VISUAL with vim shortcuts

[mscott99]

I like the VISUAL idea for editing previously written latex. However it is easier to select text while in vim mode. Would there be a way to use the selection performed in vim mode?

I am not sure of what exactly this would look like.

Best,

Matthew

[artisticat1]

Yep, this is definitely possible. I'll try to fix this in one of the next releases.

[rwang2022]

I think it's a great idea. Are there any plans to implement this soon?

The issue, I think comes from the fact that vim doesn't really support doing a visual selection then going into insert mode (without losing the selection), so right now you can only select normally using mouse or shift+arrow keys. Not exactly sure what a workaround would look like.

Best,
Ryan

[superle3]

its possible using the vimrc plugin (https://github.com/esm7/obsidian-vimrc-support/tree/master) in a kinda hacky way.
by adding

exmap test jscommand {const sel = selection; editor.cm.cm.state.vim.insertMode = true; editor.setSelection(sel.anchor, sel.head);}
vmap <C-o> :test<CR>

to your vimrc you should be able to use the visual snippets.
This does hide the cursor, but I couldn't figure out from the docs where the actual vim functions are in the editor object.
it would probably be easier to add 2 commands/shortcuts to switch between insert select mode and visual select mode in the obsidian plugin itself

[superle3]

adding

this.addcommand({
	// this adds the select mode from vim so visual snippets can be triggered with vim visual selection
	id: "switch-to-select-mode",
	name: "Switch from visual mode to select mode",
	editorCheckCallback: (checking: boolean, editor: Editor) => {
		let vimObject = (window as any).CodeMirrorAdapter?.Vim;
		if (
			!(this.app as any).isVimEnabled() ||
			!editor.cm.cm.state.vim?.visualMode
		) {
			return false;
		} else if (!checking) {
			let selection: EditorSelection = editor.listSelections();
			vimObject.handleKey(editor.cm.cm, "<Esc>");
			vimObject.handleKey(editor.cm.cm, "i");
			editor.setSelections(selection);
		} else {
			return true;
		}
	},
});

would add select mode as an command. you can go back to visual with (vim mapping).
This does work with multicursor. this doesn't give an indirect mapping sadly, cause : in visual -> :'<,'>
or for only vimrc

const sel = selection;
const vimObj = window.CodeMirrorAdapter?.Vim;
const cm = editor.cm.cm;
if (vimObj) {
    vimObj.handleKey(cm, "<Esc>");
    vimObj.handleKey(cm, "i");
    editor.setSelections(sel);
}

with the vimrc, but I couldn't get editor.listSelections() to work so this doesn't work for multicursor