Re: Customizing the mode line

[Juanma Barranquero]

The discussion is centered in making room in the modeline, and that is good.

But I'm also interested in ways to make mode-line customization (from
elisp, not M-x customize) easier. Currently I have things like this in
my .emacs:

 (setcar (cdddr (cadadr (cadadr mode-line-client))) (propertize " "
'face 'variable-pitch))
 (setf (cadr (assq :propertize mode-line-modes))
       '(overwrite-mode
         ;; etc))

and it ain't pretty (and it is quite fragile, of course).

Perhaps a way to access its content similar to menus could be made to
work; currently, some things are in variables, some are not, and there
are cases where you want to add some tiny thing (like spacing around a
value), and in order to keep the text properties (tooltips, etc)
you've got to copy a bunch of stuff.

    Juanma