Additional Configuration Options for Statusline Elements

[nouritsu]

Description

Currently the statusline in Helix does everything I want it to. Namely display information about

• Editor State (mode, cursor position, active selections etc.)
• File Information (name, encoding, line endings, language etc.)
• LSP Information (spinner for status, file reports and workspace reports)

I settled on the following configuration for statusline

[editor.statusline]
center = [
    "file-encoding",
    "file-type",
    "file-line-ending",
    "separator",
    "file-name",
    "read-only-indicator",
    "separator",
    "spacer",
    "version-control",
    "file-modification-indicator",
]
left = [
    "mode",
    "selections",
    "primary-selection-length",
    "separator",
    "position",
    "position-percentage",
]
right = ["spinner", "diagnostics", "separator", "workspace-diagnostics"]

[editor.statusline.mode]
insert = "INSERT"
normal = "NORMAL"
select = "SELECT"

Improvement

I would like additional configuration options (with sensible defaults, of course) for the different "elements" in the statusline (similar to Starship). This would open up several configuration possiblities that would serve to improve the looks and functionality of the statusline.

Custom Format

On the left side of my statusline I have

Here, I do not like the way the selections and primary-selection-length "elements" are rendered. I would like to define a custom format for the render. Something like -

[editor.statusline.selections]
format = "$count"

Which would then only render the count, eg - 5 rather than 5 sel

Note that this would not only help with decluttering/theming but also allow for reactive separators.
For example, to the right I have

This, is quite ugly. However, that is only because there are no diagnostics in my workspace/file. When the workspace is populated with a few errors, the statusline looks like

Which looks nice.

Adding in a format option would allow me to do something like

[editor.statusline.workspace-diagnostics]
format = "$separator W $diag_err $diag_warn $diag_info $diag_hint"

Which would only render the separator if the workspace-diagnostics element was also rendered.

Custom Color

In the center I have

This would look a lot better if the different elements were of a different color.

Something like

[editor.statusline.version-control]
fg = "bold green"

The bg key will be inherited from statusline color since it is not set here.

Always Render

An always render option would solve the problem of the statusline looking odd when components are expected to render, but are kept hidden.

For example -

• File encoding being hidden if non UTF-8
• Spinner not being rendered when LSP is idle (could be replaced with an icon, maybe the language icon feat: add basic support for icons #12369)
• Diagnostics for both file and workspace not rendering if 0. I know it would get quite cluttered if the statusline just had ● 0 ● 0 ● 0 ● 0 │ W ● 0 ● 0 ● 0 ● 0. But something like ● 0 | W ● 0 would look nice or even ● | W ● (green dots)

Miscellaneous Options

There are several more options that I would like to configure for the statusline. An example is described below.

The git_branch element from Starship perfectly explains what I would like to see. It provides the user with a key which removes the git_branch plugin from the prompt if the current branch is equal to a few values. For example, for helix

[editor.statusline.version-control]
ignored = ["main", "master"]

This would make it so that statusline only shows the branch if it is not equal to "main" or "master".

[Ktoks]

I like a lot of what I see here - I sometimes accidentally modify more than one selection because I forget I have more than one thing selected. It would be nice to be able to indicate that I have more than one selection by changing the color of the selection section of the status line when > 1.

[Ktoks]

Also - adding the ability to configure if you want things to always be present is nice as well.
Such as this simple PR for encoding:
#13707

[n6v26r]

Check out: #13666
It adds color options and some gliphs.
I think there is still space for improvement with custom formatting.