Syntax highlighting in terminal vim but not gVIM

Question

I am currently using VIM in the terminal and have perfect syntax highlighting happening. But then when I try to use gvim no matter what type of file or how many times I type: ":syntax on" I don't get any syntax highlighting. Any ideas anyone?

Thank you.

Here is my .vimrc for those who are interested:

" Turn on pathogen for all plug-ins installed after 9/13/2010
call pathogen#helptags()
call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles()

" My color theme for vim
colors sorcerer

" Disable line wrapping for now
set nowrap

" Enable the mouse even when vi is used in the terminal
set mouse=a

" Since I use linux, I want this
let g:clipbrdDefaultReg = '+'

" This shows what you are typing as a command.  I love this!
set showcmd

" Automatically cd into the directory that the file is in
autocmd BufEnter * execute "chdir ".escape(expand("%:p:h"), ' ')

"Fix Vim's regex...
nnoremap / /\v
vnoremap / /\v

" Gimme some breathing room at the bottom please...
set scrolloff=5

" makes vim usable with screen
set restorescreen

" Disable the arrow keys... helps the learning
map <up> <nop>
map <down> <nop>
map <left> <nop>
map <right> <nop>
imap <up> <nop>
imap <down> <nop>
imap <left> <nop>
imap <right> <nop>


"Kill error bells
set noerrorbells
set visualbell
set t_vb=

" Turn on spell check
" set spell

" Thesaurus!! 
set thesaurus+=/usr/share/myspell/dicts/mthesaur.txt

" Some NERDTree love
let NERDTreeBookmarksFile=expand("$HOME/.vim/NERDTreeBookmarks")

let NERDTreeShowBookmarks=1
let NERDTreeQuitOnOpen=1
let NERDTreeHighlightCursorline=1
let NERDTreeShowFiles=1
let NERDTreeShowHidden=1

" Make swapping windows easier...
map <C-h> <C-w>h
map <C-j> <C-w>j
map <C-k> <C-w>k
map <C-l> <C-w>l

" Allow for buffers to be hidden so that they need not be closed to go to
" another file
set hidden

" Turn on incremental search
set incsearch
set smartcase

" Long history is long
set history=1000
set undolevels=1000

" No need for a vi backup file
set nobackup

" Colors!!
set t_Co=256

" Compatibility
set nocompatible

set formatprg=par

" Syntastic!!
let g:syntastic_enable_signs=1
let g:syntastic_auto_loclist=1
let g:syntastic_quiet_warnings=0

" For soft wrapping text
command! -nargs=* Wrap set wrap linebreak nolist
set showbreak=…

" Sandro spacing preferences here
set number
set expandtab
set autoindent
set smartindent
set softtabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set shiftround

" Sandro key mapping here
map <F2> :NERDTreeToggle<CR>

"allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start

set showmode "show current mode down the bottom

"Setting the status line...

set statusline=%f       "tail of the filename

"display a warning if the file format isn't Unix
set statusline+=%#warningmsg#
set statusline+=%{&ff!='unix'?'['.&ff.']':''}
set statusline+=%*

"display a warning if file encoding isn't UTf-8
set statusline+=%#warningmsg#
set statusline+=%{(&fenc!='utf-8'&&&fenc!='')?'['.&fenc.']':''}
set statusline+=%*

set statusline+=%h      "help file flag
set statusline+=%y      "filetype
set statusline+=%r      "read only flag
set statusline+=%m      "modified flag

"Syntastic!!
" set statusline+=%#warningmsg#
" set statusline+=%{SyntasticStatuslineFlag()}
" set statusline+=%*


" Auto completion options
set wildmode=list:longest  "Change tab completion to be like Bash's
set wildignore=*.o,*.obj,*~,*.swp,*.pyc "Files to ignore on auto complete

"display tabs and trailing spaces
set list

" Use the same symbols as TextMate for tabstops and EOLs
set listchars=tab:▸\•,extends:»,precedes:«,trail:•


let g:pydiction_location='~/.vim/after/ftplugin/pydiction/complete-dict'
set sm
set ai
let java_highlight_all=1
let java_highlight_functions="style"
let java_allow_cpp_keywords=1
set tags=~/.tags
set complete=.,w,b,u,t,i

command W w !sudo tee % > /dev/null

" IMPORTANT: win32 users will need to have 'shell slash' set so that latex
" can be called correctly.
"set shell slash

" IMPORTANT: grep will sometimes skip displaying the file name if you
" search in a singe file. This will confuse Latex-Suite. Set your grep
" program to always generate a file-name.
"set grepprg=grep\ -nH\ $*


" OPTIONAL: Starting with Vim 7, the filetype of empty .tex files defaults to
" 'plaintex' instead of 'tex', which results in vim-latex not being loaded.
" The following changes the default filetype back to 'tex':
" let g:tex_flavor='latex'

filetype on        " enables filetype detection
filetype plugin on " enables filetype specific plug-ins
syntax on
filetype indent on " OPTIONAL: This enables automatic indentation as you type.


" VIM 7.3 features here...
if v:version >= 703
    set relativenumber
    set undofile
endif

Answer 1

1. Use :let g:colors_name to see the name of the colourscheme that has been loaded, the value should be 'sorcerer', if it's not then something has gone seriously wrong
   • Type :hi Operator, you 'xxx' part should be coloured and you should see guifg=<color> in the output.
   • Put a new line at the top of your .vimrc containing just the word "finish", this will stop vim processing your .vimrc. Using :colors default and :syntax on should be enough to get syntax highlighting turned on. If this works then just move the finish line down through your .vimrc until you find the section that is breaking syntax highlighting.
   • On windows, gVim uses a file called _vimrc, so check for that as well.

Answer 2

When you type :version in gvim do you see +syntax listed in your features list?

Try comparing that to your regular Vim version. Maybe your gvim build didn't include the syntax highlighting feature.