Poor readability in vimdiff with cursorline

[AndroidOatmeal]

Hello,

I've noticed that when I have :set cursorline in my vimrc and I try to vimdiff something, my cursor line makes diffed text quite hard to read. See picture for an example.

Any ideas on how to solve this?

[morhetz]

Hmm, that's weird. Is this iterm? Could your reproduce that without vimdiff? And if this is iterm, what's your g:gruvbox_termcolors?

[AndroidOatmeal]

Yeah, I'm using iTerm2. I am using the default 256 g:gruvbox_termcolors, since I have a line in my zshrc that runs the gruvbox_256palette_osx.sh script. The only other relevant lines in my vimrc are:

let g:gruvbox_contrast_dark="soft"
if !has("gui_running")
    let g:gruvbox_italicize_comments=0
endif
set background=dark
colorscheme gruvbox

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce this issue without vimdiff, since the issue only occurs the highlighted green/orange lines created by vimdiff. Gruvbox + cursorline works just fine on regular lines.

[morhetz]

I'm pretty sure that's not causing this issue, but you'd better change let g:gruvbox_italicize_comments=0 to let g:gruvbox_italic=0.
Ok, I'll try to investigate that stuff, thanks for reporting.

[AndroidOatmeal]

If it helps anyone, I've come up with a workaround that disables cursorline in vimdiff mode. I added the following to my vimrc:

if !&diff
    set cursorline
endif

[ikcalB]

+1 having the exact same Problem w/ xfce4-terminal.

imho, the lightish gray, that is normally a perfect cursorline color, has very poor contrast to fg/text color (black?) when vimdiffing.

[morhetz]

@ikcalB I'm sorry, I can't reproduce it with xfce4-terminal 0.6.3

vim from *buntu lts 14.04:
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Jan 2 2014 19:39:59)

[ikcalB]

Debian Jessie (testing)
vim 7.4.488:

VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Dec 30 2014 04:22:27)
Included patches: 1-488
Modified by pkg-vim-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
Compiled by jamessan@
Huge version with GTK2-GNOME GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
+acl             -ebcdic          +localmap        +printer         +title
+arabic          +emacs_tags      +lua             +profile         +toolbar
+autocmd         +eval            +menu            +python          +user_commands
+balloon_eval    +ex_extra        +mksession       -python3         +vertsplit
+browse          +extra_search    +modify_fname    +quickfix        +virtualedit
++builtin_terms  +farsi           +mouse           +reltime         +visual
+byte_offset     +file_in_path    +mouseshape      +rightleft       +visualextra
+cindent         +find_in_path    +mouse_dec       +ruby            +viminfo
+clientserver    +float           +mouse_gpm       +scrollbind      +vreplace
+clipboard       +folding         -mouse_jsbterm   +signs           +wildignore
+cmdline_compl   -footer          +mouse_netterm   +smartindent     +wildmenu
+cmdline_hist    +fork()          +mouse_sgr       -sniff           +windows
+cmdline_info    +gettext         -mouse_sysmouse  +startuptime     +writebackup
+comments        -hangul_input    +mouse_urxvt     +statusline      +X11
+conceal         +iconv           +mouse_xterm     -sun_workshop    -xfontset
+cryptv          +insert_expand   +multi_byte      +syntax          +xim
+cscope          +jumplist        +multi_lang      +tag_binary      +xsmp_interact
+cursorbind      +keymap          -mzscheme        +tag_old_static  +xterm_clipboard
+cursorshape     +langmap         +netbeans_intg   -tag_any_white   -xterm_save
+dialog_con_gui  +libcall         +path_extra      +tcl             +xpm
+diff            +linebreak       +perl            +terminfo
+digraphs        +lispindent      +persistent_undo +termresponse
+dnd             +listcmds        +postscript      +textobjects

I could upload another screenshot (which would look almost identical to the above)
What does it look like on your side!? @morhetz

[morhetz]

@ikcalB
Well that's urxvt actually, but xfce-terminal would be just the same

There is just blinking cursor, color line is only visible at the line-number columns.
I'm confused a little bit. Could you try reproducing this with some clean vimrc like tpope's vim-sensible?

[ikcalB]

@morhetz
tracked it down to :set cursorline (is really handy imho)
any chance to fix that by either

• having custom cursorline/textstyle at the position of the cursurline? (i.e. for each line highlighted, because it differs, use the BG color as the FG color if it is the cursorline)
• or disabling cursorline when in diff-mode?

[morhetz]

@AndroidOatmeal, @ikcalB:
That issue should be finally fixed with the latest release

[ikcalB]

@morhetz Thank you for your effort! Now, the cursorline is "behind" the highlighting of the diff - it seems to vanish.

Can you think of a good possibility, to have a cursorline with good visibility in diff mode?

[morhetz]

@ikcalB That's how it currently works as I suppose that fixes issue

Is highlighted line number not enough to distinguish current line?
Currently I have no good idea on how to have a cursorline AND highlighted bg (diff mode) at the same time.