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When using the X Window System, you can create multiple windows at the X level in a single Emacs session. Each X window that belongs to Emacs displays a frame which can contain one or several Emacs windows. A frame initially contains a single general-purpose Emacs window which you can subdivide vertically or horizontally into smaller windows. A frame normally contains its own echo area and minibuffer, but you can make frames that don't have these--they use the echo area and minibuffer of another frame.
Editing you do in one frame also affects the other frames. For instance, if you put text in the kill ring in one frame, you can yank it in another frame. If you exit Emacs through C-x C-c in one frame, it terminates all the frames. To delete just one frame, use C-x 5 0.
To avoid confusion, we reserve the word "window" for the subdivisions that Emacs implements, and never use it to refer to a frame.
The mouse commands for selecting and copying a region are mostly
compatible with the
xterm program. You can use the same mouse
commands for copying between Emacs and other X client programs.
mouse-set-point). This is normally the left button.
mouse-set-region). You can specify both ends of the region with this single command.
If you move the mouse off the top or bottom of the window while dragging, the window scrolls at a steady rate until you move the mouse back into the window. This way, you can select regions that don't fit entirely on the screen.
mouse-yank-at-click). This is normally the middle button.
mouse-save-then-kill, has several functions depending on where you click and the status of the region.
If you have a highlighted region, or if the region was set just before by dragging button 1, Mouse-3 adjusts the nearer end of the region by moving it to where you click. The adjusted region's text also replaces the old region's text in the kill ring.
Otherwise, Mouse-3 sets mark where you click, without changing point. It copies the new region to the kill ring.
If you originally specified the region using a double or triple Mouse-1, so that the region is defined to consist of entire words or lines, then adjusting the region also proceeds by entire words or lines.
If you use Mouse-3 twice in a row at the same place, that kills the region already selected.
The simplest way to kill text with the mouse is to press Mouse-1 at one end, then press Mouse-3 twice at the other end. See section Deletion and Killing. To copy the text into the kill ring without deleting it from the buffer, press Mouse-3 just once--or just drag across the text with Mouse-1. Then you can copy it elsewhere by yanking it.
To yank the killed or copied text somewhere else, move the mouse there
and press Mouse-2. See section Yanking. However, if
mouse-yank-at-point is non-
nil, Mouse-2 yanks at
point. Then it does not matter precisely where you click; all that
matters is which window you click on. The default value is
This variable also effects yanking the secondary selection.
To copy text to another X window, kill it or save it in the kill ring. Under X, this also sets the primary selection. Then use the "paste" or "yank" command of the program operating the other window to insert the text from the selection.
To copy text from another X window, use the "cut" or "copy" command of the program operating the other window, to select the text you want. Then yank it in Emacs with C-y or Mouse-2.
When Emacs puts text into the kill ring, or rotates text to the front
of the kill ring, it sets the primary selection in the X server.
This is how other X clients can access the text. Emacs also stores the
text in the cut buffer, but only if the text is short enough
x-cut-buffer-max specifies the maximum number of characters);
putting long strings in the cut buffer can be slow.
The commands to yank the first entry in the kill ring actually check first for a primary selection in another program; after that, they check for text in the cut buffer. If neither of those sources provides text to yank, the kill ring contents are used.
The secondary selection is another way of selecting text using X. It does not use point or the mark, so you can use it to kill text without setting point or the mark.
mouse-set-secondary). The highlighting appears and changes as you drag.
If you move the mouse off the top or bottom of the window while dragging, the window scrolls at a steady rate until you move the mouse back into the window. This way, you can mark regions that don't fit entirely on the screen.
mouse-secondary-save-then-kill). A second click at the same place kills the secondary selection just made.
mouse-kill-secondary). This places point at the end of the yanked text.
Double or triple clicking of M-Mouse-1 operates on words and lines, much like Mouse-1.
mouse-yank-at-point is non-
yanks at point. Then it does not matter precisely where you click; all
that matters is which window you click on. See section Mouse Commands.
Some Emacs buffers display lists of various sorts. These include lists of files, of buffers, of possible completions, of matches for a pattern, and so on.
Since yanking text into these buffers is not very useful, most of them define Mouse-2 specially, as a command to use or view the item you click on.
For example, if you click Mouse-2 on a file name in a Dired buffer, you visit the that file. If you click Mouse-2 on an error message in the `*Compilation*' buffer, you go to the source code for that error message. If you click Mouse-2 on a completion in the `*Completions*' buffer, you choose that completion.
You can usually tell when Mouse-2 has this special sort of meaning because the sensitive text highlights when you move the mouse over it.
You can use mouse clicks on window mode lines to select and manipulate windows.
C-Mouse-2 on a scroll bar splits the corresponding window vertically. See section Splitting Windows.
The prefix key C-x 5 is analogous to C-x 4, with parallel subcommands. The difference is that C-x 5 commands create a new frame rather than just a new window in the selected frame (See section Displaying in Another Window). If an existing visible or iconified frame already displays the requested material, these commands use the existing frame, after raising or deiconifying as necessary.
The various C-x 5 commands differ in how they find or create the buffer to select:
find-file-other-frame. See section Visiting Files.
dired-other-frame. See section Dired, the Directory Editor.
mail-other-frame. It is the other-frame variant of C-x m. See section Sending Mail.
find-tag-other-frame, the multiple-frame variant of M-.. See section Tags Tables.
find-file-read-only-other-frame. See section Visiting Files.
You can control the appearance of new frames you create by setting the
frame parameters in
default-frame-alist. You can use the
initial-frame-alist to specify parameters that affect
only the initial frame. See section `Initial Parameters' in The Emacs Lisp Manual, for more information.
