Send VSCode visual selections

[hholst80]

While using Live Share I noticed that visual selections in Neovim does not show up as proper selections on the other side, in the same way that mouse selections does.

Is it possible to get selections made in neovim visual and via commands such as visual-inner-word (viw) to show up in a consistent way?

[asvetliakov]

unfortunately no, until there will be an api in neovim to provide visual mode enter/left and especially changed events, see neovim/neovim#4399 .

theortically/as workaround you can try to use call VSCodeNotifyRange/VSCodeNotifyRangePos(...) from neovim side to produce vscode selection. Theoretically you can try to call it in something like autocmd CursorMoved (check current mode by calling mode()). Currently, VSCodeNotify requires vscode command as first argument but you might to try to pass empty "" here

[hholst80]

I appreciate that you knew so well what needed to be in place for this to happen.

I'll not hold my breath that this will be fixed any time soon:

bsmith89 opened this issue on Mar 3, 2016

[asvetliakov]

I'll not hold my breath that this will be fixed any time soon:

I believe neovim team is aware of such API needs and they're planning to improve current GUI protocol for own-rendering clients such as vscode-neovim, so this may happen in very nearest future

[jli]

theortically/as workaround you can try to use call VSCodeNotifyRange/VSCodeNotifyRangePos(...) from neovim side to produce vscode selection. Theoretically you can try to call it in something like autocmd CursorMoved (check current mode by calling mode()). Currently, VSCodeNotify requires vscode command as first argument but you might to try to pass empty "" here

Would you be able to be more explicit about how to do this workaround? I'm not super familiar w/ neovim configuration.

(I've been enjoying vscode-neovim a lot, but this issue hampers my workflow a lot, so would be very eager to try a workaround.)

[theol0403]

The linked issue has been fixed! Now there is nvim api for mode changed. Hopefully this means the visual mode workaround can be fixed and selections can be sent to vscode!

[theol0403]

Related: #7

[robclancy]

Why is this closed? The neovim issue is fixed now too.

[theol0403]

I did some more digging, and made a reopen request here: neovim/neovim#11590

Related:
#172
#778

Basically, the workarounds that were used before were:

• whenever cursor pos updated
• if mode is visual
  • if mode didn't used to be visual, make a marker
  • make a selection from marker to cursor pos (smart, based on visual mode)

This was bad, didn't support o to change anchor, and only triggered on cursor move, not visual mode selection (viw didn't work).

Another option is to parse Visual highlight group. But this is limited to viewport, so will produce incorrect large selections.

We now have ModeChanged, so we know when to start and stop showing visual mode. We just need to know when to update. It is possible that we can use getpos('v') to find full-range visual highlight, but we still need to know when to update.