Update July 13, 2015: Combine PaperColor.vim and PaperColor-Dark.vim into a single PaperColor.vim. See updated usage instruction.

PaperColor Theme

Light & Dark color schemes for Vim terminal editor and gVim

Inspired by Google's Material Design

Improve code readability; great for presentation

Currently designed for these languages: C, C++, Makefile, CMake, Lex/Flex & Yacc/Bison, Bash, VimL, Golang, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Markdown, DTrace, SystemTap, PlantUML, Haskell, Assembly (MIPS, GAS, NASM), SQL/MySQL, Octave/MATLAB, Fortran, R, PHP, Perl

Other languages can still display well as long as your Vim is set up to recognize the language syntax even though that may not be the optimal experience. So, if the language you are working on isn't listed here, feel free to make a design request.

Plugin support: Netrw, NERDTree, Tagbar, Tabline, Vimdiff, Vim-Airline

(see below for syntax-highlighting plugins target)

Installation

Place 'PaperColor.vim' file into 'colors' folder within your Vim directory, e.g. ~/.vim/colors/

Or simply use a plugin manager like Vundle (recommended for easy :PluginUpdate):

Plugin 'NLKNguyen/papercolor-theme'

Then, put this in your ~/.vimrc

    set t_Co=256   " This is may or may not needed.

    set background=light
    colorscheme PaperColor

Or using the dark version:

    set background=dark
    colorscheme PaperColor

To switch to dark or light variant during session: :set background=dark or :set background=light

To quickly toggle between them, use vim-unimpaired's keymap cob

Optional: turn on line numbers and status bar

    set number
    set laststatus=2

##Highlighting Customization Some elements have default highlighting color that may not fit everyone, and you can customize their HEX color code in your .vimrc file. Refer to 256-color table when choosing color.

Below is an example of the most often asked.

CursorLine

let g:PaperColor_Light_CursorLine = "#dfdfff"

Note: Replace _Light_ with _Dark_ for the dark theme.

Syntax Highlighting Plugins Target

There are syntax highlighting enhancement plugins that improve upon Vim built-in syntax highlighting, and each can have many different implementations. This is the list of plugins that this color scheme targets.