As I cleaned up my `init.el' using `use-package' I discovered some edge cases in `diminish' that can be easily addressed. 

1. Although the stated purpose from `diminish' is to shorten existing minor mode lighters, there can be the case made for adding a lighter when none is supplied by default. The patch to the `diminish' function creates a dummy empty string lighter when it is called without an existing lighter.

2. The patch to `diminish-undo' detects when a mode was not previously diminished and properly restores the original lighter.

3. The patch to `diminished-modes' corrects and simplifies the logic by calling the `format-mode-line' function to generate the lighter from the minor mode specifications. This eliminates kludgy code for simulating symbol evaluation but also handles other mode-line format specifications not previously handled.

I have signed copyright papers so there shouldn't be any concern there.  I have tried to not use anything not present in Emacs 24.3 and updated the version number to 0.50 to reflect that there is a significant change since version 0.46; please correct either if necessary.  The patch is attached.

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MICHAEL@MAUGER.COM // FSF and SFConservancy member // GNU Emacs sql.el maintainer