1 The SXEmacs Frame
- Frame
- In many environments, such as a tty terminal, an SXEmacs frame
literally takes up the whole screen. If you are
running SXEmacs in a multi-window system like the X Window System, the
SXEmacs frame takes up one X window. See SXEmacs under X, for more
information.
- Window
- No matter what environment you are running in, SXEmacs allows you to look
at several buffers at the same time by having several windows be part of
the frame. Often, the whole frame is taken up by just one window, but
you can split the frame into two or more subwindows. If you are
running SXEmacs under the X window system, that means you can have several
SXEmacs windows inside the X window that contains the SXEmacs frame.
You can even have multiple frames in different X windows, each with
their own set of subwindows.
Each SXEmacs frame displays a variety of information:
- The biggest area usually displays the text you are editing. It may
consist of one window or of two or more windows if you need to look at two
buffers a the same time.
- Below each text window's last line is a mode line (see Mode Line), which describes what is going on in that window. The mode line
is in inverse video if the terminal supports that. If there are several
SXEmacs windows in one frame, each window has its own mode line.
- At the bottom of each SXEmacs frame is the echo area or minibuffer
window(see Echo Area). It is used by SXEmacs to exchange information
with the user. There is only one echo area per SXEmacs frame.
- If you are running SXEmacs under a graphical windowing system, a
menu bar at the top of the frame makes shortcuts to several of the
commands available (see Pull-down Menus).
- Under a graphical windowing system, a
toolbar at the top of the frame, just under the menu bar if it exists,
provides “one-touch” shortcuts to several commands. (Not yet
documented.)
- Under a graphical windowing system, a
gutter at the top (under the toolbar) and/or bottom of the frame
provides advanced GUI facilities like tab controls for rapid switching
among related windows and progress bars for time-consuming operations
like downloads across the Internet. Gutters are an experimental feature
introduced in SXEmacs version 21.2. (Not yet documented.)
You can subdivide the SXEmacs frame into multiple text windows, and use
each window for a different file (see Windows). Multiple SXEmacs
windows are tiled vertically on the SXEmacs frame. The upper SXEmacs window
is separated from the lower window by its mode line.
When there are multiple, tiled SXEmacs windows on a single SXEmacs frame,
the SXEmacs window receiving input from the keyboard has the keyboard
focus and is called the selected window. The selected window
contains the cursor, which indicates the insertion point. If you are
working in an environment that permits multiple SXEmacs frames, and you
move the focus from one SXEmacs frame into another, the
selected window is the one that was last selected in that frame.
The same text can be displayed simultaneously in several SXEmacs
windows, which can be in different SXEmacs frames. If you alter the text
in an SXEmacs buffer by editing it in one SXEmacs window, the changes are
visible in all SXEmacs windows containing that buffer.