Hi there,

This is my environment: Win7==>Oracle VB==>Ubuntu==>GFortran. I use vim editor for entering and editing the code. I found it very inconvenient that the background is black in the editor. Besides the editor colors some parts of the code like comments for instance being dark blue. It is almost impossible to read them.

How can I change the background. I want it to be white.

Thanks, - A.

What precise version of vim are you using?

The versions I've used (all from the command line on Linux) have no background of their own; they take their background from the terminal. For them, to change the background of vim, you would change the background of the terminal.

It is a good insight. I will try that. Have no idea what the vim version is. How can I find it out? Thanks, - A.

Well, ultimately it does not work. set_color command (had to be installed) appears to be able to change the background but there is no command to change the foreground (fonts). It all looks very ugly.

In a terminal, enter this command:

OK, I cracked it, although haphazardly, I mean I stumbled on it after reading some website. The solution is to install the cream which is a beautiful and well arranged editor with graphical interface. It has white background, its own, and it colors FORTRAN statements appropriately.

Thanks, - A.

Glad you got it figured out. Thanks for updating us.

I've never heard of cream. I use the gtk version of gvim. If it's not already installed, it is usually easy to install. iirc, it's the vim-gtk package in ubuntu repositories...

You can set options by editing a config file in ~ (your homedir) that is called .vimrc

if has('gui_running')
colorscheme elflord
endif

I also have a setting in my .Xdefaults for my rxvt terminal windows because all that bright light hurts my eyes! There are other options, but these are the important ones for this.

rxvt*background:Black
rxvt*foreground:White

and then, you can just use the :colorscheme option in a terminal window or not use the if statement in your vimrc, but you will need to set your terminal background separately, and that depends on how your terminal program does it's thing.

Thank you fu9ar. It is very interesting.

BTW, I just tried gvim. It is installed, however I DO NOT see any difference between cream and gvim. The same graphic interface, the same buttons. Quite a shock. I will be curious how others will comment.

gVim is the graphical version of Vim. Cream is an editor that is kind of like gVim. Out of the box, Cream does not have Vim's modes enabled (it is always in insert mode), and there are some other tweaks that supposedly make it easier to use for beginners.

If you want to change your vim background, you can usually do it by changing the color scheme with :color.