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
Integrates with airline
Support for GUI-based Vim includes: font, linespace, fullscreen, transparency, and screen columns/lines

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.

GUI-based Vim users can complement a colorscheme with a particular typeface. For example, the lightweight anti-aliased typeface like Adobe's Source Code Pro ExtraLight may look great against a black background but be unreadable against a white one, so you’ll only pair it with an appropriate colorscheme.

Or for a particular typeface you may want a larger leading to reduce crowding of lines. See the linespace option.

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,
\                },
\ '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 using 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',
\ 'background': 'dark',
\ 'laststatus': 2,
\ }

Note that an explicit setting in a theme will take precedence over these defaults.

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 thematic.

GUI-based Vim users have additional options available in theming. For example,

let g:thematic#themes = {
\ 'bubblegum'  : { 'typeface': 'Menlo',
\                  'font-size': 18,
\                  'linespace': 2,
\                },
\ 'solar_dark' : { 'colorscheme': 'solarized',
\                  'typeface': 'Source Code Pro Light',
\                  'font-size': 20,
\                  'linespace': 8,
\                },
\ 'solar_lite' : { 'colorscheme': 'solarized',
\                  'typeface': 'Source Code Pro',
\                  'font-size': 20,
\                  'linespace': 6,
\                },
\ 'iawriter'   : { 'colorscheme': 'reede_light',
\                  'columns': 75,
\                  'typeface': 'Menlo',
\                  'font-size': 22,
\                  'fullscreen': 1,
\                },
\ }

Commands

Running :ThematicFirst invokes thematic and chooses the first theme. Note that your themes will be ordered 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 (with tab completion)

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

nnoremap <Leader>T :ThematicNext<CR>
nnoremap <Leader>I :Thematic iawriter<CR>

What theme properties can I set?

Many properties are available for console-only and GUI-based Vim.

For console or GUI-based 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 (optional if your theme name is the same as the colorscheme name)
background (dark or light) - some colorschemes can be further configured via background
airline-theme - plugin for theming your status bar
sign-column-color-fix - temporarily modifies colorscheme to force gutter background to match Normal background
diff-color-fix - temporarily modifies colorscheme to force diff character color to a standard red/green/yellow
fold-column-color-mute - temporarily modifies colorscheme to hide indicators, matching Normal text background
number-column-color-mute - temporarily modifies colorscheme to hide numbers, matching Normal text background

The following options are for GUI-based Vim only (they will be ignored if you're running a console-based Vim):

Typography-related:

typeface - name of font
font-size - point size of font
linespace (0+) - pixel spacing between lines to allow the type to breathe

Screen-related:

fullscreen - if 1, force a switch to fullscreen
fullscreen-background-color-fix - optional change of color of the background (or border) to match Normal text background
columns and lines - you’ll mostly use these to manage the height and width the text area in fullscreen mode
transparency (0=opaque, 100=fully transparent) - view details of window and desktop beneath Vim

GUI fullscreen capabilities

thematic supports fullscreen capabilities for GUI-based Vim, including changing the fullscreen background to match the text background.

Note that when installed, thematic will override your fullscreen settings, specifically fuoptions to get better control over screen lines and columns and the fullscreen background.

FAQ

Q: I want to set `cursorline`, `wrap`, `textwidth`, `foldcolumn`, 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 couple of plugins:

vim-markdown - support for editing markdown
vim-pencil - 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-pencil and using with a narrow textwidth:

autocmd FileType markdown set foldcolumn=12 textwidth=74

Q: Using MacVim, the fullscreen background color isn't working as expected. How do I change its behavior?

To have the fullscreen background's color set by thematic, enter the following in OS X Terminal:

$ defaults write org.vim.MacVim MMNativeFullScreen 0

Or, if you prefer your fullscreen window to float against a standard background:

$ defaults write org.vim.MacVim MMNativeFullScreen 1

Monospaced fonts

Whether using console or GUI-based Vim, a good monospaced font can improve your editing experience. Many are available for free:

Note that you already have a few installed, such as Menlo on OS X.

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

Future development

If you’ve spotted a problem or have an idea on improving this plugin, please post it to the github project issue page.

README.markdown Unescape Escape

vim-thematic