Re: not too happy with Emacs 21 vertical-line dragging when scrollbars present

[Richard Stallman]

    The squares where the `.' are were visible drag handles for the windows.

ISTR that we never thought of them as having a purpose; they were
simply unused space.  So we used them to make the mode line bigger,
without realizing anything useful was being taken away.

At Lisp level you could put a different meaning on clicks on the first
two characters of the mode line.  Want to try that?  It would be
desirable to change what those two characters look like, so as to give
a visual hint.