Subject: Re: bug#14957: 24.3.50; Flyspell language visible in mode line

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 01:03:38 +0100

"Sebastien Vauban" <sva-news-D0wtAvR13HarG/[email-masked]>
writes:

> However, I still wonder how to put the language indicator at the *end*
> of the modeline -- I tried this at first, but I'm now sure it's not a
> good idea.

> We can't do that by inverting the two components in the above cons
> expression.  And it seems I'm not yet bilingual enough in Lisp...

Yes, cons is wrong here, better use e.g. `append'.  You should boil
yourself some tea, and then read about lists:

(info "(elisp) Lists")

> FYI, there is one minor annoyance; I'd like to see the language
> indicator only where it makes sense, that is NOT in (almost) every
> buffer. For example, I do see "fr" (my default dictionary) in the
> Emacs manuals, which is twice wrong:
>
> - they're in English, and
> - they're read-only...
>
> I guess the read-only feature is the way to specify (in an automatic
> way) the visibility (by default) of that feature. WDYT?  In such a
> case, we simply have to add a condition in the above "and" expression.

Yes, that sounds reasonable.

@Everybody: would it make sense to add a new variable
`mode-line-dictionary' that shows the abbreviated name of the current
dictionary when appropriate?  Spell checking is essential when editing
any buffer, so showing the dictionary is not less useful than showing
the input method.  People that don't want to see it anyway could just
customize the variable to nil.  We could also make it display something
only when the dictionary is not the default one.

Regards,

Michael.