Re: highlight current window/modeline after switching to it

[Clemens Fischer]

* 2003-11-13 clemens fischer:

> with at least two windows open, i often have trouble to find the
> active one, ie. the one where the curser is ready to accept commands.
> so i want eg. the modeline swap fore- and background colors or parts
> of it.  my older versions (this is a GNU Emacs 21.3.1
> (i386-unknown-freebsd4.8, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)) did this
> without any extra elisp.
>
> i couldn't find a ready-made function, so my question continues with
> "is there a hook called on each `other-window'"?  i think i could take
> it from there with the elisp snippets already collected :)

using (defadvice) without the inner fillings didn't help me, and i
just cannot grasp all that rigmarole with the advice system.  i just
came as far as:

;(defadvice other-window (around other-window-flash activate)
;  (interactive "p")
;  (setq display-time-string-forms
;        '( day "/" month "/" (substring year -2)
;               " " 24-hours ":" minutes
;               (if time-zone " (") time-zone (if time-zone ")")))
;  ad-do-it
;  (setq display-time-string-forms
;        '( "* " day "/" month "/" (substring year -2)
;           " " 24-hours ":" minutes
;           (if time-zone " (") time-zone (if time-zone ")")))
;  (force-mode-line-update t)
;)

this version leaves me with the little `*' i wanted to signify the
active window, but in all and everyone of them:  no help.

so i went to go another way:  we have 'pre-command-hook and
'post-command-hook, and a buffer-local variable mode-line-format.

; mode-line-format's value is shown below:
;
;(setq cf-model-default (#("-" 0 1
;   (help-echo "mouse-1: select window, mouse-2: delete others, mouse-3: delete 
..."))
; mode-line-mule-info mode-line-modified mode-line-frame-identification 
mode-line-buffer-identification
; #("   " 0 3
;   (help-echo "mouse-1: select window, mouse-2: delete others, mouse-3: delete 
..."))

now the collision is between elisps incompatible read and write
syntax.  elisp will show me mode-line-format, but it can't read its
own output!

i can try understanding defadvice or (i think easier) use hooks.  my
first attempt was:

(defun cf-before-other-win
    (let ((com (prin1-to-string last-command))
          (deactivate-mark nil))
      (if (string= com "other-window")
          (setq mode-line-format cf-model-egal))))

(defun cf-after-other-win
    (let ((com (prin1-to-string last-command))
          (deactivate-mark nil))
      (if (string= com "other-window")
          (setq mode-line-format cf-model-selected))))

;(add-hook 'post-command-hook 'cf-before-other-win t)
;(add-hook 'pre-command-hook 'cf-after-other-win t)

this one might propably work, but then i should be able to give
mode-line-format sensible values.  just yanking it over from the
doc-string and changing a bit is not enough, if the syntax displayed
can't be reread.

  clemens