tilde in dired default-directory but not elsewhere

[Emanuel Berg]

I noticed this because I use default-directory in the
mode line.

But I managed to reproduce this with emacs -Q like
this:

First start it and do describe-variable
default-directory. You get the tilde. Then open a file
with an .el extension which should bring Emacs to
emacs-lisp-mode. Do the dance again and it says
/home/user/!

Do `cd', and you get the tilde in the suggestion - but
describe it, and you get the explicit path!

Is this as it should be, and if so, is there a reason?

Interesting tho it might be, what I really want is the
tilde in the mode line, always, showing the complete
path. I have a huge font I suppose so it happens that
the path overflows the width of the terminal if I get
deep in the file tree. Besides my eye is trained for ~
and it looks sort of weird to see the /home/user/
stuff.

-- 
underground experts united