have you ever found a solution to make readline change cursor shape depending on mode? not knowing the mode before typing keeps me from turning this on, even though I prefer vi bindings.
show-mode-in-prompt
If set to `on', add a character to the beginning of the prompt indicating
the editing mode: emacs (`@'), vi command (`:'), or vi insertion (`+').
The default value is `off'.
Chet accepted a patch I submitted for custom indicators, and this will be coming in bash 4.4/readline 7.0: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs/22580/fo...
I have patched versions of bash 4.3/readline 6.3 available on github (the bash page has gifs showing the functionality in action): https://github.com/calid/bash https://github.com/calid/readline
Note that the '\m' escape hasn't been accepted into the mainline yet, so as of now the custom indicators will still only display at the beginning of the prompt in the new versions.
The general solution is to just tap Esc a couple of times to ensure you're in Normal mode and continue from there.