Should we set vim's default background colorscheme to assume dark?

[Evan Huus]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Clint Byrum <clint at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> This bug was filed fairly recently:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vim/+bug/871907
>
> I tend to think that its a bit confusing why we default to a light
> background setting in vim, when our default terminals all are dark.
>
> I have not checked on any of the other flavors of Ubuntu, but at least
> on our main desktop configuration, all terminals have a dark background.
>
> This seems like a no-brainer, so I was thinking of uploading a fix before
> FeatureFreeze, but I wanted to open up the discussion a bit wider in
> case there are people who feel that this might be too radical of a change.
>
> The change would be simple.. vim defaults to a light background, so in
> the default vimrc for precise, we'd change it to have background=dark.
>
> I have CC'd ubuntu-server, because I'm certain there are a lot of users
> of non-Ubuntu desktop platforms who ssh into Ubuntu servers, and would
> possibly be affected by this, whether negatively or positively.

+1 for the change.

As someone who uses Vim on Ubuntu almost every day, I didn't even know
this existed!

My eyes thank you, and I can't think of a reason why this doesn't make
sense as a default. Users who change the default terminal and use vim
on a regular basis have the kind of savvy necessary to change this
setting too.

Evan