would have been a good chance I’d have thought there had been some mistake copy-pasting the hex codes.

[lunacookies]

Please let me know what the results of the experiment are if you get the chance :)

[karoliskoncevicius]

Hello,

So I finally tried it, it seemed to work but it wasn't ideal. For example here, the colors are back to normal after colored git output:

It is a bit confusing when colors are not consistent. If not for that - I would really consider trying out for a longer period of time. One approach would be to set all normal output color to grey and set prompt to black. But I am afraid this would affect a lot of other CLI tools and applications.

[lunacookies]

One approach would be to set all normal output color to grey and set prompt to black. But I am afraid this would affect a lot of other CLI tools and applications.

I think the ideal approach would be to set the current foreground colour to something a bit lower contrast (but not as low as what you’ve currently picked), and then pick a different higher-contrast colour (such as #000000) for the prompt. Maybe this colour could also be useful in Vim for Title?

[karoliskoncevicius]

This would have a lot of downsides I think. First is - any new installed application will have this "reduced contrast" as it's default. i.e. mutt for email. And would have to be re-configured somewhere to use the correct colors. Another issue is that my output for some commands is colored. For example I am using dircolors and directories are printed in bold after ls.

So while I see some benefits - for now I am not sure how to handle this. One solution would be to change the color of the prompt completely (i.e. for it not to be black). This would be the inversion - prompt being less visible compared with output.