davclark / vim-colors-bluedrake

A perceptually-based vim color scheme

Bluedrake Color Palette

Bluedrake is a carefully designed palette of 16 colors that was inspired by color palettes used for quantitative graphics. The colors in the bluedrake palette were chosen using the perceptually-based HCL (Hue-Chroma-Luminance) color space. The 8 base colors are a sequential color palette with all colors having the same hue (same as the blue accent hue). This sequential palette makes it easy to switch between light and dark color themes while using the same accent colors. The 8 accent colors are a qualitative color palette and were chosen so that no color stands out compared to another color (i.e., all accents have the same chroma and luminance but different hues). This means that different syntax groups are distinguished based on the location of the color on the color wheel rather than how bright the color is.

The basic design and structure underlying bluedrake is similar to the incredibly well designed solarized color palette by Ethan Schoonover. The main design difference is that in bluedrake the main content is colored using the blue accent color, whereas in solarized it is colored using a base color. In general, the base colors are not used for content in the bluedrake color scheme, resulting in all content being highlighted by colors that are the same hue.

Features

• Light and dark themes that use the same 16 color palette
• Equally visible content colors
• Base color palette with consistent hue
• GUI and terminal compatible (see Installation for more info)

Installation

Unless you have a preferred installation method, I recommend installing pathogen and then simply run:

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/michaelmalick/vim-colors-bluedrake.git

Then add the following lines to your .vimrc file for the dark theme:

syntax enable
set background=dark
colorscheme bluedrake

or the following lines for the light theme:

syntax enable
set background=light
colorscheme bluedrake

Terminal Users

If you are using vim in a terminal, I highly recommend changing the default terminal colors to the specs listed in the Colors sections. Light and dark themes are available for OSX terminal.app in the terminal directory. Bluedrake defaults to using the terminal specified colors, if you are in a terminal that does not allow setting the colors, put let g:bluedrake_256=1 in your .vimrc before the colorscheme bluedrake line.

Options

If you want to toggle between the light and dark themes, add the following lines to your .vimrc file:

function! ColorSchemeToggle()
    if &background=="dark"
        let &background="light"
    else
        let &background="dark"
    endif
    exe "colorscheme bluedrake"
endfunction
nnoremap <silent> <F1> :call ColorSchemeToggle()<CR>

If you prefer a light color theme in the GUI and a dark theme in the terminal add the following lines to your .vimrc file:

if has('gui_running')
    set background=light
else
    set background=dark
endif

Colors

Listed below are the color specs for the bluedrake palette:

BLUEDRAKE HCL       TERMCOL   16 HEX     256 RGB
--------- --------- --------- -- ------- --- -----------
base03    232 30 15 brblack   8  #002d49 235 0   45  73
base02    232 28 21 black     0  #003951 236 0   57  81
base01    232 25 40 brgreen   10 #2f5468 24  47  84  104
base00    232 22 47 bryellow  11 #577284 242 87  114 132
base0     232 18 65 brblue    12 #8ea2b0 247 142 162 176
base1     232 15 72 brcyan    14 #b4c3cf 110 180 195 207
base2     232 12 91 white     7  #dae6f0 253 218 230 240
base3     232 10 97 brwhite   15 #edf8ff 254 237 248 255
yellow    97  90 55 yellow    3  #768f00 100 118 143 0
orange    52  90 55 brred     9  #b67800 136 182 120 0
red       7   90 55 red       1  #d75a69 167 215 90  105
magenta   322 90 55 brmagenta 13 #d74bb9 170 215 75  185
violet    277 90 55 magenta   5  #976ce2 99  151 108 226
blue      232 90 55 blue      4  #0094d4 32  0   148 212
cyan      187 90 55 cyan      6  #00a39a 37  0   163 154
green     142 90 55 green     2  #009e3c 28  0   158 60

Table Notes:

1. 16 = terminal color code
2. HCL = hue chroma luminance
3. RGB = red green blue

License

The bluedrake color palette is MIT/X11 licensed. Copyright (c) 2014 Michael Malick