Text based emacs modeline

Question

How do we use text-only based modeline in emacs ?

I don't want a big button across the screen at the bootom of my emacs window. Just a text line with all the contents would be good and minimal.

Similarly when I do a split screen, I don't want a scroll bar, just a "|" character across the entire screen is enough. Is this possible ?

Answer 1

M-x customize-group RET mode-line-faces RET

To completely get rid of the 'button' appearance, remove the 'box' attribute from mode-line, mode-line-highlight, and mode-line-inactive.

Answer 2

Doing (set-scroll-bar-mode nil) will remove the scrollbars (you can even use yascroll.el to use fringe-based scrollbars, less obtrusive than the widget based).

Regarding what you call "big button"... I think the modeline face you are using makes it look like a button (i.e., has a "beveled" border). You can change the face to look like a normal text face, with or without border, and the size you want. This is what I do. I think some themes (like solarized) do that, so you can test one of them to have a feeling of how that would work.