1 Solarized Color Theme for irssi
2 ===============================
4 Initially created by Huy Z \<huy-git-pub circled-a huyzing.com\>, this is a
5 repository of themes for the [irssi] IRC chat client that support Ethan
6 Schoonover’s [Solarized] color scheme.
8 ![Solarized Dark main screenshot](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-main-in-iTerm-solarized-dark.png)
10 [irssi]: http://www.irssi.org/
11 [Solarized]: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized
13 Visit the Solarized homepage
14 ----------------------------
16 See the [Solarized] homepage for screenshots, details and color theme
17 implementations for terminal emulators and other applications, such as Vim,
23 The first irssi theme, called "universal", was designed to work best with both
24 Solarized Dark and Light palettes, but also to work under default terminal
25 colors. In other words, this theme was designed with a "fallback" scenario: if
26 you happen to find yourself on a terminal where the Solarized palette has not
27 been set up, you won't have elements become invisible or incrediby hard to
30 Thus, this theme was designed with these 4 palettes in mind:
32 - Solarized Dark: the theme works best when the terminal emulator is
34 - Solarized Light: the theme works, when the terminal emulator is set
35 to this scheme, almost as well as with Solarized Dark (you probably won't
36 notice the difference, but if you do, it could be optimized slightly by
37 switching the theme's use of some of the Solarized base colors)
38 - Default terminal ANSI Colors with a dark background
39 - Default terminal ANSI Colors with a light background
41 This theme was designed to be clean and functional, starting from the default
42 theme distributed with irssi. Colors are strictly used for functionality and
43 the number of colors visible is minimized when possible. Colors were selected
44 based on the characteristics of the text characters to be displayed:
46 - Visibility generally follows importance, with an attempt to let unimportant
47 text fade into the background (which is not always possible when
48 simultaneously supporting dark and light backgrounds)
49 - Loud colors are chosen to call attention to noteworthy messages
51 ### Supported Scripts ###
53 The following third-party scripts are supported:
55 - [adv\_windowlist.pl](http://anti.teamidiot.de/static/nei/*/Code/Irssi/)
56 - [usercount.pl](http://scripts.irssi.org/html/usercount.pl.html)
57 - [trackbar.pl](http://scripts.irssi.org/html/trackbar.pl.html)
61 This is how the "universal" theme for irssi looks under different palettes.
62 Click images to see screenshots.
64 Solarized Dark (this example uses iTerm2 on OS X):
66 [![Solarized Dark](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-iTerm2-solarized_dark-th.png)](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-iTerm2-solarized\_dark.png)
68 Solarized Light (this example uses iTerm2 on OS X):
70 [![Solarized Light](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-iTerm2-solarized_light-th.png)](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-iTerm2-solarized\_light.png)
72 Default dark terminal colors (this example uses Apple's Terminal.app on OS X):
74 [![default dark](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-Terminal.app-dark-th.png)](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-Terminal.app-dark.png)
76 Default light terminal colors (this example uses iTerm on OS X):
78 [![default light](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-iTerm-light-th.png)](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-irssi-in-iTerm-light.png)
83 If you have come across these themes via the [irssi-only repository] on github,
84 you may want to check the main [Solarized repository] to see if there is an
87 In the future, the [irssi-only repository] may be kept in sync with the main
88 [Solarized repository], but the [irssi-only repository] may be left separate
89 for installation convenience and to include the latest improvements.
91 At this time, issues, bug reports, changelogs are to be reported at the
92 [irssi-only repository].
94 [Solarized repository]: https://github.com/altercation/solarized
95 [irssi-only repository]: https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized
101 1. Configure your terminal emulator (See the section "Understanding Solarized Colors in
102 Terminals" for a detailed explanation behind these settings)
104 1. Make sure that you have changed your terminal emulator's color settings to
105 the Solarized palette.
107 2. Make sure that bold text is displayed using bright colors. For example,
108 - For iTerm2 on OS X, this means that Text Preferences must have the `Draw
109 bold text in bright colors` checkbox *selected*.
110 - For Apple's Terminal.app on OS X, this means that Text Settings must
111 have the `Use bright colors for bold text` checkbox *selected*.
113 3. It's recommended to turn off the display of bold typeface for bold
115 - For iTerm2 on OS X, this means that Text Preferences should have the
116 `Draw bold text in bold font` checkbox *unselected*.
117 - For Apple's Terminal.app on OS X, this means that Text Settings
118 should have the `Use bold fonts` checkbox *unselected*.
