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I use emacs in the terminal. One thing that I miss sometimes from a more traditional GUI editor are scrollbars. Sure, there's the percentage in the modeline, but sometimes you just want a visualization. Also, the percentage doesn't visualize how large the document is relative to the visible buffer like a scrollbar would.
What are my options for scrollbars in terminal emacs? scroll-bar-mode seems to be completely absent (I built emacs with --without-x).
This project is a good alternative: https://github.com/m2ym/yascroll-el because it works with and without GUI. Don't forget the cl require in your .emacs
(require 'cl) ;; build-in librairie
(require 'yascroll)
(global-yascroll-bar-mode)
(require 'cl)? (yascroll should be requireing any libraries it needs).
require (emacs 25)
Nov 30, 2015 at 15:56
yascroll I think, see github.com/m2ym/yascroll-el/issues/18
You could also use the sml-modeline package. It works pretty well in the terminal (imo) and is a nice alternative when yascroll doesn't work so well. However, you might want to apply the following monkey patch to sml-modeline-mode if you don't want it messing with stuff that's already in your modeline:
(require 'sml-modeline)
(defun sml-modeline-mode
(&optional arg)
"Show buffer size and position like scrollbar in mode line.
You can customize this minor mode, see option `sml-modeline-mode'.
Note: If you turn this mode on then you probably want to turn off
option `scroll-bar-mode'."
(interactive
(list
(or current-prefix-arg 'toggle)))
(let
((last-message
(current-message)))
(setq-default sml-modeline-mode
(if
(eq arg 'toggle)
(not
(default-value 'sml-modeline-mode))
(>
(prefix-numeric-value arg)
0)))
(if sml-modeline-mode
(progn
(unless sml-modeline-old-car-mode-line-position
(setq sml-modeline-old-car-mode-line-position
(car mode-line-position)))
(add-to-list 'mode-line-position ;; this line is patched and...
'(:eval
(list
(sml-modeline-create)))))
(add-to-list 'mode-line-position sml-modeline-old-car-mode-line-position)) ;; this line is patched
;; (they use `add-to-list' instead of `setcar')
(run-hooks 'sml-modeline-mode-hook
(if
(default-value 'sml-modeline-mode)
'sml-modeline-mode-on-hook 'sml-modeline-mode-off-hook))
(if
(called-interactively-p 'any)
(progn
(customize-mark-as-set 'sml-modeline-mode)
(unless
(and
(current-message)
(not
(equal last-message
(current-message))))
(let
((local ""))
(message "Sml-Modeline mode %sabled%s"
(if
(default-value 'sml-modeline-mode)
"en" "dis")
local))))))
(force-mode-line-update)
(default-value 'sml-modeline-mode))
As you can see, only two lines there are patched which just make sure that it uses add-to-list instead of setcar (this keeps it from overriding anything that's the car of mode-line-position). Also, I have the following settings in my Custom file for sml-modeline:
(custom-set-variables
...
'(sml-modeline-borders (quote ("[" . "] ")))
'(sml-modeline-len 17)
'(sml-modeline-numbers (quote percentage))
...)
The only real quirks I've seen for this mode are that it's not really accurate in things like Info-mode (because it seems that Info-mode buffers are actually one big buffer given the illusion of being multiple ones) and sometimes the "scrollbar" disappears between the percent symbol and the number adjacent to it when the "scrollbar" is really small. Other than that, sml-modeline works pretty nicely.
EDIT:
I just found two hacky "fixes" for the aforementioned bugs. For the bug regarding Info-mode et al. scrolling, if you remove the (widen) invocations from sml-modeline-create, you'll get the expected behavior. Note that I've only tested this in Info-mode, so don't expect this "fix" to give desired behavior everywhere. For the other bug regarding the "scrollbar" disappearing, you can eliminate this effect by not setting the sml-modeline-borders variable. Not exactly sure why that works, but it does so whatever.
