Groups global settings (like colorscheme) into ‘themes’
Stays out of your way, except where you want it
No predefined key mappings to interfere with your other mappings
vim-thematic-gui extension available with GUI-based support for: font, fullscreen, etc.
Integrates with airline

Why thematic?

You may be among the many Vim users who keep things simple by sticking with a single theme that suits their needs, configuring it in their .vimrc by setting the color scheme, font and status line.

Or you might instead be among the users who instead configure the visual details of Vim to match the lighting conditions or task at hand, or even to suit their mood. For example, you might choose a theme that is less fatiguing to your eyes given the ambient lighting conditions, where you'll have a muted theme for a dark room and a high-contrast theme for use in a bright one.

Writing code, you want a status bar, ruler, a hint of transparency and a programming font. But if you're writing an essay or screenplay, you want the screen stripped of all extraneous detail, with a traditional font and generous left and right margins.

Managing such an multi-theme environment in Vim has traditionally been a hassle. The thematic plugin is intended to solve that problem, providing you flexibility and convenience.

Requirements

May require a recent version of Vim.

Installation

Install using Pathogen, Vundle, Neobundle, or your favorite Vim package manager.

Configuration

Themes

A few of Vim's standard colorschemes are configured by default, but you'll want to override them with your own, like this:

let g:thematic#themes = {
\ 'bubblegum'  : {
\                },
\ 'jellybeans' : { 'laststatus': 0,
\                  'ruler': 1,
\                },
\ 'matrix'     : { 'colorscheme': 'base16-greenscreen',
\                  'laststatus': 0,
\                },
\ 'solar_dark' : { 'colorscheme': 'solarized',
\                  'background': 'dark',
\                  'diff-color-fix': 1,
\                  'sign-column-color-fix': 1,
\                },
\ 'solar_lite' : { 'colorscheme': 'solarized',
\                  'background': 'light',
\                  'sign-column-color-fix': 1,
\                },
\ }

If you don't specify a colorscheme, thematic will attempt to load one given your theme name.

You can also specify a dictionary of default values, to be shared by all of your themes.

let g:thematic#defaults = {
\ 'airline-theme': 'jellybeans',
\ 'laststatus': 2,
\ }

Note that an explicit setting in a theme will always override these defaults.

Note also that thematic stays out of your way, ignoring any settings that you aren't explicitly setting through your thematic configuration. For example, you can set guifont= in your .gvimrc independent of your thematic configuration.

Commands

Running :ThematicFirst invoke thematic and chooses the first theme, as your themes will be reordered alphabetically by name.

:ThematicFirst         " switch to the first theme, ordered by name
:ThematicNext          " switch to the next theme, ordered by name
:ThematicPrevious      " switch to the previous theme, ordered by name
:ThematicRandom        " switch to a random theme
:ThematicOriginal      " revert to the original theme
:Thematic {theme_name} " load a theme by name

thematic does not map any keys by default, but you can easily do so in your .vimrc file:

nnoremap <Leader>t <Plug>ThematicNext
nnoremap <Leader>T <Plug>ThematicPrevious

What theme properties can I set?

For each theme you specify one or more properties.

For console or GUI Vim:

laststatus (0, 1, or 2) - controls the visibility of the status bar
ruler - as alternative to status bar, shows minimal position details in lower right
colorscheme - set the colors for all windows
background (dark or light) - some colorschemes can be further configured via background
sign-column - optional two-character gutter on left-side of window
airline-theme - plugin for theming your status bar
sign-column-color-fix - temporarily modifies colorscheme to force gutter background
diff-color-fix - temporarily modifies colorscheme to force diff character color
fold-column-color-mute - temporarily modifies colorscheme to hide indicators in foldcolumn
force-redraw - if 1, forces a redraw! after thematic makes changes

For GUI-based options, see the vim-thematic-gui plugin. Here’s a summary:

typeface, font-size, and linespace - be specific about typography
fullscreen and fullscreen-background-color-fix - force a switch to fullscreen, with optional change of color of the background (or border)
columns and lines - manage the width of margins in fullscreen mode
transparency (0-100) - view details of window and desktop beneath Vim

FAQ

Q: I want to set `cursorline`, `wrap`, `textwidth`, etc. in my themes.

thematic focuses exclusively on global settings. The settings above are not globally-scoped but are instead scoped to individual buffers and windows. These are best set using the FileType feature in Vim.

In addition, settings like textwidth will modify your documents, which this plugin strenuously avoids.

Q: How can I configure Vim to emulate markdown editors like IAWriter?

It works best with GUI Vim's fullscreen. A few steps are involved:

(1) Install a few plugins:

vim-thematic-gui - support GUI features in thematic
vim-markdown - support for editing markdown
vim-writer - to configure for word processing

(2) Edit your .gvimrc to disable the tool bar, etc.

set antialias
set guicursor+=a:blinkon0    " disable cursor blink
set guioptions-=r   "kill right scrollbar
set guioptions-=l   "kill left scrollbar
set guioptions-=L   "kill left scrollbar multiple buffers
set guioptions-=T   "kill toolbar

(3) Finally, create a theme configured to your tastes. Here's an example for MacVim:

let g:thematic#themes = {
\ 'iawriter'    :{ 'colorscheme': 'solarized',
\                  'background': 'light',
\                  'columns': 75,
\                  'font-size': 20,
\                  'fullscreen': 1,
\                  'laststatus': 0,
\                  'linespace': 8,
\                  'typeface': 'Menlo',
\                },
...
\ }

Without GUI-based Vim, console-based emulation is trickier, as there's no easy way to create generous left and right margins. You can approximate it by switching from soft-wrap to hard line breaks with vim-writer and using with a narrow textwidth:

autocmd FileType markdown set foldcolumn=12 textwidth=74

If this project is not to your liking, you might enjoy:

Future development

If you have any ideas on improving this plugin, please post them to the github project issue page.

README.markdown Unescape Escape

vim-thematic