With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.

Zenburn

This is the The Official Zenburn Page

Zenburn is a low-contrast color scheme for Vim. It’s easy for your eyes and designed to keep you in the zone for long programming sessions.

What’s the purpose of this page?

The Wikipedia page for Zenburn is officially deleted, therefore this page attempts to replace the wiki page as a nexus for Zenburn-related information. Unfortunately, unlike a wiki this page is not editable by everyone.

A page is easier to upkeep than a post, plus editing a page doesn’t mess up the RSS feeds (unlike editing a post which was posted a long time ago in the past). That’s why there is now this brand spanking new Official Page.

Latest version and background information

Zenburn.vim
Old skool official page
History of Zenburn
One day Zenburn was in Slashdot’s comments (and the server nearly melted)
Screenshot!
Page at vim.sf.net

Notes

To use Zenburn in GVim, simply copy the file to colors/ subdirectory under your Vim configuration folder (e.g. ~/.vim/colors or C:\vim\colors).

To use Zenburn in Vim, you must enable the 256-color mode for Vim. This can be done with e.g. export TERM=xterm-256color. You might also need to add set t_Co=256 into your .vimrc file, before loading the colorscheme. Note, that due to limitations of the 256-color mode the color scheme is not exactly like it appears in GVim, but very close nevertheless.

Have a look at Darmawan’s page for further information and screenshots.

List of known ports and derivatives

Zenburn for KDE konsole by Christoffer Sawicki. See also below for Konsole 2.0.
Daniel Brockman has a page with many adaptations. E.g. Emacs (!), XTerm, ion, ratpoison, etc.
Zenburn scheme ported to Visual Studio 2005 by Jeff Atwood
Jakub Piotr Cłapa Zenburnt his entire desktop!
Zenburn ported to Notepad++ by Dominykas Djačenka.
SubEthaEdit Zenburn by Henrik Bergius.
“Dark Zenburn Global Style” for Stylish browser plugin.
Zenburn for KDevelop/Kate by Lukasz “Lookanio” Purgal.
Zenburn for KDE3 by Kevin Geiss.
Putty colors by Steve T.
Marc Kerbiquet uses Zenburn in his Code Browser software.
Andrew Janke did a Zenburn-configuration file for Gnome Terminal. See also his comment below.
Jonathan Bonomo made a color scheme for sterjm (project page). You can download the file here.
Hisham made a Typo/CSS Zenburn theme.
Juhapekka Tolvanen made a Zenburn config for ctheme.
Zenburn for Konsole redux by Craig. It’s for Konsole 2.0 (KDE4). Apologies to Craig since I had somehow overlooked his link from the old page.
Zenburn Blogger template with syntax highlighting for code examples, by Elijahr.
“Zenburn-like color scheme with terminus/proggyclean fonts for terminals and emacs.” Cheers to Nick C for pointing it out.
Windows cmd.exe port (also for Powershell) by Twinside.
Adrian C has a whole bunch of Zenburn things, including a Zenburn theme for the Awesome WM - have a look at the simply excellent screenshots! You can read Adrian’s journal entry too.
Abchernin sent information about how to set up for EasyEclipse for Python 1.3.1.

If you have made a new port, please drop a mail or comment to get it included here.

Thank you for enjoying “Just some alien fruit salad to keep you in the zone”!

38 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Can you please put the colour refence table as it were from the wikipedia entry? It was very useful…

Thanks & keep up the good work.
I wonder who the idiot that asked to have the entry deleted was…

J.H., I don’t know who it was originally - my guess is some random Wikipedia admin.

As for the deletion, the article was deleted based on lack of notability. After reading the Wikipedia rules, I have to admit I agreed with the verdict to delete, as the article unfortunately did not reach the high level Wikipedia demands. I didn’t like it, but judging the article and the rules objectionably that’s the way it had to go :(

As for the color table, I’ll sure try to add it… if only I can find it from somewhere! It seems that the wikipedia entry has just vanished, as if it never existed. Or I don’t know how to look.

I copied the contents of the table to a spread sheet on my machine before they took down the page. I’ve uploaded it to google docs. I’ll color it when I get the chance.

the link didn’t seem to work:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pKLGtBDTfcpZoRtJFr_eeAg&hl=en

Very good, C Betancourt! I shall make a task for myself to add the table here in the near future.

