bug#50147: Wishlist: Display mode name in mode line tooltip

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> When I hover over the major and minor mode names in the mode line, the
> tooltip says "Minor mode" or "Major mode".
>
> It would be useful if it could display the full mode name in the tooltip.

I think so, too.  Today those things are just constant strings -- it'd
be nice to be able to add this in a non-consing way (i.e., without
having to create a new big-ish string every time we display the mode
line).

Here's the current code:

          `(:propertize ("" mode-name)
                        help-echo "Major mode\n\
mouse-1: Display major mode menu\n\
mouse-2: Show help for major mode\n\
mouse-3: Toggle minor modes"
                        mouse-face mode-line-highlight
                        local-map ,mode-line-major-mode-keymap)

This is quite careful to not create any garbage.

Hm...  perhaps we could just make the help-echo point to a function
instead?  That should have no performance impact, I think.

          '("" mode-line-process)
          `(:propertize ("" minor-mode-alist)
                        mouse-face mode-line-highlight
                        help-echo "Minor mode\n\
mouse-1: Display minor mode menu\n\
mouse-2: Show help for minor mode\n\
mouse-3: Toggle minor modes"
                        local-map ,mode-line-minor-mode-keymap)

The minor modes are done in one go, though, so that'd have to be
changed?

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   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no