14.10 Standard Faces
Here are the standard faces for specifying text appearance. You can
apply them to specific text when you want the effects they produce.
default- This face is used for ordinary text that doesn't specify any face.
Its background color is used as the frame's background color.
bold- This face uses a bold variant of the default font.
italic- This face uses an italic variant of the default font.
bold-italic- This face uses a bold italic variant of the default font.
underline- This face underlines text.
fixed-pitch- This face forces use of a fixed-width font. It's reasonable to
customize this face to use a different fixed-width font, if you like,
but you should not make it a variable-width font.
variable-pitch- This face forces use of a variable-width font.
shadow- This face is used for making the text less noticeable than the surrounding
ordinary text. Usually this can be achieved by using shades of gray in
contrast with either black or white default foreground color.
Here's an incomplete list of faces used to highlight parts of the
text temporarily for specific purposes. (Many other modes define
their own faces for this purpose.)
highlight- This face is used for text highlighting in various contexts, such as
when the mouse cursor is moved over a hyperlink.
isearch- This face is used to highlight the current Isearch match
(see Incremental Search).
query-replace- This face is used to highlight the current Query Replace match
(see Replace).
lazy-highlight- This face is used to highlight “lazy matches” for Isearch and Query
Replace (matches other than the current one).
region- This face is used for displaying an active region (see Mark).
When Emacs is built with GTK support, its colors are taken from the
current GTK theme.
secondary-selection- This face is used for displaying a secondary X selection (see Secondary Selection).
trailing-whitespace- The face for highlighting excess spaces and tabs at the end of a line
when
show-trailing-whitespace is non-nil (see Useless Whitespace).
escape-glyph- The face for displaying control characters and escape sequences
(see Text Display).
nobreak-space- The face for displaying “no-break” space characters (see Text Display).
The following faces control the appearance of parts of the Emacs
frame:
mode-line- This face is used for the mode line of the currently selected window,
and for menu bars when toolkit menus are not used. By default, it's
drawn with shadows for a “raised” effect on graphical displays, and
drawn as the inverse of the default face on non-windowed terminals.
mode-line-inactive- Like
mode-line, but used for mode lines of the windows other
than the selected one (if mode-line-in-non-selected-windows is
non-nil). This face inherits from mode-line, so changes
in that face affect mode lines in all windows.
mode-line-highlight- Like
highlight, but used for portions of text on mode lines.
mode-line-buffer-id- This face is used for buffer identification parts in the mode line.
header-line- Similar to
mode-line for a window's header line, which appears
at the top of a window just as the mode line appears at the bottom.
Most windows do not have a header line—only some special modes, such
Info mode, create one.
vertical-border- This face is used for the vertical divider between windows on text
terminals.
minibuffer-prompt- This face is used for the prompt strings displayed in the minibuffer.
By default, Emacs automatically adds this face to the value of
minibuffer-prompt-properties, which is a list of text
properties used to display the prompt text. (This variable takes
effect when you enter the minibuffer.)
fringe- The face for the fringes to the left and right of windows on graphic
displays. (The fringes are the narrow portions of the Emacs frame
between the text area and the window's right and left borders.)
See Fringes.
cursor- The
:background attribute of this face specifies the color of
the text cursor. See Cursor Display.
tooltip- This face is used for tooltip text. By default, if Emacs is built
with GTK support, tooltips are drawn via GTK and this face has no
effect. See Tooltips.
mouse- This face determines the color of the mouse pointer.
The following faces likewise control the appearance of parts of the
Emacs frame, but only on text terminals, or when Emacs is built on X
with no toolkit support. (For all other cases, the appearance of the
respective frame elements is determined by system-wide settings.)
scroll-bar- This face determines the visual appearance of the scroll bar.
See Scroll Bars.
tool-bar- This face determines the color of tool bar icons. See Tool Bars.
menu- This face determines the colors and font of Emacs's menus. See Menu Bars.
tty-menu-enabled-face- This face is used to display enabled menu items on text-mode
terminals.
tty-menu-disabled-face- This face is used to display disabled menu items on text-mode
terminals.
tty-menu-selected-face- This face is used to display on text-mode terminals the menu item that
would be selected if you click a mouse or press <RET>.