On Wed, Feb 23 2011, Chong Yidong wrote:

> Global indicators, especially transient ones, ought to use the echo
> area.

This is a more general problem. There's no space for global indicator in
Emacs, e.g. display-time, erc-track etc "abuses" mode-line because they
have no other choice. Using the echo area which is transient does not
seems like the right thing to do.

Unless somone add a non transient part to it. That would be awesome.

> If that's too hard, how about reserving the first character in the echo
> area for a spinner instead?

Why not rather a full part of the echo area for all the global
indicators that should be there rather than in the mode-line?

-- 
Julien Danjou
❱ http://julien.danjou.info