User-Defined Specs Formatting Variables

8.4.5: Formatting Fonts

There are specs for highlighting, and these are shared by all the format variables. Text inside the `%(' and `%)' specifiers will get the special mouse-face property set, which means that it will be highlighted (with gnus-mouse-face) when you put the mouse pointer over it.

Text inside the `%{' and `%}' specifiers will have their normal faces set using gnus-face-0, which is bold by default. If you say `%1{', you'll get gnus-face-1 instead, and so on. Create as many faces as you wish. The same goes for the mouse-face specs---you can say `%3(hello%)' to have `hello' mouse-highlighted with gnus-mouse-face-3.

Here's an alternative recipe for the group buffer:

;; Create three face types.
(setq gnus-face-1 'bold)
(setq gnus-face-3 'italic)

;; We want the article count to be in
;; a bold and green face.  So we create
;; a new face called `my-green-bold'.
(copy-face 'bold 'my-green-bold)
;; Set the color.
(set-face-foreground 'my-green-bold "ForestGreen")
(setq gnus-face-2 'my-green-bold)

;; Set the new & fancy format.
(setq gnus-group-line-format
      "%M%S%3{%5y%}%2[:%] %(%1{%g%}%)\n")

I'm sure you'll be able to use this scheme to create totally unreadable and extremely vulgar displays. Have fun!

Note that the `%(' specs (and friends) do not make any sense on the mode-line variables.

User-Defined Specs

Formatting Variables