Re: Customizing the mode line

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden
> Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:07:44 -0400
> 
> I don't think that a better UI for customizing the mode line is a
> really important place to improve.  Customizing it is not that hard to
> do.

??? Really?  Then please describe how to do that.  What user options
are available for that, and what values one should give them for the
following use-cases:

 . Show only the major mode, not the minor modes.

 . Remove the percent/All/Top/Bot part.

 . Display the load-average and the Mail notification between the line
   number and the major/minor mode indicator.

> Let's spend our time working on features that will enable Emacs to do
> things that it currently cannot do, and handle situations it currently
> cannot handle.

You seem to say, in effect, that features which use the mode line are
not important enough to discuss.  If so, I certainly disagree.  The
system load is very important to me when I get sluggish response from
Emacs: it allows me to figure out if my net connection is the
culprit.  The mail notification is very important to me as well, for
obvious reasons.

Btw, my complaint was triggered by the need to see the current
function (displayed by which-func-mode) when I was studying the
display engine code for my bidi work.  So this problem clearly affects
our ability to work on improving Emacs in other areas, certainly so
for me.