Re: eliding in mode-line-format

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 1 Oct 2021 at 21:02, Manuel Giraud <manuel@ledu-giraud.fr> wrote:

> I'd like to have some kind eliding feature in the mode line.
>
> As a usage example, I'd like to be able to have "a buffer with a really
> long and meaning full name" that I'm able to track down (with icomplete
> for instance) but I want its "%b" mode line representation to be
> truncated to say n characters ("a buffer with…" for instance).

$ emacs -Q

(setq-default mode-line-buffer-identification
    '(-15 (:eval (propertized-buffer-identification "%b"))))

Now you have buffer names truncated to 15 characters.

(See documentation on mode-line-format, also see the default value of
mode-line-format and all the parts it gets built from.)

Instead of using a list with a negative number at the front, you might
prefer defining a function to ellipsize a string. You then get to
choose an ellipsis character and whether to truncate from the start,
end or middle.