119 - For XTerm, this may mean setting the `font` and `boldFont` to be the
120 same in your .Xresources or .Xdefaults, e.g.:
123 xterm*boldFont: fixed
125 Example: for iTerm2, these are the correct settings:
127 ![iTerm bold settings](https://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized/raw/master/img/screen-iTerm2-bold-options.png)
129 2. Obtain `solarized-universal.theme`
131 a) Option A: Download `solarized-universal.theme` from [irssi-only repository]
132 and place it in your `~/.irssi` directory
134 b) Option B: To always have the latest version, clone the git repository:
136 $ git clone git://github.com/huyz/irssi-colors-solarized.git
137 $ ln -s $PWD/irssi-colors-solarized/solarized-universal.theme ~/.irssi/.
139 3. Change your `~/.irssi/config` to include the following settings, while making
140 sure to replace `YOUR_NICKNAME` with your IRC nickname:
147 theme = "solarized-universal";
148 hilight_color = "= %R";
153 { text = "YOUR_NICKNAME"; color = "%M"; nick = "yes"; word = "yes"; }
160 lag = "{sb Lag: %m$0-%n}";
161 act = "{sb Act: $0-}";
162 more = "%k%3-- more --%n";
167 4. Optionally, if you have the `adv_windowlist.pl` or `trackbar.pl` scripts
168 installed, modify your `~/.irssi/config` so that:
172 "perl/core/scripts" = {
174 ### For Solarized adv_windowlist.pl script
175 awl_display_key_active = "%k%2[$Q=$N:$C]%n";
176 awl_display_nokey_active = "%k%2[$N:$C]%n";
177 awl_display_key = "[$Q:$H$C$S]";
178 awl_display_nokey = "[$N:$H$C$S]";
180 ### For Solarized trackbar.pl script
181 trackbar_style = "%B";
186 Understanding Solarized Colors in Terminals
187 -------------------------------------------
189 ### Solarized Colors vs. ANSI Colors ###
191 8-color terminal programs such as irssi use color codes that correspond to the
192 expected 8 normal ANSI colors. irssi additionally supports bold, which
193 terminal emulators will usually display by using the *bright* versions of the 8
194 ANSI colors and/or by using a bold typeface with a heavier weight. (Note that
195 different terminal emulators may have slightly different ideas of what color
196 values to use when displaying the 16 [ANSI color escape
197 codes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Colors).)
199 In order to be displayed by 8-color terminal programs, which cannot specify RGB
200 values, Solarized must replace the default ANSI colors. Since the Solarized
201 palette uses 16 colors, not only must this color scheme replace the 8 normal
202 colors but must also take over the 8 *bright* colors, for a total of 16 colors.
203 This means that a Solarized terminal application loses the ability to bold text
204 but gains 8 more Solarized colors.
206 About half of the Solarized palette is reminiscent of the original ANSI
207 colors, e.g. Solarized red is close to ANSI red (or more precisely, the
208 general consensus of what ANSI red should look like). But the rest of the
209 Solarized colors do not correspond to any ANSI colors, e.g. there is no ANSI
210 color that corresponds to Solarized orange or purple.
212 This means that, for example, if the irssi theme wants to display "green", a
213 Solarized terminal will display something close to green, but if the theme
214 wants to display "bold yellow" or "bright yellow", a Solarized terminal will
215 not be able to display it. However, a Solarized theme will be able to display
216 the new colors orange and purple and also several shades of gray. This is
217 again thanks to the replacement of the ANSI *bright* colors; e.g. ANSI "bold
218 red", which is usually displayed as "bright red", will now show as Solarized
219 orange, while ANSI "bold blue", which is usually displayed as "bright blue",
220 will now be a shade of gray.
222 ### Terminal Emulator ###
224 Because irssi is an ANSI 8-color terminal program, it is entirely dependent on
225 the terminal emulator for the display of its colors. You cannot directly tell
226 an irssi theme to display Solarized orange, e.g. by specifying an RGB value.
227 Instead, the theme's colors must be chosen using the ANSI color codes with the
228 expectation that the terminal emulator will display them as appropriate
229 Solarized colors. For example, the irssi color format `%R` which normally
230 would be "bold red" is expected to be displayed by the terminal emulator as
233 So in order for irssi to display the Solarized palette, you have to set your
234 Terminal emulator's color settings to the Solarized palette. The [Solarized
235 repository] includes theme settings for some popular terminal emulators as
236 well as Xresources; or you can download them from the official [Solarized]
237 homepage. If you use the irssi themes *without* having changed your
238 emulator's palette, you will get a strange selection of colors that may be
241 Yes, this means that, to use the Solarized theme for irssi, you need to change
242 color settings for not one but two different programs: your terminal emulator
243 and irssi. The two sets of settings will work in concert to display Solarized
244 colors appropriately.
