How to change the Sublime Text 3 StatusBar message in a command or macro (no plugin)?

Question

addressing Sublime Text 3 users here.

I wrote a couple of macros to enable spell-check and load a specific dictionary, as I constantly swap between French and English and I wanted a simple shortcut for this (instead of browsing the menu or two successive commands in the command pallet).

My macros work as expected (french-spellcheck.sublime-macro, english-spellcheck.sublime-macro). But I would like to display a message in the Status Bar, for instance "Switched to French" or "Switched to English" (for some time, let say 5 sec).

I looked everywhere I know and I tried for some time, but apparently there is no way to do this in a command (that could be added at the end of the macro), as the set_status internal ST3's Python API command (from Window package) is only available for plugins...

Does any one has an idea of how to display a message to the SublimeText3 StatusBar in a command/macro and not with a plugin? Thanks!

Answer 1

There is no built in command that invokes the API methods for doing this (at least not a documented one), so there's no way to go about this without a plugin of some sort.

That said, in order to do what you want, the following is all you would need to save into a file named e.g. set_status.py in your Packages/User folder (alongside your macros). This provides a set_status command that takes a value named value for the text to display, as mentioned in the commented out portion of your macro file.

import sublime, sublime_plugin

class SetStatusCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
    def run(self, edit, value="set_status: use arg 'value' to set text"):
        self.view.window ().status_message (value)

This uses a different API than the one you mention in your macro file comments; status_message does the work of displaying a message in the status bar, waiting a few seconds, and then removing it, which makes the command simple to implement.

If you wanted more control (i.e. to change the duration) you would need to modify this to invoke the API commands your macro files already mention: view.set_status() and sublime.set_timeout().