termschool

An improved codeschool like vim theme for 256-color terminals

termschool is a vim theme optimized for 256-color terminals. The theme "medium/dark" and makes heavy use of greys, greens and blues in pastel tones.

This is a screenshot of vim running termschool:

The original codeschool for 256-color terminals was created by @Astonj (http://astonj.com) based on the editor used at http://codeschool.com. While I enjoyed the theme, I felt it could use a number of improvements and started implementing them for private use. At some point, my version started to differ from the original and I decided to release it for public use, with the name "termschool" (think "Codeschool for terminals.")

Keep in mind that this theme is a constant work in progress. I use editors all day and once in a while I'll stumble on some color combination that I don't quite like. When that happens, I'll update the theme and push a change. Fork this repository if you prefer a theme that will never change, or keep pulling newer versions if you like my fixes and improvements.

Installation

Using Vundle

If you're using Vundle, just add the following to your ~/.vimrc file:

Plugin 'marcopaganini/termschool-vim-theme'
colorscheme termschool

While still inside vim, type: <ESC>:PluginInstall. This should install termschool automatically. Restart vim and the new theme should be the default. Once in a while, type <ESC>:PluginUpdate to fetch the newest version of the plugin from github.

Manual installation

Manual installation is very simple: Download the termschool.vim file and copy it into your ~/.vim/colors directory. Edit your ~/.vimrc file and add:

colorscheme termschool

Restart vim and everything should work.

A better (but slightly more complicated) option is to git clone this repository somewhere in your disk and create a symlink from the termschool.vim file inside your working repository to ~/.vim/colors.

Caveats

Please note that this theme requires a 256-color capable terminal. Most popular terminals are 256-color capable these days, but if things look odd, your terminal might not have this capability.

If you know your terminal is 256-color capable and things still look ugly/weird, try adding the following to your ~/.vimrc file right before the colorscheme termschool line:

set t_Co=256

This will force vim to use 256 colors.

Note that the theme has been tuned for 256-color terminals (I just can't match the productivity of screen + vim on gvim) but should also work fine for GUI environments.

Feel free to send comments with ideas, suggestions and push requests.

FZF Compatible colors

If you use FZF, you can get termschool compatible colors by adding the following to your ~/.bashrc:

export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="${FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS}"'
  --color="fg:231,bg:234,bg+:23,hl:113,gutter:234"
  --color="query:255,prompt:178,pointer:178,marker:44"
'

If your terminal supports truecolor, you can make the FZF colors match the GUI colors more closely:

export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="${FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS}"'
  --color="fg:#f0f0f0,bg:#252c31,bg+:#005f5f,hl:#87d75f,gutter:#252c31"
  --color="query:#ffffff,prompt:#f0f0f0,pointer:#dfaf00,marker:#00d7d7"
'

Related Links

You may also want to check the Mojave vim theme, a dark color theme based (mostly) on pastel colors that is well suited to long editing sessions.