But zsh already has a visual mode...

[okapia]

You reference http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Zsh-Line-Editor.html in your documentation. If you go there and search for the word "visual", you'll find that zsh already has a visual mode. In addition to viins and vicmd, visual and viopp keymaps were added three years ago. Are you perhaps stuck using an ancient release of zsh? Or has oh-my-zsh tricked you because it stupidly rebinds v to edit-command-line? Zsh also comes with functions for implementing the surround plugin which you seem to have duplicated.

Or have I somehow misunderstood what this plugin is going?

[dezza]

It just shows —VISUAL—

Like vim.

Maybe try it? :)

[okapia]

dezza: What's "it" in this case? The plugin does a lot more than show -- VISUAL --, and in fact it doesn't do that for me.

[BachoSeven]

@okapia you need to have a zsh theme that recognizes vi-mode and uses that to show -VISUAL- or similar

[okapia]

If all you want is the display -VISUAL- or similar when in visual mode, use a zle-line-pre-redraw hook. This plugin seems to rebind every key and practically reinvents the entire visual feature. All you need is a dozen lines like:

zle-line-pre-redraw() {
  [[ $KEYMAP != vicmd ]] && return
  local new="$RPS1"
  if (( REGION_ACTIVE )); then
    new="(VIS)"
  else
    new="(CMD)"
  fi
  if [[ $new != $RPS1 ]]; then
   RPS1="$new"
   zle .reset-prompt
  fi
}
zle -N zle-line-pre-redraw

You might also want to use the zle-keymap-select hook to catch switching between insert and normal modes.

[BachoSeven]

@okapia Thanks for the snippet, I eventually learned more about zsh and realised that it is best to write things yourself, so I made custom keybindings and mode indicators for the builtin vi-mode.

I had implemented command, insert and replace mode indicators, but got stuck on visual, because it wouldn't update it from zle-keymap-select. I then found your comment again, and line-pre-redraw works perfectly!