GNU ELPA - rich-minority

To activate the enrichment of your minor-modes list, call M-x rich-minority-mode, or add this to your init file:

(rich-minority-mode 1)

By default, this has a couple of small effects (provided as examples) it is up to you to customize it to your liking with the following three variables:

rm-blacklist

List of minor mode names that will be hidden from the minor-modes list. Use this to hide only a few modes that are always active and don’t really contribute information. eg:

(setq rm-blacklist
      (format "^ \\(%s\\)$"
	      (mapconcat #'identity
			 '("Fly.*" "Projectile.*" "PgLn")
			 "\\|")))

rm-whitelist

List of minor mode names that are allowed on the minor-modes list. Use this to hide all but a few modes.

rm-text-properties

List text properties to apply to each minor-mode lighter. For instance, by default we highlight Ovwrt with a red face, so you always know if you’re in overwrite-mode.

Diminish is an established player in the mode-line world, who also handles the minor-modes list. What can rich-minority offer in contrast?

• rich-minority is more versatile:

  1. It accepts regexps, instead of having to specify each minor-mode individually; That is, where in diminish.el you would do this:

     (diminish 'auto-fill-function)
     

     rich-minority does this:

     (add-to-list " Fill" 'rm-blacklist)
     

     where " Fill" could be any regular expression.

  2. It also offers a whitelist behaviour, in addition to the blacklist;
  3. It supports highlighting specific minor-modes with completely arbitrary text properties.
• rich-minority takes a cleaner, functional approach. It doesn’t hack into the minor-mode-alist variable.

What is rich-minority missing?

It just doesn’t have a quick and simple replacement functionality yet. However, you can set the display property of a minor-mode to whatever string you want and that will function as a replacement.

This package is available from GNU Elpa and Melpa, you may install it by calling M-x list-packages.

rich-minority is released under the GPLv3 or newer.