Why vim color schemes differs between gvim and a normal terminal?

Question

Why vim color schemes differs between gvim and a normal terminal? For example many schemes of this showcase don work in a normal terminal. I am saving all new schemes to ~/.vim/colors/ and set with :colorscheme cool

Any way to solve this?

Answer 1

Terminal windows (such as xterm) are typically limited to 2**8 colors. On the other hand, a GUI term can have as many colors as your graphical windows desktop.

Many vim color schemes are designed for either the GUI or the terminal; if they are designed for a GUI, it's unlikely they would display in a terminal well by-default.

If you need to convert a GUI scheme to terminal (256 colors), you can use the CSApprox plugin.