Subject: bug#27847: 26.0.50; mode-line-percent-position: line-based instead of char-based (optionally)

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2017 11:00:35 -0700 (PDT)

> AFAIK, the percentage(s) shown in the modeline by the variable
> "mode-line-percent-position" are all character-based, i.e., the
> percentage(s) is (are) computed based on the number of _characters_
> before a certain visible character (first visible, last visible, first
> in middle line, ...)
> 
> I'd prefer this (those) percentage(s) to be based on the number of
> _lines_ instead, because that would give me the information I really
> want to see: the relative _vertical_ position of the window/viewport
> wrt the whole buffer (i.e., the kind of information that a graphical
> vertical scrollbar provides visually).
> 
> So I'd like I could set some variable for switching to this way of
> computing the modeline percentage(s).  I think that many users would
> like it.

FYI, you can use library `modeline-posn.el' to get what you
want.  In this case you would define a custom behavior (it
is not one of the predefined choices), but that is easy to do.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/modeline-posn.el