Re: blinking the modeline

[Piet van Oostrum]

>>>>> roblist@bigdis.com (Rob Meyer) (RM) wrote:

RM> (defun blink-mode-line ()
RM>   "Blink the left character of the mode line"
RM>   (interactive)
RM>   (message "1: %s" mode-line-inverse-video)
RM>   (sleep-for 1)
RM>   (setq mode-line-inverse-video (not mode-line-inverse-video))
RM>   (message "2: %s" mode-line-inverse-video)
RM>   (force-mode-line-update)
RM>   (sleep-for 1)
RM>   (setq mode-line-inverse-video (not mode-line-inverse-video))
RM>   (message "3: %s" mode-line-inverse-video)
RM> )

RM> Does nothing but print the messages, which strangely enough are as I
RM> would expect (t, nil, then t). But no mode-line change at all. If I
RM> comment out the
RM> second setq, then it does change the mode-line once, leaving it the
RM> opposite of it's original state after running. But nothing I do seems
RM> to be able to convince Emacs to flash the mode-line.

Use sit-for rather than sleep-for (sleep-for doesn't redisplay). You could
also display-time which updates the time in the modeline every minute.
However, when there is a lot of crap in the modeline the time will be
pushed out of it. 
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum@hccnet.nl