I like the idea but I think this should be expressed through styles and not options, we are trying to move away from multiple options for styling the same thing. It would be better to make it so the message is drawn on top of the existing status line as standard and message-style (or message-format) must contain a fill directive if it is to be cleared (the default can do this).

What I'm suggesting would mean it could work like status-format and the default message-format could be something like:

#[#{E:message-style}]#{message}

And message-style something like:

align=left fill=yellow bg=yellow

If you want the ability to set the width I suggest adding a width directive for styles. This could take either a fixed width (<= max available) or a %.

Thanks for the feedback! I've reworked the approach as suggested.

Here's the changes in the updated commit:

• Removed message-width, message-position, message-margin, and message-min-width options entirely. Width and position are now expressed through style directives on message-style.

• Added percentage support to the width style directive (width=50%), so message-style can set either a fixed width or a percentage of available space.

• Changed the default message-format to #[#{E:message-style}]#{message}, so the format references the style directly.

• Added fill to the default message-style (bg=yellow,fg=black,fill=yellow) and message-command-style (bg=black,fg=yellow,fill=black). The message is now always drawn on top of the existing status line, and the fill directive controls whether the background is cleared. Removing fill from the style would leave the status bar content visible behind the message text.

• The align directive on message-style controls horizontal position (left, centre, right) of the prompt area within the status line.

Example configuration for a centered half-width prompt:

set -g message-style "bg=yellow,fg=black,fill=yellow,align=centre,width=50%"

The message-format option is still available for adding decorations (powerline arrows etc.) around #{message}, but the geometry is entirely driven by the style.

This looks good, but it has your neighbour stuff as well, could you take that out? (Need to take a look at that when I have time, sorry for delay...)

Oops my bad. Rebased!

The code looks good but I don't like how this is building the screen based on information that is not in the format.

If you want part of the text to be on the right you should have to say #[align=right]. I don't think having it mysteriously infer what is left and what is right based on where it is relative to #{message} is intuitive.

Similarly, why do you need to pull fill out of message-style? What happens if I set message-format to #[fill=blue]#{message} instead? Ideally message-style should not be checked in C code but instead embedded in message-format as something like #[#{?command_mode,#{E:message-command-style},#{E:message-style}}].

I think there should only be one format_draw call and it should take care of everything, it already understands how to align to left and right. Take a look at status.c:453 - it sets up the screen, then calls format_draw to draw the entire status line. Can we not do the same for this? Except instead of clearing the status line, we start by copying the existing one to draw the message on top.

It may need some tweaks to the formats to handle width - it may need to differentiate between "available width" (the total draw area) and the width the user wants (ie "width=X"). I can't remember how that is handled right now...