Formatting Variables
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Formatting Variables
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No, there's nothing here about X, so be quiet.
If gnus-use-full-window non-nil, Gnus will delete all
other windows and occupy the entire Emacs screen by itself. It is
t by default.
gnus-buffer-configuration describes how much space each Gnus
buffer should be given. Here's an excerpt of this variable:
((group (vertical 1.0 (group 1.0 point)
(if gnus-carpal (group-carpal 4))))
(article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point)
(article 1.0))))
This is an alist. The key is a symbol that names some action or
other. For instance, when displaying the group buffer, the window
configuration function will use group as the key. A full list of
possible names is listed below.
The value (i.e., the split) says how much space each buffer
should occupy. To take the article split as an example -
(article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point)
(article 1.0)))
This split says that the summary buffer should occupy 25% of upper
half of the screen, and that it is placed over the article buffer. As
you may have noticed, 100% + 25% is actually 125% (yup, I saw y'all
reaching for that calculator there). However, the special number
1.0 is used to signal that this buffer should soak up all the
rest of the space available after the rest of the buffers have taken
whatever they need. There should be only one buffer with the 1.0
size spec per split.
Point will be put in the buffer that has the optional third element
point. In a frame split, the last subsplit having a leaf
split where the tag frame-focus is a member (i.e. is the third or
fourth element in the list, depending on whether the point tag is
present) gets focus.
Here's a more complicated example:
(article (vertical 1.0 (group 4)
(summary 0.25 point)
(if gnus-carpal (summary-carpal 4))
(article 1.0)))
If the size spec is an integer instead of a floating point number, then that number will be used to say how many lines a buffer should occupy, not a percentage.
If the split looks like something that can be evaled (to be
precise---if the car of the split is a function or a subr), this
split will be evaled. If the result is non-nil, it will
be used as a split. This means that there will be three buffers if
gnus-carpal is nil, and four buffers if gnus-carpal
is non-nil.
Not complicated enough for you? Well, try this on for size:
(article (horizontal 1.0
(vertical 0.5
(group 1.0)
(gnus-carpal 4))
(vertical 1.0
(summary 0.25 point)
(summary-carpal 4)
(article 1.0))))
Whoops. Two buffers with the mystery 100% tag. And what's that
horizontal thingie?
If the first element in one of the split is horizontal, Gnus will
split the window horizontally, giving you two windows side-by-side.
Inside each of these strips you may carry on all you like in the normal
fashion. The number following horizontal says what percentage of
the screen is to be given to this strip.
For each split, there must be one element that has the 100% tag. The splitting is never accurate, and this buffer will eat any leftover lines from the splits.
To be slightly more formal, here's a definition of what a valid split may look like:
split = frame | horizontal | vertical | buffer | form
frame = "(frame " size *split ")"
horizontal = "(horizontal " size *split ")"
vertical = "(vertical " size *split ")"
buffer = "(" buffer-name " " size *[ "point" ] *[ "frame-focus"] ")"
size = number | frame-params
buffer-name = group | article | summary ...
The limitations are that the frame split can only appear as the
top-level split. form should be an Emacs Lisp form that should
return a valid split. We see that each split is fully recursive, and
may contain any number of vertical and horizontal splits.
Finding the right sizes can be a bit complicated. No window may be less
than gnus-window-min-height (default 1) characters high, and all
windows must be at least gnus-window-min-width (default 1)
characters wide. Gnus will try to enforce this before applying the
splits. If you want to use the normal Emacs window width/height limit,
you can just set these two variables to nil.
If you're not familiar with Emacs terminology, horizontal and
vertical splits may work the opposite way of what you'd expect.
Windows inside a horizontal split are shown side-by-side, and
windows within a vertical split are shown above each other.
If you want to experiment with window placement, a good tip is to call
gnus-configure-frame directly with a split. This is the function
that does all the real work when splitting buffers. Below is a pretty
nonsensical configuration with 5 windows; two for the group buffer and
three for the article buffer. (I said it was nonsensical.) If you
eval the statement below, you can get an idea of how that would
look straight away, without going through the normal Gnus channels.
Play with it until you're satisfied, and then use
gnus-add-configuration to add your new creation to the buffer
configuration list.
(gnus-configure-frame
'(horizontal 1.0
(vertical 10
(group 1.0)
(article 0.3 point))
(vertical 1.0
(article 1.0)
(horizontal 4
(group 1.0)
(article 10)))))
You might want to have several frames as well. No prob---just use the
frame split:
(gnus-configure-frame
'(frame 1.0
(vertical 1.0
(summary 0.25 point frame-focus)
(article 1.0))
(vertical ((height . 5) (width . 15)
(user-position . t)
(left . -1) (top . 1))
(picon 1.0))))
This split will result in the familiar summary/article window
configuration in the first (or ``main'') frame, while a small additional
frame will be created where picons will be shown. As you can see,
instead of the normal 1.0 top-level spec, each additional split
should have a frame parameter alist as the size spec.
See Frame Parameters. Under XEmacs, a frame property list will be
accepted, too---for instance, (height 5 width 15 left -1 top 1)
is such a plist.
Here's a list of all possible keys for
gnus-buffer-configuration:
group, summary, article, server,
browse, message, pick, info,
summary-faq, edit-group, edit-server,
edit-score, post, reply, forward,
reply-yank, mail-bounce, draft, pipe,
bug, compose-bounce, and score-trace.
Note that the message key is used for both
gnus-group-mail and gnus-summary-mail-other-window. If
it is desirable to distinguish between the two, something like this
might be used:
(message (horizontal 1.0
(vertical 1.0 (message 1.0 point))
(vertical 0.24
(if (buffer-live-p gnus-summary-buffer)
'(summary 0.5))
(group 1.0)))))
Since the gnus-buffer-configuration variable is so long and
complicated, there's a function you can use to ease changing the config
of a single setting: gnus-add-configuration. If, for instance,
you want to change the article setting, you could say:
(gnus-add-configuration
'(article (vertical 1.0
(group 4)
(summary .25 point)
(article 1.0))))
You'd typically stick these gnus-add-configuration calls in your
`.gnus.el' file or in some startup hook---they should be run after
Gnus has been loaded.
If all windows mentioned in the configuration are already visible, Gnus
won't change the window configuration. If you always want to force the
``right'' window configuration, you can set
gnus-always-force-window-configuration to non-nil.
Formatting Variables
Various
Faces and Fonts