color of quoted message while composing a message

Hi,

I have been trying to change the color of quoted text (beginning with
> ) when I'm writing the reply using vim editor but so far without
success. Colors change as they should when reading the message but
nothing happens in compose mode.

The default (dark) blue color of quoted text in reply is quite
difficult to read so I think I'm not the first one trying to do this
but reading the mutt documentation and searching with google did not
provide any answers.

Any help appreciated.

regards,

Olli

On Wed, 28 May 2008 01:51:28 -0700 (PDT), Olli Lehtonen wrote:

> I have been trying to change the color of quoted text (beginning with )
>> when I'm writing the reply using vim editor but so far without
> success. Colors change as they should when reading the message but
> nothing happens in compose mode.

I think I must be misunderstanding, but it sounds like you're trying to
alter the colours vim uses for composing a reply by changing settings in
mutt. Is that really what you're trying to do, or did I miss something?

Cheers,

--
Paul

* Olli Lehtonen wrote:
>
> I have been trying to change the color of quoted text (beginning
> with > ) when I'm writing the reply using vim editor but so far
> without success. Colors change as they should when reading the
> message but nothing happens in compose mode.

Where are you changing the settings? In mutt's settings or vim's
settings? You should be changing it in vim's settings of course.

> The default (dark) blue color of quoted text in reply is quite
> difficult to read so I think I'm not the first one trying to do this
> but reading the mutt documentation and searching with google did not
> provide any answers.

That's because you should be searching vim documentation.

With my setup, the colours are set in
~/.vim/after/syntax/mail.vim :

hi mailQuoted1 ctermfg=10
hi mailQuoted2 ctermfg=2
hi mailQuoted3 ctermfg=28
hi mailQuoted4 ctermfg=28
hi mailQuoted5 ctermfg=28
hi mailQuoted6 ctermfg=28

--
Troy Piggins | http://piggo.com/~troy _ /|/
|\__/ Oo,
( \\ D
Mutt 1.5.18 (with rr.compressed & vvv.nntp patches) L\-\L`\/|

Olli Lehtonen <olli.lehtonen@helsinki.fi> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been trying to change the color of quoted text (beginning with
>> ) when I'm writing the reply using vim editor but so far without
> success. Colors change as they should when reading the message but
> nothing happens in compose mode.
>
> The default (dark) blue color of quoted text in reply is quite
> difficult to read so I think I'm not the first one trying to do this
> but reading the mutt documentation and searching with google did not
> provide any answers.

In addition to what others have written, the solution to this may depend
on the type of terminal you're using and the number of colors it
supports. I also found the blue used by all my text-mode/curses
applications running in xterms too dark to read against the black
background I normally use. I played with the definition of xterm's blue
in my ~/.Xdefaults file until I found one that was visible when used as a
foreground against a black background as well as when used as a
background behind a white or light gray foreground.

Here are the relevant lines from my ~/.Xdefaults file:

XTerm*VT100*color4: #008fff
XTerm*VT100*color12: #008fff
! ! Now that I'm using an LCD, I
! ! like this blue better than
! ! #70a0ff, which is now a little
! ! light.

When I switched from a CRT to an LCD monitor, I found I had to tweak the
colors a bit.

I know it probably doesn't make sense to use the same blue for both
color4 and color12, but these definitions and my selection of colors in
various terminal applications have evolved from me knowing nothing about
xterm colors and barely getting color to work at all on an HP-UX system
that previously had no color terminals to the point now where everything
looks the way I want it to, and I haven't taken the time to go back and
redo everything right.

--
Gary Johnson

Thank you for your advice.

I was not familiar with syntax definitions of vim and I thought that
vim somehow (?) reads the mutt's color definitions. Now it makes much
more sense. Someone using vim had obviously had the same problem as
setting

set background=dark

in .vimrc redefines all colors so that they are much more easier to
read with black terminal background.

Thanks,

Olli