(Cc'ing the bug tracker thread in case others would like to chime in.)

Hello Jonas,

Jonas Bernoulli <jonas@bernoul.li> writes:

> Pengji Zhang <me@pengjiz.com> writes:
>
>> - Unlike minions, this patch focuses on *lighters* for *enabled* minor
>>   modes. The menu contains only lighters, making it a more space
>>   efficient replacement for lighters on mode line, instead of a way to
>>   manage minor modes like minions.
>
> As the author of minions I am going to stick with that, but even then
> the addition of `mode-line-minor-modes' is beneficial.  Minions can
> now just modify this trivial element instead of the much more complex
> `mode-line-modes', which lead to a lot of duplication (or alternatively
> fragile patching of the built-in value).

Thanks! Good to know it is useful to minions as well.

> Unfortunately one still has to modify `mode-line-modes' to remove the
> parens around the modes.  IMO these are just unnecessary noise if one
> uses minions or the new mode-line-collapse-minor-modes.
>
>   Messages …
>
> is good enough for me, I can see how one might want parens if showing
> enabled minor-modes directly in the mode-line
>
>   (Messages foobar schalala other modes here)
>
> So I would like to suggest the addition of something like:
>
> (defcustom mode-line-modes-delimiters '("(" . ")")
>   "Strings placed near the edges of `mode-line-modes'."
>   :type '(choice (const :tag "No delimiters")
>                  (cons (string :tag "Opening string")
>                        (string :tag "Closing string")))
>   :group 'mode-line
>   :version "31.1")
>
> used like so
>
>  (defvar mode-line-modes
> ...
> -         "("
> +         '(:eval (car mode-line-modes-delimiters))
> ...
> -         ")"
> +         '(:eval (cdr mode-line-modes-delimiters))

Just my two cents -- I do think that it is good to make the delimiters
customizable.

> Additionally you might want to consider making the menu string
> customizable instead of using
>
> (if (char-displayable-p ?…) " …" " ...")

That makes sense. Please find the attached patch.

>      Cheers,
>      Jonas

Regards,
Pengji