Mode line strings for sub- and super- minor modes are counterintuitive

[Matthias Meulien]

When subword (resp. superword) minor mode is enabled, a comma 
(resp. a superscript two) is displayed in the mode line. I found 
those two characters difficult to see and meaning less.

I understand that there's not much space in the mode line but 
other minor modes are much verbose (eg. MML, Abbrev, Fill, Narrow, 
Outl, etc). Why subword and superword modes have this special 
treatment?

I suggest to use Subw and Supw for the user to have a chance to 
link the mode line string to the full minor mode.

>From 9697e30918fa3cc0a4c741ee8f1774f3e67ab173 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Matthias Meulien <address@hidden>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 22:11:51 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Change mode line string for subword-mode and superword-mode

---
 lisp/progmodes/subword.el | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lisp/progmodes/subword.el b/lisp/progmodes/subword.el
index a8455c5..9b65cda 100644
--- a/lisp/progmodes/subword.el
+++ b/lisp/progmodes/subword.el
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ This mode changes the definition of a word so that word 
commands
 treat nomenclature boundaries as word bounaries.
 
 \\{subword-mode-map}"
-    :lighter " ,"
+    :lighter " Subw"
     (when subword-mode (superword-mode -1))
     (subword-setup-buffer))
 
@@ -279,7 +279,7 @@ as parts of words: e.g., in `superword-mode',
 \"this_is_a_symbol\" counts as one word.
 
 \\{superword-mode-map}"
-    :lighter " ²"
+    :lighter " Supw"
     (when superword-mode (subword-mode -1))
     (subword-setup-buffer))
 
-- 
2.0.4


– 
Matthias