Re: [External] : Re: Indicate better the current use of the echo area / minibuffer [was: Controlling Isearch from minibuffer]

[Daniel Mendler <mail@daniel-mendler.de>]

On 5/13/21 7:41 PM, Drew Adams wrote:
> It seems that this thread has been knee-jerk
> hijacked by those intent on pushing a proposal to
> base Isearch on the minibuffer.
> 
> That's NOT the intention of this thread.
> There's another thread for that - please go there
> for that.
> 
> This thread is about the current (longstanding)
> design of Isearch, which is NOT minibuffer-based.
> 
> And it's also about the echo area and minibuffer
> (independently of any concern with Isearch).

Of course, my intention was to hijack "your" thread.

Just to make it clear - my mail is related to your colorful
echo/minibuffer proposal as follows: If Isearch would not use the echo
area as it currently does, there would not even exist a need for an
indicator to make anything more clear.

But please tell me about the different indication modes you have
implemented in your packages. You have a color for the minibuffer and a
color if Isearch is active? Then you change color based on the recursion
level. Are there indicators for other states?

I have written a tiny package, which displays a "recursion indicator" in
the mode line: https://github.com/minad/recursion-indicator. Currently
it displays an arrow per recursion level and a special symbol if a
recursive minibuffer session is active. It makes sense to extend this
with more states, like Isearch. For Isearch I am using a separate
indicator in the mode line:

~~~
(defvar isearch-indicator
  (concat (propertize "Isearch" 'face 'isearch)))
(add-hook 'isearch-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
            (push isearch-indicator mode-line-misc-info)))
(add-hook 'isearch-mode-end-hook
          (lambda ()
            (setq mode-line-misc-info
                  (delq isearch-indicator mode-line-misc-info))))
~~~

Daniel