256 colour xterms

Welcome to the 90’s! 256 colours are here!

It’s pretty sad. I got really excited today when I read the Tip #1312: 256 colors in vim.

I quickly installed the few colour schemes listed in the tip and was really impressed with the inkpot scheme… it’s pretty.

So first, you seem to need a recent xterm vim 6.4 or vim 7. The xterm or vim that shipped with Debian/Sarge does not support 256 colours… or at least, that’s what was reported to me on IRC.

Here are some useful links:

• vim tip 1312 - the tip that started it all
• The 256 color mode of xterm
  • useful notes and scripts to test xterm support
  • some vim colorschmes – I am sticking to inkpot
  • how to get screen to work with 256 colours
• konsole-256color - blog entry on konsole/screen/vim in 256 colours
• making mutt display 256 colors - a discussion on mutt user’s group that gets into some screen details
• XTerm and 8-bit Characters - has nothing to do with colours, but related
• vim tip #1384 - xterm256 color names for console vim
• vim color scheme test
• XTerm Colour Chart - shows xterm and urxvt colour cubes
• XTerm 256-Colour Chart - another xterm chart program (also works with urxvt 88 colour mode)

NB: I had to make the change mentioned on the page to my .screenrc and rebuild my screen package:

sudo apt-get build-dep screen
apt-get source screen
cd screen*
dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..
dpkg -i screen*.deb

Here are my config files:

• vimrc, and colorschmes
• screenrc