Live preview visual block insert mode in vim?

Question

In vim, I can hit Ctrl-v 4j shift-I hello ESC to prepend hello to 4 lines of text.

However, while I am typing hello, I only see myself typing on the first line. Is there any way to make it so I see myself typing on all four lines at once? (like in the equivalent mode in, say, Textmate, or emacs' cua-mode)

Answer 1

There is no built-in way, for several reasons:

• the parallel screen update would be slower (think of vi's heritage: slow terminal over low-bandwidth connection)
• more difficult to implement (think of underlying autocmd events, potential popup menu, etc.)
• inconsistency with other commands (such as 4a or 3o), which also only show the first edit, and duplicate the entered text after insert mode is left

There is probably a way to implement such in Vimscript (similar to what the mentioned multiple cursors plugins do), but it would probably be hard to get right under all circumstances.