provide vim-like indication of mode in statusline about evil HOT 3 OPEN

:( I just read through more of the evil documentation and realized that I guess I'm supposed to be staring at a single character in the emacs modeline for this purpose? I went back into the make emacs session (to get the modeline) and, sure enough, I hadn't noticed the N become an I. Is there no way for this information to be kept in the vim statusline? It seems strange to go out of the way to replicate the "-- INSERT --" display but then reinterpret it from a constant status to a transient message... I think I'd have been less confused if it didn't show anything, as it wouldn't trigger the now 25-year-old brain habituation that, if "-- INSERT --" suddenly disappears, I've been thrown back to normal mode... this is so deeply ingrained that it isn't even a conscious thought process I experience: it is just this subconscious vibe I get in my peripheral vision about what is going on in my editor.

from evil.

(I have now discovered evil-echo-state, which has given me the name of the statusline in emacs/evil as well as provided me at least some reprieve from the constant nagging feeling that I've exited insert mode every time that message disappears.)

(BTW: I'm sorry I keep leaving little updates. I really am. Honestly. Like, that prior post only felt necessary as I had added that extra paragraph in my first message about the lack of any visual indication at all: there was one, it was just very subtle, and only if you use a modeline. But, in that message, I also noted the side thought about how I'd figured out that what was really causing the disorientation was more-so the message disappearing than failing to be a status, and so rather than waste someone else's time writing me a message to try evil-echo-state that seems like my job to correct myself. Wow, this is getting so meta. I'm sorry. I still, though, feel like evil would feel a lot more natural to a vim user if the statusline persisted.)

from evil.

@saurik I think you make a good point. Maybe it's an option we can add. I went here: https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil/blob/master/evil-states.el#L37 and changed the tag to " --NORMAL-- " and that persists in the modeline:

So can see that's it's trivial to hack in. If you like the look of it, I can have a think about making this a defcustom so it doesn't need to be a hack..?

from evil.