Customizing the Screen

Lugaru's Epsilon
Programmer's
Editor 14.04

Context:

Epsilon User's Manual and Reference

    Commands by Topic

       . . .

       Fixing Mistakes

          Undoing

          Interrupting a Command

       The Screen

          . . .

          Horizontal Scrolling

          Windows

          Customizing the Screen

             Cursor Shapes

          Fonts

          Setting Colors

          . . .

       Buffers and Files

          Buffers

          Files

          File Variables

          . . .

          Buffer List Editing

       . . .

Previous	Up	Next
Resizing Windows	Commands by Topic	Cursor Shapes

Epsilon User's Manual and Reference > Commands by Topic > The Screen >

Customizing the Screen

Epsilon displays tabs in a file by moving over to the next tab stop column. Epsilon normally spaces tabs every four or eight columns, depending on the mode. You can change the tab stop spacing by setting the variable tab-size. Another method is to use the set-tab-size command, but this can only set the tab size in the current buffer. To change the default value for new buffers, set the variable using the set-variable command.

Many indenting commands take the tab size into account when they indent using spaces and tabs. See Indenting Commands for information on the indenting commands.

Epsilon can display special characters in four ways. Epsilon normally displays control characters with a ^ prefix indicating a control character (except for the few control characters like ^I that have a special meaning--^I, for example, means <Tab>). It displays other characters with their graphic symbol.

In mode 0, Epsilon displays Meta characters (characters with codes between 160 and 255) by prefixing to them a "M-", e.g., Meta C appears as "M-C". Epsilon display Control-meta characters (codes 128 to 159) by prefixing to them "M-^", e.g., "M-^C". Epsilon displays most control characters (codes 0 to 31) by prefixing to them a caret, e.g., Control C appears as "^C". Characters with codes from 32 to 127 or above 255 are displayed as-is.

In mode 1, Epsilon displays graphic symbols for all the above characters, instead of using a prefix as in ^A (except for the few that have a special meaning, like <Tab> or <Newline>). Characters with codes from 32 to 127 or above 255 are displayed as-is.

In mode 2, Epsilon displays control characters and all characters with codes above 127 by their hexadecimal values, with an "x" before them to indicate hex.

In mode 3, which is the default, Epsilon displays control characters as "^C", and uses a graphic symbol for other characters, as described above.

The set-show-graphic command on Ctrl-F6 cycles among these four modes of representation. Providing a numeric argument of 0, 1, 2, or 3 selects the corresponding mode.

The command change-show-spaces on Shift-F6 makes spaces, tabs, newline, and various Unicode space-like characters (including zero-width spaces) in the buffer visible, by using special graphic characters for each. Pressing it again makes these characters invisible. The command sets the buffer-specific variable show-spaces .

Set the buffer-specific variable draw-line-numbers to 1 if you want Epsilon to display line numbers. Each line's number will appear to its left, in a field whose width is specified by the line-number-width variable. See the description of draw-line-numbers for details on its line number formatting options. (For line numbers in printed output, see the print-line-numbers variable.)

Epsilon will usually display a message in the echo area for at least one second before replacing it with a new message. You can set this time with the see-delay variable. It contains the number of hundredths of a second that a message must remain visible, before a subsequent message can overwrite it. Whenever you press a key with messages pending, Epsilon skips right to the last message and puts that up. (Epsilon doesn't stop working just because it can't put up a message; it just remembers to put the message up later.)

Epsilon for Windows can draw a rectangle around the current line to increase its visibility and make it easier to find the cursor. Set the draw-focus-rectangle variable nonzero to enable this. Set the draw-column-markers variable if you want Epsilon for Windows to draw a vertical line at a particular column or columns, to make it easier to edit text that must be restricted to certain columns. (Also see auto-fill mode described in Formatting Text.)

The set-display-characters command lets you alter the various characters that Epsilon uses to construct its display. These include the characters Epsilon uses in some of the display modes set by set-show-graphic, the line-drawing characters that form window borders, and the characters it uses to construct the scroll bar. (Epsilon for Windows only uses the first of these groups.) The command displays a matrix of possible characters, and guides you through the selection process.

Standard bindings:

Ctrl-F6    set-show-graphic

Shift-F6    change-show-spaces

   set-tab-size

   set-display-characters

Previous Up Next
Resizing Windows Commands by Topic Cursor Shapes