Help moving Colortemplate v3 into production

[lifepillar]

This is a call for feedback. Colortemplate v3, the new iteration of Colortemplate, is fully functional, but the code should still be considered alpha-level. If you want to try it out, do the following:

• make sure that you are using Vim 9.0.1558 or later. Using the current Vim master is heartily recommended.
• Install vim-devel (only the libraries are needed, submodules are not required).
• Checkout the v3 branch of the Colortemplate repository.
• Start by building the templates in the templates folder.

The documentation is not up to date yet. For a complete example, take a look at vim-wwdc17-theme. Or load your favorite colorscheme, execute :ColortemplateImport, and start hacking!

Colortemplate's grammar is described in autoload/v3/parser.vim. Colortemplate's data model is described in the wiki.

To provide feedback, please open a new issue in this repo tagging the issue with [v3].

Thanks in advance to all the contributors!

[lifepillar]

@habamax @romainl @neutaaaaan Feeling brave enough to give it a try? 🙂

Among the rest, v3 addresses some of recent Bram's concerns about the generated code (modeline and t_Co in particular).

One thing to note is that the generated highlight group definitions are always complete, with both gui and (c)term attributes. This is by design, and a change compared to v2, but the decision may be reverted. Open for discussion.

[romainl]

I would like to help but I'm still on 1276. I will make sure to come back as soon as there is a new MacVim release.

[lifepillar]

Thanks! The current code is “living on the edge” because it relies on very recent fixes for Vim 9 script. That is a bit inconvenient for now. It is perhaps worth adding how I build Vim:

git checkout https://github.com/vim/vim.git
cd vim
env CFLAGS=-I/opt/local/include LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/lib ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
make -j9 VIMRUNTIMEDIR=`pwd`/runtime

I use MacPorts, and /opt/local is where MacPorts installs stuff. If you are using Homebrew, you may replace /opt/local with /opt/homebrew (I guess). If you are using something else, adjust accordingly.

I usually don't bother running sudo make install, and run Vim directly from the repo: ./src/vim. That's why I specify VIMRUNTIMEDIR.

[lifepillar]

More examples of colorschemes defined with v3 syntax:

• vim-wwdc16-theme
• Solarized 8
• Gruvbox 8

[lifepillar]

Consider this definition using v3 syntax:

; Default definition
Comment grey white bold,italic

; Definition that applies only in gVim
Comment/gui pink white italic

; Definition that applies to terminals with t_Co >= 256
Comment/256 grey white bold

It seems intuituive enough, right? But:

Question: What would you expect Comment to be when termguicolors is set?

For the record, currently, the above will generate code like this (with white=#ffffff, black=#000000, grey=#444444, and pink=#f27487):

hi Comment guifg=#444444 guibg=#ffffff guisp=NONE gui=bold,italic

if has('gui_running')
  hi Comment guifg=#f27487 guibg=#ffffff guisp=NONE gui=italic
endif

if str2nr(&t_Co) >= 256
  hi Comment ctermfg=238 ctermbg=231 cterm=bold
  finish
endif

So, when termguicolors is set, Comment uses the default colors (gray on white), but with terminal attributes (bold). Does it make sense?

Currently, there is no explicit /termgui variant. Should there be?