246 ### Bold Settings ###
248 Historically, there has been a one-to-one correspondence between the bolded
249 versions of the 8 default ANSI colors and the bright versions of the 8 default
250 colors. Back in the day, when a color program demanded the display of bold
251 text, it was probably just easier for terminal emulators to display a brighter
252 version of whatever color the text was (and expect the user to interpret that
253 as bold) than to display a typeface with a bold weight
255 Nowadays, it is easy for terminal emulators to display bold typefaces, so it
256 doesn't make sense for bolded text to change color, but the confusing
257 association remains. In fact, new terminal emulators allow users to break the
258 correspondence between bold and bright and can simply change the font.
260 However, ANSI 8-color terminal applications such as irssi only have a
261 conception of bold and don't know about the possibility of using up to 16
262 colors. So to use all 16 Solarized colors, we change the semantics of "bold"
263 in the theme to mean that we want to access the 8 new Solarized colors,
264 including the grays. Recall the example above, where we described that the
265 irssi color format `%R`, which would have normally displayed bold red, is
266 expected to show up as Solarized orange.
268 This is why it is important to *not* break the association between bold and
269 bright colors. Many terminal emulators offer an option to disable the use of
270 bright colors for bold, and you must not do so. Often, new users of Solarized
271 will be confused when they change their terminal emulator's color palette to
272 Solarized but haven't yet installed Solarized-specific color themes for all
273 their terminal applications (e.g. mutt, ls's dircolors, irssi, and their
274 colorized shell prompts). They will see texts that are hard to read or
275 disappear entirely. The solution isn't to disable bright colors; the solution
276 is to install Solarized color themes for all terminal applications and then you
277 will have all 16 colors.
279 Also, because the semantics of "bold" are lost in favor of more colors, it
280 also makes sense to disable the display of bold text as a bold typeface. It
281 won't hurt to see bold typefaces wherever the new 8 Solarized colors are
282 displayed but it doesn't make much sense anymore.
285 The Solarized Color Values
286 --------------------------
288 L\*a\*b values are canonical (White D65, Reference D50), other values are
289 matched in sRGB space.
291 SOLARIZED HEX 16/8 TERMCOL XTERM/HEX L*A*B sRGB HSB
292 --------- ------- ---- ------- ----------- ---------- ----------- -----------
293 base03 #002b36 8/4 brblack 234 #1c1c1c 15 -12 -12 0 43 54 193 100 21
294 base02 #073642 0/4 black 235 #262626 20 -12 -12 7 54 66 192 90 26
295 base01 #586e75 10/7 brgreen 240 #4e4e4e 45 -07 -07 88 110 117 194 25 46
296 base00 #657b83 11/7 bryellow 241 #585858 50 -07 -07 101 123 131 195 23 51
297 base0 #839496 12/6 brblue 244 #808080 60 -06 -03 131 148 150 186 13 59
298 base1 #93a1a1 14/4 brcyan 245 #8a8a8a 65 -05 -02 147 161 161 180 9 63
299 base2 #eee8d5 7/7 white 254 #d7d7af 92 -00 10 238 232 213 44 11 93
300 base3 #fdf6e3 15/7 brwhite 230 #ffffd7 97 00 10 253 246 227 44 10 99
301 yellow #b58900 3/3 yellow 136 #af8700 60 10 65 181 137 0 45 100 71
302 orange #cb4b16 9/3 brred 166 #d75f00 50 50 55 203 75 22 18 89 80
303 red #dc322f 1/1 red 160 #d70000 50 65 45 220 50 47 1 79 86
304 magenta #d33682 5/5 magenta 125 #af005f 50 65 -05 211 54 130 331 74 83
305 violet #6c71c4 13/5 brmagenta 61 #5f5faf 50 15 -45 108 113 196 237 45 77
306 blue #268bd2 4/4 blue 33 #0087ff 55 -10 -45 38 139 210 205 82 82
307 cyan #2aa198 6/6 cyan 37 #00afaf 60 -35 -05 42 161 152 175 74 63
308 green #859900 2/2 green 64 #5f8700 60 -20 65 133 153 0 68 100 60