If you come up with the colors before I add the table, please put a comment here so then I’ll be sure to use the latest version.

You can get a “gnome-terminal” %gconf file here:

http://mavis.anu.edu.au/ubuntu/zenburn-gnome-terminal/%25gconf.xml

Just drop this in a directory called:

~/.gconf/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/zenburn

and you are good to go. Note that I use a slightly transparent background for this one so perhaps you should increase the saturation of the background a bit but I like it this way!

I ported Zenburn for ctheme:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ctheme/

http://iki.fi/juhtolv/configs/ctheme/

I put Zenburn and Minimal (a TextMate color theme) together, made a similar one “MinimalZen” for EmEditor (http://www.EmEditor.com), you can find sreenshots in “http://picasaweb.google.com/toadloading/ScreenShots” and my EmEditor color theme in “http://www.box.net/shared/dnj42nqyow”

I found the StatusLine to close to the background color, so I set it the same as StatusLineNC. Humbly submitted as a possible patch if you agree.

*** .vim/colors/zenburn.vim.orig 2008-07-10 11:03:11.000000000 +1000 --- .vim/colors/zenburn.vim 2008-07-10 11:02:50.000000000 +1000 *************** *** 167,169 **** hi Statement ctermfg=187 ctermbg=234 cterm=none ! hi StatusLine ctermfg=237 ctermbg=186 hi StatusLineNC ctermfg=236 ctermbg=108 --- 167,169 ---- hi Statement ctermfg=187 ctermbg=234 cterm=none ! hi StatusLine ctermfg=236 ctermbg=186 hi StatusLineNC ctermfg=236 ctermbg=108

Hi Charlie!

I checked your patch, and agreed that the current StatusLine color was lousy. I took your patch in but had to edit it slightly, to be more in line with how GVim looks like.

Anyway, your name shall live forever in the Zenburn file itself, have a look at the latest version :) If you want your full name to be displayed, please send me a mail.

Thanks for spotting it!

Pardon my ignorance, but does this color scheme work with vim in a terminal or just gvim? I’ve tried using it in a terminal and it doesn’t look right.

Ydobon, it works with both gvim and vim - however, one must have 256 colors enabled in the terminal for the colors to look right.

This can be done with export TERM=xterm-256color, then launching vim. It works under Linux etc. but I’m not sure if that will work under a Windows prompt.

…and if it still doesn’t seem to work, check that the terminal emulator supports 256 colors in the first place :)

Thank you Ydobon, I’ll update this page with instructions how to enable the 256-color mode.

First and foremost: great work. This colorscheme is tight, and I’m loving it.

However, I was running into the trouble under iTerm in osX wherein if I changed my terminal type to anything other than “builtin_ansi”, my arrow keys would stop working within vim. Took me a while, but I finally found a solution, which I thought I should share with anyone else running into the same problem. It’s http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=550 , but it’s _NOT_ the actual tip, it’s the suggestion given in the first response there.

I know this isn’t strictly related to zenburn (so I won’t blame you if you kill this post), but manoman was it driving me crazy while I was trying to get your theme to work ;>

Again, great work. Now I need this ported as a theme for irssi.

Thanks Mediapathic! I’ve not noticed problems under Linux, but for the benefit of Mac OS X users, it’s good to have the information.

The chart that used to be available on wikipedia is now on deletionpedia

http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Zenburn

Thanks for your vigilance Christopher, I added Deletionpedia entry to the main text!

Hmm… too bad we need a Deletionpedia in the first place, but I’m really glad it exist. There’s gems among the deleted pages. (I’m not necessarily saying the Zenburn page is such ;) )

This is a great theme, thanks for making it. If anyone would be motivated enough to do a scite port, I’d be incredibly grateful.

Minor typo, but it bit me. Isn’t it
:set t_Co=256
instead of
:set T_co=256

Dave, you are correct. Thanks for spotting it, I’ve changed the text to have t_Co. Sorry for the trouble.

Hi! I’m having two issues.
First I’cant make in work under the urxvt terminal, I’ve setted TERM to xterm-256color but nothing. Default vim themes work fine, also zenburn works fine in xterm.

The other thing is the link to the emacs port is down, do you know some other source?

