Enabling italics in vim syntax highlighting for mac terminal

Question

I'd like to have vim display my comments in italics, and I understand I need to place

cterm=italic

in the

hi Comment

line in the color.vim file I'm using. This, however, is having no effect on the text display, which I suspect has to do with some Terminal.app setting, unless I'm misunderstanding the vim syntax. I'd appreciate if someone can show me how to enable this feature.

Additionally, I am currently using the Monaco font, which does not have a separate italic file (however, the italic syntax-highlighting doesn't work for Consolas, Lucida, Bitstream Vera or other italic- or oblique-enabled fonts either). Assuming that a solution exists for fonts with italics, do I have to jump through any further hoops to get Monaco working?

Thanks for any input.

EDIT:
I'm surprised I haven't gotten an answer yet; this doesn't seem like it should be too difficult to do. Maybe it is. Alternatively, could someone explain why this would not be possible?

Answer 1

Konrad, don't know about Terminal.app, but italic is supported in a lot of different terminal emulators. urxvt, konsole, gnome-terminal come to mind.

Answer 2

You can't with the regular monaco-font it seems.

It seems that only MacVim enables the italics.

Here

Answer 3

As of SnowLeopard, Terminal.app doesn’t support the italic attribute (SGR, value 3). Feel free to file a request at http://bugreporter.apple.com.