Vim Ruby syntax coloring messes up terminal colors on exiting vim in Gnu Screen

Question

I fire up Gnu screen and start editing a Ruby file with syntax coloring on and choose a vim colorscheme that uses boldface and a colored background (e.g. evening). Then I quit vim. The terminal doesn't return to the way it was before, but takes on some of the properties of the colorscheme I was using in Vim.

This doesn't happen if I'm using vim outside of Gnu screen.

Has anyone experienced this too? What's the workaround?

I'm using Ubuntu Jaunty and the GNOME Terminal.

Answer 1

Sounds like what happens when you set t_Co in your ~/.vimrc to a value that isn't correct.

If that is the case, what you should be doing instead is ensuring that $TERM is set properly in your environment so Vim automatically knows how many colors it can use. Manually setting t_Co in your ~/.vimrc is never the correct answer.

Inside screen, $TERM should be screen or screen-bce depending on your configuration. If you have the proper terminfo entries and screen was built to support it, you can also use screen-256color or screen-256color-bce.