Subject: bug#1355: suggestion on the modeline

From: "Richard M. Stallman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:57:21 -0500

It'd better to instead say  Read Only  instead of  %* , and  
    show  Modified  instead of the  ** . (don't show anything when  
    it's  -- )

If the mode line were infinitely long, I would agree with you.
But there's no room for that.

      The coding system shown in mode line should be removed. Because,  
    for vast majority of programers, he rarely deals with different file  
    coding systems or coding system change, perhaps just few times a  
    year.

You're probably right.  I would guess that only a few experts
know what these mean, and it's only useful once in a while,
not often enough to be worth mentioning in the mode line.

However, having the unibyte/multibyte indicator in the mode line
is useful.

      The cursor location percentage should by default not shown if  
    emacs is running in GUI with scroll bar.

Maybe so.

      When emacs is running in a terminal, the special indicator  
     Top  and  Bot  should be shown as percentage as usual,  

"Top" is equivalent to 00%, and showing "00%" instead would
be just as good.  However, "Bot" gives you other information:
that the bottom of the buffer is on the screen.

      Minor mode should not be displayed in mode line. It's confusing.  
    For one reason, it by default selectively display only some of the  
    minor modes currently on, and the selective process is not something  
    people who intuitively understands. For the other reason, Emacs's  
    technical concept of Minor mode is somewhat confusing. Most minor  
    modes in practice can be thought of as Preferences settings (Mac- 
    speak) or Options (Windows-speak and Linux Desktops).

The aim is to show those that are useful to see.

      Line number mode should be on by default. So that, the line number  
    shows in the mode line.

Isn't it enabled by default, nowadays?