Thanks

Xuan, I think your urxvt might not support the 256-color mode. Have you tried to patch your urxvt? (More info here).

Brockman’s server is indeed down. Unfortunately I don’t know of any other sources, however I think the server error is transient, so let us wait a few days…

Argghh, version 7.9 too old to patch, I’ll upgrade to a newer and patch it.

Thanks Slinky, I’m looking forward to test this scheme, seems to be what I want.

Glad to see Zenburn has it’s spot on the web. I was the one who originally created the Zenburn Wikipedia article. It took quite a while making that table and adjusting every single color… I was bummed when they deleted it cause it wasn’t important to them.

Jake, thanks for doing that. Fortunately your hard work hasn’t gone down the drain, even though Wikipedia nuked the page. The page lives on at Deletionpedia - your table is also there.

Hi, I am grateful for Zenburn, it has helped a lot in reducing my eyestrain headaches. I made a Zenburn-based theme for Blogger, if anyone is interested. http://elijahr.blogspot.com/2008/12/zenburn-blogger-template-with-syntax.html

Thank you Elijahr! I added your theme to the list in this page.

I’m very happy to hear Zenburn helped again to reduce the eyestrain headache levels in this planet… The way I see it: less eyestrain = better environment = easier to concentrate = better productivity = better software = win!

Has anyone found a simple way to plug the zenburn palette into Eclipse (3.4 to be exact)?

I saw someone also created something for urxvt: http://dotfiles.org/~jbromley/.Xresources

Thank you Nick, I updated the list.

Hi, I’ve just adapted zenburn to the windows’ cmd.exe : http://twinside.free.fr/dotProject/?p=125

It also work with the powershell

Thank you Twinside, list is updated! Also, thanks to all the people who mailed me; now your contributions are in the list.

Here (7 KiB .ksf)’s a roughly equivalent Komodo Edit color scheme. I didn’t bother with the language-specific settings, YMMV with them.

I’ve made a few zenburn-inspired GTK themes:

http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Zenburn+GTK?content=100628
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Xfce-zenburn?content=105206
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks+Zenburn?content=103035

plus an Openbox theme:

http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Zenburn?content=103045

I love your theme, but sometimes I want to see my console’s background color instead of the grey one zenburn uses. I added the following lines to my copy of zenburn:

if exists(”g:zenburn_use_console_bg”)
hi Normal ctermbg=NONE
hi statement ctermbg=NONE
hi todo ctermbg=NONE
endif

Those statements seem to be enough to let my normal background show through.

Here’s a zenburn-based mutt colorscheme that expects you to be using a 256 color terminal:

http://trovao.droplinegnome.org/stuff/dotmuttrc

And a mutt screenshot: http://trovao.droplinegnome.org/stuff/mutt-zenburnt.png

Can someone update the Notepad++ style? It doesn’t seem to include zenburn colours for html/css/xml :(

Oop, just found an updated version for Notepad++ !

http://gn.iohazard.net/wiki/GN/NotepadPlusPlusZenburn

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Personal weblog of Jani Nurminen. Contains ideas, links, my creations, about me, and so on.

Zenburn

Categories

Archives

Search

Blogroll

apmid.org

AzP

Daniel B.

Jaska

Jonny

Scrsite

Cool sites

Edge

First Monday

Gilles Peterson Worldwide

Global Guerrillas

Ill-ec-tro-nic

Mind Modifications

New Mixes

Santa Fe Institute

Software Engineering Radio

The Daily WTF

Visual Complexity

Advertisement

Zenburn

Categories

Archives

Search

Blogroll apmid.org AzP Daniel B. Jaska Jonny Scrsite

Cool sites Edge First Monday Gilles Peterson Worldwide Global Guerrillas Ill-ec-tro-nic Mind Modifications New Mixes Santa Fe Institute Software Engineering Radio The Daily WTF Visual Complexity

Advertisement

Blogroll

apmid.org

AzP

Daniel B.

Jaska

Jonny

Scrsite

Cool sites

Edge

First Monday

Gilles Peterson Worldwide

Global Guerrillas

Ill-ec-tro-nic

Mind Modifications

New Mixes

Santa Fe Institute

Software Engineering Radio

The Daily WTF

Visual Complexity