Library `column-marker.el' provides commands that create column markers in
the current buffer. AFAIK, no automatic way is provided to get the same
effect in all buffers. However, you can always use a column-marker command
in a mode hook, so that each buffer of that mode calls the command to create
the same column marker.

So there is no simple way to just make it apply to all buffers? There's no "all-modes-hook" or anything like that? This is so frustrating. Someone must have needed this functionality before I did.

Can I make edits to the mode to make it global? I'm thinking about margin.el, which uses the command margin-mode. Here's the code in question:

;;;###autoload
(define-minor-mode margin-mode
"Minor mode that displays a margin"
nil " | " nil ;;Does the first nil here determine whether the mode is on or off by default?
(if margin-mode
      (progn
        (margin-overlay-on)
        (jit-lock-register 'margin-change)
        (setq margin-mode t))
    ;; else
    (progn
      (margin-overlay-off)
      (jit-lock-unregister 'margin-change)
      (setq margin-mode nil))))

I thought that I might be able to change that to make it global somehow. In another section of code somewhere else, I saw :global t at the beginning of the define-minor-mode function. However, it didn't work properly. Are there other things I need to do? Would setting the first nil to t do the trick?

Yours,
James Aguilar