You can make certain chosen buffers, for which Emacs normally creates
a second window when you have just one window, appear in special frames
of their own. To do this, set the variable
special-display-buffer-names to a list of buffer names; any
buffer whose name is in that list automatically gets a special frame
when it is to be displayed in another window.
For example, if you set the variable this way,
(setq special-display-buffer-names '("*Completions*" "*grep*" "*tex-shell*"))
then completion lists,
grep output and the TeX mode shell
buffer get individual frames of their own. These frames, and the
windows in them, are never automatically split or reused for any other
buffers. They continue to show the buffers they were created for,
unless you alter them by hand. Killing the special buffer deletes its
More generally, you can set
special-display-regexps to a list
of regular expressions; then a buffer gets its own frame if its name
matches any of those regular expressions. (Once again, this applies only
to buffers that normally get displayed for you in a separate window.)
special-display-frame-alist specifies the frame
parameters for these frames. It has a default value, so you don't need
to set it.
This section describes commands for altering the display style and window management behavior of the selected frame.
Note that this auto-raise feature is implemented by Emacs itself. Some
window managers also implement auto-raise. If you enable auto-raise for
Emacs frames in your X window manager, it should work, but it is beyond
Emacs's control and therefore
auto-raise-mode has no effect on
auto-lower-mode has no effect on auto-lower
implemented by the X window manager. To control that, you must use
the appropriate window manager features.
You can also set a frame's default font through a pop-up menu. Press C-Mouse-3 to activate this menu.
In Emacs versions that use an X toolkit, the color-setting and font-setting functions don't affect menus and the menu bar, since they are displayed by their own widget classes. To change the appearance of the menus and menu bar, you must use X resources (see section X Resources). See section Window Color Options, regarding colors. See section Font Specification Options, regarding choice of font.
For information on frame parameters and customization, see section `Frame Parameters' in The Emacs Lisp Manual.
When using X, Emacs normally makes a scroll bar at the right of each Emacs window. The scroll bar runs the height of the window, and shows a moving rectangular inner box which represents the portion of the buffer currently displayed. The entire height of the scroll bar represents the entire length of the buffer.
You can use Mouse-2 (normally, the middle button) in the scroll bar to move or drag the inner box up and down. If you move it to the top of the scroll bar, you see the top of the buffer. If you move it to the bottom of the scroll bar, you see the bottom of the buffer.
The left and right buttons in the scroll bar scroll by controlled increments. Mouse-1 (normally, the left button) moves the line at the level where you click up to the top of the window. Mouse-3 (normally, the right button) moves the line at the top of the window down to the level where you click. By clicking repeatedly in the same place, you can scroll by the same distance over and over.
Aside from scrolling, you can also click C-Mouse-2 in the scroll bar to split a window vertically. The split occurs on the line where you click.
You can enable or disable Scroll Bar mode with the command M-x scroll-bar-mode. With no argument, it toggles the use of scroll bars. With an argument, it turns use of scroll bars on if and only if the argument is positive. This command applies to all frames, including frames yet to be created.
To enable or disable scroll bars for just the selected frame, use the M-x toggle-scroll-bar command.
By default, each Emacs frame has a menu bar at the top which you can use to perform certain common operations. There's no need to describe them in detail here, as you can more easily see for yourself; also, we may change them and add to them in subsequent Emacs versions.
Each of the operations in the menu bar is bound to an ordinary Emacs command which you can invoke equally well with M-x or with its own key bindings. The menu lists one equivalent key binding (if the command has any) at the right margin. To see the command's name and documentation, type C-h k and then select the menu bar item you are interested in.
You can turn display of menu bars on or off with M-x menu-bar-mode. With no argument, this command toggles Menu Bar mode, a minor mode. With an argument, the command turns Menu Bar mode on if the argument is positive, off if the argument is not positive.
When using Emacs with X, you can set up multiple styles of displaying characters. The aspects of style that you can control are the type font, the foreground color, the background color, and whether to underline. Emacs 19.26 does not support faces on MS-DOS, but future versions will support them partially (see section MS-DOS Issues).
The way you control display style is by defining named faces. Each face can specify a type font, a foreground color, a background color, and an underline flag; but it does not have to specify all of them.
The style of display used for a given character in the text is determined by combining several faces. Which faces to use is always set up by Lisp programs, at present, by means of text properties and overlays. Any aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text properties comes from the frame itself.
To see what faces are currently defined, and what they look like, type M-x list-faces-display. It's possible for a given face to look different in different frames; this command shows the appearance in the frame in which you type it. Here's a list of the standardly defined faces:
When Transient Mark mode is enabled, the text of the region is
highlighted when the mark is active. This uses the face named
region; you can control the style of highlighting by changing the
style of this face (see section Modifying Faces). See section Transient Mark Mode,
for more information about Transient Mark mode and activation and
deactivation of the mark.
One easy way to use faces is to turn on Font-Lock mode. This minor mode, which is always local to a particular buffer, arranges to choose faces according to the syntax of the text you are editing. It can recognize comments and strings in any major mode; for several major modes, it can also recognize and properly highlight various other important parts of the text. To get the full benefit of Font-Lock mode, you need to choose a default font which has bold, italic, and bold-italic variants.
Here are the commands users can use to change the font of a face:
Here are the commands for setting the colors and underline flag of a face:
You can also use X resources to specify attributes of particular faces. See section X Resources.
The following commands do user-level management of frames under a window system:
iconify-or-deiconify-frame). The normal meaning of C-z, to suspend Emacs, is not useful under a window system, so it has a different binding in that case.
If you type this command on an Emacs frame's icon, it deiconifies the frame.
delete-frame). This is not allowed if there is only one frame.
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