no way to stop helpful modeline color tinkering

[Dan Jacobson]

Big let down versus emacs21.
$ emacs -Q /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL #or any file with lots of text
C-x 2 C-x o
The mode line running across the middle of the screen is the same
color as my emacs background color set in ~/.Xresources,
Emacs*Background: DarkSlateGray

Instead of two windows, it looks very much like one big window!

And it seems there is no variable to restore the former emacs21 style
behavior. Thanks for trying to show me what buffer is current via
changing the modeline, but it turns out that was too helpful.