How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Bob Babcock]

In emacs 21.3 under Win32 I get a 1-character wide black border on the left 
and right sides of the window.  (The arrows indicating a wrapped or long 
line appear in this area.)  How do I control the color of this area?  I 
thought it might be something like (setq border-color "red"), but this 
doesn't change the display at all.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Daniel Brockman]

Bob Babcock <wssddc@nospam.gis.net> writes:

> In emacs 21.3 under Win32 I get a 1-character wide black border on the left 
> and right sides of the window.  (The arrows indicating a wrapped or long 
> line appear in this area.)  How do I control the color of this area?

M-x customize-face RET fringe RET.

> I thought it might be something like (setq border-color "red"), but
> this doesn't change the display at all.

Haha, you just made a wild guess?

-- 
Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se>

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Bob Babcock]

Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se> wrote in
news:mailman.2527.1117514716.25862.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org: 

>> In emacs 21.3 under Win32 I get a 1-character wide black border on
>> the left and right sides of the window.  (The arrows indicating a
>> wrapped or long line appear in this area.)  How do I control the
>> color of this area? 
> 
> M-x customize-face RET fringe RET.

So, that area is called "fringe".  Now I can set the color.  It's not just 
in mythology that knowing a things true name gives you power over it.  
Thanks.

I thought I wanted to match the fringe and default background colors, but 
now that I've played with it a little bit, I think I'll try slightly 
different colors to give a subtle boundary.  Black next to blue made a 
jarring boundary.

>> I thought it might be something like (setq border-color "red"), but
>> this doesn't change the display at all.
> 
> Haha, you just made a wild guess?

No, apropos RET border RET told me that there was something called border-
color, but looking again, I see it's not a variable so setq doesn't make 
sense.  There was some method to my flailing.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Daniel Brockman]

Bob Babcock <wssddc@nospam.gis.net> writes:

> Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se> wrote in
> news:mailman.2527.1117514716.25862.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org: 
>
>>> In emacs 21.3 under Win32 I get a 1-character wide black border on
>>> the left and right sides of the window.  (The arrows indicating a
>>> wrapped or long line appear in this area.)  How do I control the
>>> color of this area? 
>> 
>> M-x customize-face RET fringe RET.
>
> So, that area is called "fringe".  Now I can set the color.
> It's not just in mythology that knowing a things true name gives you
> power over it.  Thanks.

Indeed, that is how it works in Emacs too. :-)

Seriously, I can't think of a good way to find this out on your own.
I don't blame you for asking; the name is far from obvious.

> I thought I wanted to match the fringe and default background
> colors, but now that I've played with it a little bit, I think I'll
> try slightly different colors to give a subtle boundary.  Black next
> to blue made a jarring boundary.

Yes, I also like to have them differ slightly in color.  Although, on
second thought... red fringes on a white background might just make
Emacs look like a flashy striped sports car.  Well, that, or it might
just be damn ugly.

>>> I thought it might be something like (setq border-color "red"),
>>> but this doesn't change the display at all.
>> 
>> Haha, you just made a wild guess?
>
> No, apropos RET border RET told me that there was something called
> border- color, but looking again, I see it's not a variable so setq
> doesn't make sense.  There was some method to my flailing.

Ah, I see.  You did make an honest try, then. :-)

-- 
Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se>

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se>
> Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 08:42:57 +0200
> 
> > So, that area is called "fringe".  Now I can set the color.
> > It's not just in mythology that knowing a things true name gives you
> > power over it.  Thanks.
> 
> Indeed, that is how it works in Emacs too. :-)
> 
> Seriously, I can't think of a good way to find this out on your own.

There _is_ a way: the node "Faces" in the Emacs manual lists all the
faces that Emacs knows about.  So if you know you are looking for a
face, you should find it there.

That said, if someone can suggest a few strings or phrases that could
be useful index entries for the fringes, please speak up, and I will
add the most successful indexing to the manual, so that the
description of the fringes could be easily found via the index search
even if one doesn't know the name.  (A good criterion for coming up
with a useful index entry is to ask yourself what would you try to
look up in the index if I needed to find out about this feature and
didn't know its exact name.)

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Stefan Monnier]

> Seriously, I can't think of a good way to find this out on your own.
> I don't blame you for asking; the name is far from obvious.

C-h N will show you the NEWS where such things should be mentioned.
Of course, the NEWS covers a lot more than just the addition and name of the
fringe, but it's highly recommended reading every time you upgrade.


