Using Different Color Schemes with Vim
Hey!
If you have been using the Linux console text editor vim (or: Vi IMproved), you have probably noticed already that at times - especially in files with a large amount of comments - the default color scheme on a black background is less than ideal. Dark blue on black is pretty hard to read and can strain the eyes a lot.
So today I went out to see if somebody had come up with a solution for this particular problem. I saw people who changed console colors by exporting and overwriting certain system variables, and others who edited the default color scheme.
The simplest solution I have found to this problem is just switching the color scheme. You can do that by typing the following in the already open vim session:
:colorscheme desert
where desert is just an example for the scheme of choice. Desert - for me - has just the right color for comments: aquamarine / light blue.
If you are satisfied with the scheme and would like it to be applied each time you launch vim, you can just edit /etc/vim/vimrc (or in my case with CentOS: /etc/vimrc) and add the following line:
colorscheme desert
with desert again, of course, being the chosen color scheme. This would apply this setting automatically for each vim instance that is launched system-wide. If you do not have access to the system-wide preferences or prefer just using it for your own user account, edit the ~/.vimrc instead.
The blog entry I got this tip from (Asher's space) has further instructions on how to edit existing color schemes and even a link to a blog post that explains how to edit the dark blue color for directories in ls listings with color, but I did not feel the need to go that far. If you are interested in that topic I can only encourage you to visit the original post.
Thanks for reading!
Update (2012-01-04):
Okay, looks like pingback isn't working, so here's a direct link to the original blog post:
vi code highlighting: change the default comments color from dark blue to light blue (https://asher2003.wordpress.com/)
New Old Blog URL
Hello and a Happy New Year 2012!
Yesterday evening and early today I decided to implement something that has been flying around in my head for quite some while. I enabled SSL for my website - including this blog! - and at the same time moved the blog back to its original URL: http://blog.plee.me/
Now, as some of you might know, that subdomain URL has always continued to work even though I switched the URL to the subdirectory one for a while. However, instead of invalidating one or the other, both will still work. If you visit a link pointing to http://www.plee.me/blog/... you will be redirected to the new subdomain one.
So, with SSL being enabled as well, you can also reach this blog via https://blog.plee.me/, which I would strongly advise you to use over the unencrypted one. It's quite unlikely that I will post highly sensitive content on here to justify SSL encryption, but hey, it's fancy, and who doesn't like fancy stuff, right? 🙂
In order to not get any warning due to untrusted certificates, however, I recommend (not only for my site's sake but for a number of other privately or non-commercially run websites throughout the whole web) you visit http://www.cacert.org/ and get the root certificates for your browser so that CAcert will be trusted as a Certificate Authority.
Alright, that's it for now. I think I will have some relevant stuff to write about in 2012, so stay tuned.
Don't hold your breath though 😛
Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, I have actually been active on Twitter again for the last half year or so, and I'm intending on keeping that trend. So swing by there if you like 🙂 The link/info is on my main website.
Thanks for reading and sorry for any inconvenience.