Xterm, Vim, LXLE

Question

My problem is within Vim, when I type something that returns an error the box that returns the error message at the bottom of the window shows up as solid white. After researching nonstop I haven't been able to find this problem before, one main part of it is I don't know the technical name for this area of the vim window. I have gotten to the point where I believe it's a conflict between the xterm color scheme and vim. If anyone has had this experience or has information that could help that would be great.

I am using the distro LXLE which comes with Xterm and an already populated Xresources file by default.

Answer 1

That area at the bottom where error messages appear is the command-line . Vim uses predefined highlighting groups for various output. The error messages use ErrorMsg (cp. :help hl-ErrorMsg ).

If you do :hi ErrorMsg , the problem should be reproducible. Can can either switch to a different colorscheme (check the full :hi output for any other bad color combinations), or, if the error message is the only problem, modify the highlight group, like this:

:hi ErrorMsg cterm=... ctermfg=... ctermbg=...

See :help highlight-term for an explanation. To make that permanent, put the above command below the :colorscheme command in your ~/.vimrc .

All of this assumes that your terminal is correctly set up; ie $TERM has a correct value and the number of colors available ( :set t_Co? ) is correct.