Mac OS X vim colors mangled

Question

Here's my setup

• Mac OS X 10.6
• VIM (default version that comes with OSX 10.6)
• rails.vim (installed in .vim/autoload)
• ir_black.vim (installed in .vim/colors)
• i have "colorscheme ir_black" and "syn on" in ~/.vimrc

Now when I go into terminal and edit a ruby file with vim my colors are messed up. There are only a few colors showing up and some text is even blinking. I'm wondering if there's a conflict between rails.vim syntax highlighting and the ir_black color scheme? Can anyone help me fix this? I would like to use the ir_black color scheme.

Answer 1

The Mac OSX Terminal.app in Snow Leopard does not support 256 colors, which is required for the ir_black theme (this is the theme I use).

Download and try something like iTerm.app (http://iterm.sourceforge.net/), and you shouldn't have a problem with colors.

Or you could use MacVim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/)

Edit: As of OSX 10.7 Lion, the built in Terminal.app now supports 256 colors. See the comment below by Chris Page for how to achieve this.

Answer 2

I've been using a nearly identical setup, except for vim, which I grab from Macports. A few years ago I found ir_black and loved it. I now use it for all vim sessions, Terminal.app, and TextMate. Getting it to work with Leopard, and then Snow Leopard was a tad hokey. But things have improved. Follow the instructions here, Making Terminal.app look great in Snow Leopard.