Blank modeline with display-time-mode

[alanpearce]

I tried to install powerline, but when I (require 'powerline), I just get a blank green modeline of the same height as the normal one.
In *Messages*, I see

Error during redisplay: (wrong-type-argument stringp ("" display-time-string)) [3 times]

I tried (setq debug-on-error t), but no errors were raised

Disabling display-time-mode does not help, even when done before calling (require 'powerline) for the first time in a session. The only workaround is to remove (display-time-mode t) from my init file. I'm okay with ceasing my use ofdisplay-time-mode, but I thought I'd post this bug incase it affects other people.

If you need some more info, let me know!

Tested Emacs/OS versions:

GNU Emacs 24.1.50.1 (amd64-unknown-freebsd9.0, GTK+ Version 3.0.12)
GNU Emacs 24.0.92.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7601)

[jonathanchu]

Thanks, this is great detail and very helpful. Looking into this now if I can work time-mode into this without messing up anything else.

[jonathanchu]

global-mode-string seemed to be the culprit. I removed it as it wasn't really being used anyway. Tested with (display-time-mode 1) and it rendered correctly.

4f04dbd

Let me know if this worked for you.

[alanpearce]

This fixes the blank modeline, however display-time-mode doesn't appear to add anything to the powerline.

Not a huge issue for me, but it would be great if powerline supported all the standard modeline additions.

[jonathanchu]

You bring up a good point - the main issue is that there isn't a way to customize this without forking and modifying powerline.el. I need to think about how to extend this to make it more customizable in the future, and your issue brings that to light that it will be needed sooner than later. 😃

[jonathanchu]

This should have been fixed in @zarkone's pull request merged into master already. If this is still an issue for you, please do give this a try and see if it solves it for you @alanpearce. Thanks and apologies on the delays in response 🍻