benjaminthomas.org

256 Colors in Vim in tmux

2012-03-28T00:00:00-06:00

Most solutions I’ve found for getting 256 colors in Vim inside tmux have you configure your terminal to report its type as having 256 colors, by setting the type to screen-256color. While this solution works, it means that when you log into servers via ssh that don’t know the screen-256color terminal type, you have to jump through hoops to get things working again. Either by again resetting your terminal type, or by compiling and installing terminfo files.

An ideal solution for the colors problem doesn’t change change your default terminal type but leaves it as something basic and understood by practically all servers (e.g. xterm or screen).

tmux’s own FAQ suggests the -2 flag, but that didn’t work for me.

Here’s the solution I’ve come up with:

In your .vimrc file, tell Vim to use 256 colors:

set t_Co=256

Now, tmux needs to report supporting 256 colors as well. tmux has a configuration option for setting terminal overrides. Basically, all terminals have this string that describe their capabilities, and the terminal-overrides tmux function allows us to selectively change certain capabilities. So, the following line makes tmux report itself as being able to use 256 colors:

set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm:colors=256'

You’ll have to change xterm in there to whatever type your terminal reports itself as (both iTerm and gnome-terminal, the programs I use, report xterm as their default).

TermKit →

2011-10-16T00:00:00-06:00

TermKit — Trying to redesign the terminal so we aren’t using basically the same tool we’ve had for 30 years. At first I was vehemently opposed to the idea, but the more I read and thought about it, the more it made sense. I haven’t tried it yet though…

GitHub Flow →

2011-10-16T00:00:00-06:00

GitHub Flow: — Description of how GitHub uses Git. I really need to start using Git in a more intelligent manner..

Zsh Line Editor →

2011-10-16T00:00:00-06:00

Zsh Line Editor — List of commands that can be bound to keys in the Zsh shell. I was already a big fan of Zsh and then I played around with trying these out for an hour or two and now I’m a huge fan of Zsh. You can change little things that improve your terminal experience in just wonderful ways. The most important of which, I was able to get Home and End keys to work properly in gnome-terminal. Here’s the relevant section of my .zshrc file, to see what I ended up with…

A Farewell to CSS3 Gradients →

2011-10-16T00:00:00-06:00

A Farewell to CSS3 Gradients — Did you know that modern browsers support using SVG images in backgrounds? I didn’t. Cool!

ievms →

2011-10-16T00:00:00-06:00

ievms — A schell script that will install VirtualBox virtual machines for testing IE 7, 8 and 9 in a completely legal and Microsoft supported manner. This is fantastic.

A Machine For Reading Books

2011-10-13T00:00:00-06:00

The very smart Lukas Mathis posed a question after the Kindle Touch devices were announced at the end of September that was, “If you were to design a piece of hardware that was only used for one single task, to read books, how would you design it?”

In particular he thought that moving the page turning buttons to the touch screen was a bad idea:

What’s the one single thing Kindle owners do the most? I’m guessing it’s turning to the next page. While reading a book, every Kindle Touch owner will do this at least once a minute, probably hundreds of times in a single session.

With a button, it’s simple. You don’t have to move your finger. You don’t cover the screen with any part of your hand. You push down a bit, and you get tactile feedback, a little «click» that tells you that you’ve successfully initiated a page turn.

Now, compare this to turning pages using a touchscreen. First of all, the Kindles don’t have resistive screens. This is usually an advantage, but in this particular case, it means that you can’t rest your finger on the screen. You have to physically lift it before you can turn the page.

And in response to not his original question, but the question at the top of the section I just quoted, the single thing that Kindle Touch owners will do the most while using it is hold it. And with a real book you can hold it by any of its margins without obscuring text. However, if you add buttons to this margin, then you now have to be careful how you hold it, for fear of accidentally hitting a button.

So, I’d say that Amazon did optimize the reading experience. Though, I neither own nor have I ever used a Kindle, so I could be completely wrong. But I always found the placement of the page turning buttons on the margins to be a strange choice.

Windows Phone 8 is a great start at a response to the iPad

2011-06-03T00:00:00-06:00

A video preview of Windows 8 has been passed around today, and I have to say, the UI looks really neat. It really looks like something I’d use and even enjoy using. Which is a big deal, since I haven’t enjoyed using a Windows computer in years.

However, all isn’t peachy, afterwards, my two biggest reactions were:

Why are they building one OS for two completely different devices? This new OS is for both touch screen tablets and mouse based computers? If the iPhone and iPad have shown anything it is how much better a device you can make if you get rid of all the baggage (both historical and practical) that comes with the status quo.
When I saw them load up Excel in the demo, I think I was supposed to be excited, but my heart sunk. What the hell is that doing there? That is the last thing I wanted to see.

John Gruber apparently had the second reaction too (via Marco Arment):

The ability to run Mac OS X apps on the iPad, with full access to the file system, peripherals, etc., would make the iPad worse, not better. The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell”. iOS’s lack of backward compatibility with any existing software means that all apps for iOS are written specifically for iOS.

Though, after I had time to collect my thoughts a little:

In response to my first reaction, I think this is the thing to be legitimately upset about. This has Steve Balmer written all over it. So, cocky and self-assured that of course they can build one OS for both types of devices. They just doesn’t get it.
In response to my second reaction, and to what The Grübes wrote, for 25 years one of Window’s biggest selling points for customers and developers has been backwards compatibility. Especially with the corporate world. Imagine the revolt if the next version of the operating system dropped all support for old applications and programs. I mean what other reason is there to use Windows? There is a reason that so many IT departments won’t upgrade from IE 6. IE 7 isn’t backwards compatible.

Microsoft has backed itself into a corner where it has a crappy OS compared to iOS and Mac OS X, but it can’t start over because the fact that so many people are using their crappy OS as it is now is the only thing keeping them going. The position Apple was in when they started over with OS X was completely different.

So, I don’t think this demo was for some new “shell” or “skin”. This was Microsoft admitting defeat. This was them saying, Okay, what we have isn’t working, we need to do something new. This was them starting over but giving all those legacy apps some place to go.

I for one am excited to see where they take this. While I think Android is giving Apple some competition it needs in the mobile space (iPads and Xooms included), it is too iOS like to really challenge Apple creatively speaking. But WebOS, Windows Phone 7, and now this really are very different in their approaches.

Good work Microsoft! (Woah! That feels weird to say!)

I guess time will tell whose theory is right (and The Grübes tends to be right) but my guess is when it comes time to ship devices with Windows 8 that there won’t be one app included that isn’t specifically written for this new “shell”. If not, then they need to fire whoever made that decision.

Website update

2011-02-22T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve updated this website with a couple small tweaks.

I now use a smaller font and narrower column width, which I think make it easier for reading.
I’ve changed the way links show up in the feed. Now instead of all the links showing up as one item, they each are their own item and the URL associated with them is for the page I am linking to. This should make it easier to read and bookmark from within a feed reader.

So, sorry if I spam your feed reader today!

I’m hoping to start posting here more regularly. We’ll see how that goes.