Showing a different background colour in vim past 80 characters

Question

I have seen http://stackoverflow.com/questions/235439/vim-80-column-layout-concerns, but the answer there hilights only actual content that goes over the 80 character mark - I want to be able to have a vim window open with 100 or more columns, with the leftmost 80 columns using the normal background and anything past that using a slightly different background. I mean the background of the window, not just text that goes over the 80 character point. This would give me an indication of how close I am getting to the 80-char point without having to go over it first.

I don't think this is currently possible, but I thought I'd ask just in case.

Maybe it could be done with a plugin?

Answer 1

The default vim status line gives a character count, so if you look away from what you're typing you can see how close you're getting to 80. I know it's not what you wanted, but frankly I'm pretty sure what you want isn't possible without editing the vim source itself. This is at least a workaround.

Answer 2

I don't think that it's possible to have what you want, but I following this question since I am interested in such a thing myself.

Maybe, I am stating the obvious, but you could setup the highligth in the 70th+ columns to get an indication of how close you get to the 80th column.

Answer 3

Highlight 81 column

set textwidth=80
set colorcolumn=+1

You may also make some styling:

hi ColorColumn guibg=#2d2d2d ctermbg=246