        Stefan

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Stefan Monnier]

> That said, if someone can suggest a few strings or phrases that could
> be useful index entries for the fringes, please speak up, and I will
> add the most successful indexing to the manual, so that the
> description of the fringes could be easily found via the index search
> even if one doesn't know the name.  (A good criterion for coming up
> with a useful index entry is to ask yourself what would you try to
> look up in the index if I needed to find out about this feature and
> didn't know its exact name.)

It seems people rarely come up with "fringe" on their own, instead they
think of "border" or "margin".


        Stefan

splash screen (was Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32))

[Joe Corneli]

   Seriously, I can't think of a good way to find this out on your own.
   I don't blame you for asking; the name is far from obvious.

And yet I'm sure it could be made obvious with a simple splash screen.

"What you are looking at now is called Emacs.  It has big spaces that
you type in called 'buffers' and a stripe across the bottom with text
in it called a 'mode line'.  The mode line tells you what buffer
you're looking at (and what mode it is in).  Below the modeline is an
'echo area', more commonly called the 'minibuffer'.  At the edges of
the screen you see vertical stripes called 'fringes'.  If you type M-x
customize-basic-appearance (hold down the meta key, often Alt, and
press x, then type and tab-complete the name of the function) you can
change the way Emacs looks.  For further information, you might enjoy
the Emacs info pages, typically M-x info C-s extensible C-a RET.
Have a nice day..."

or whatever.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[rgb]

> >>> In emacs 21.3 under Win32 I get a 1-character wide black border on
> >>> the left and right sides of the window.  (The arrows indicating a
> >>> wrapped or long line appear in this area.)  How do I control the
> >>> color of this area?
> >>
> >> M-x customize-face RET fringe RET.
> >
> > So, that area is called "fringe".  Now I can set the color.
> > It's not just in mythology that knowing a things true name gives you
> > power over it.  Thanks.
>
> Indeed, that is how it works in Emacs too. :-)
>
> Seriously, I can't think of a good way to find this out on your own.
> I don't blame you for asking; the name is far from obvious.

I've found that using C-h c and then clicking on some part of the
screen often tells me it's name.  For example in this case I get

<right-fringe> <mouse-1> (translated from <down-mouse-1> <mouse-1>)
runs the command mouse-set-point

So I know where I clicked is called <right-fringe>.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 08:49:07 -0400
> 
> It seems people rarely come up with "fringe" on their own, instead they
> think of "border" or "margin".

Thanks.

I thought about these myself, but the problem is, we already have
other features that have these two words in their names.  I'll see if
I can come up with something nonetheless.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Bob Babcock]

"rgb" <rbielaws@i1.net> wrote in 
news:1117557516.402642.305960@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> I've found that using C-h c and then clicking on some part of the
> screen often tells me it's name.  For example in this case I get
> 
> <right-fringe> <mouse-1> (translated from <down-mouse-1> <mouse-1>)
> runs the command mouse-set-point

C-h c does a backspace and inserts a "c" for me...
C-\ c invokes describe-key-briefly, but when I click on the fringe, it 
doesn't say anything about right-fringe in either the minibuffer or the 
*Messages* buffer.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Bob Babcock]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote in 
news:mailman.2650.1117574367.25862.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org:

>> It seems people rarely come up with "fringe" on their own, instead they
>> think of "border" or "margin".
> 
> I thought about these myself, but the problem is, we already have
> other features that have these two words in their names.  I'll see if
> I can come up with something nonetheless.

When I look up border in info, the first thing I find is

   "An Emacs frame has an internal border and an external border.  The
internal border is an extra strip of the background color around the
text portion of the frame."

This definition of internal border comes very close to fitting fringe, but 
the fringe doesn't use the background color and doesn't completely surround 
the text portion of the frame.  Perhaps there could be a note at this point 
in the documentation defining the fringe.

I quized my son, who is not an emacs user, and he suggested the name gutter 
for the fringe area (as well as border and margin).

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Bob Babcock <wssddc@nospam.gis.net>
> Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 02:00:33 GMT
> 
> C-h c does a backspace and inserts a "c" for me...

Then try "F1 c" instead.

Re: How do I set border color in 21.3 (Win32)

[Stefan Monnier]

> <right-fringe> <mouse-1> (translated from <down-mouse-1> <mouse-1>)

The fringe wasn't clickable in Emacs-21.N (it's an Emacs-CVS feature).


        Stefan