Improved Mixer layouts

Some improved mixer layouts could help a lot.

For example:

1. Horizontal meter strips instead of vertical ones. This could be a real help for some displays.
2. Ability to reduce meter strip to minimal length or use an alternative representation e.g. numeric values.
3. as well as buttons for Mute [M] and Solo [S] could also have a button for Stereo/Mono. This wouldn't affect much, but would reduce the need for several channels for file export.

I'm not suggesting that these should replace the existing displays, but be choices available to the end user.