Assorted questions

[Simon Friedberger <simon+zsh@a-oben.org>]

Hello everybody,

I'll just make a list with my questions. :)

1.	Can I give background color to empty spaces.
	I've adapted the example in the wiki at
	http://zshwiki.org/home/examples/zlewidgets#vi_keys_-_show_mode
	to show a different background color when in vi command mode.
	You can see what I did here
	https://simon.a-oben.org/blog/?p=233
	Just in case that the details matter.

	This approach has two problems.
	a) The empty background isn't colored. This isn't really a
	problem but it would be nice if it was. Is it possible?
	b) I have a little smily in my prompt for return status 0 and
	the return status for anything else. This is reset when I change
	mode but it shouldn't. Any fixes?

2.	I'm a fan of keeping things simple so I'm a bit irritaded by
	some of the options. Maybe you can explain a good use-case to me.
	a)	accept-and-hold seems to be the same as <ENTER>^p 
	b)	history-search-back(for)ward and
		history-beginning-search-back(for)ward
		seem to be the same as ^r
		I know that there is a subtle difference but I don't see
		how it matters in practice.

3.	The zle section of the guide suggests a binding with
	bindkey -rpM viins '\e['
	to make <ESC> unambiguous but I tried with $KEYTIMEOUT set to
	something high and it doesn't seem to make a difference if I
	have that binding or not. Can anybody suggest an experiment
	where the difference shows?

4.	I would like to have some history magic. It would be nice if
	^p/^n (or up/down) just switched through the local history but
	^r/^s searched through all history entries. I used to have
	shared history set but it irks me that when a long command
	finished I cannot just press up and change a paramter and run it
	again.
	The man page suggests that there is a set-local-history binding
	but I cannot find any documentation on it.

Alright, that's all for now. heh

Thanks
Simon