f78
The Echo Area
Contents|Index|Previous|Next
The
Echo Area
The echo area is a
one line window which appears at the bottom of the screen. It is used to
display informative or error messages, and to read lines of input from
you when that is necessary. Almost all of the commands available in the
echo area are identical to their Emacs counterparts, so please refer to
GNU Emacs Manual for greater depth of discussion on the concepts
of editing a line of text.
The following briefly details
the commands that are available while input is being read in the echo area.
C-f
(echo-area-forward)
- Moves forward a character.
C-b
(echo-area-backward)
- Moves backward a character.
C-a
(echo-area-beg-of-line)
- Moves to the start of the
input line.
C-e
(echo-area-end-of-line)
- Moves to the end of the
input line.
M-f
(echo-area-forward-word)
M-b
(echo-area-backward-word)
Cd
(echo-area-delete)
- Deletes the character under
the cursor.
Del
(echo-area-rubout)
- Deletes the character behind
the cursor.
C-g
(echo-area-abort)
- Cancels or quits the current
operation. If completion is being read, C-g
discards the text of the input line which does not match any completion.
If the input line is empty, C-g
aborts the calling function.
RET
(echo-area-newline)
- Accepts (or forces completion
of) the current input line.
C-q
(echo-area-quoted-insert)
- Inserts the next character
verbatim; for example, so you can insert control characters into a search
string.
printing character
(echo-area-insert)
M-Tab
(echo-area-tab-insert)
Ctrl-t
(echo-area-transpose-chars)
- Transposes the characters
at the cursor.
The
next group of commands deal with killing and yanking text. For an in depth
discussion of killing and yanking, see Killing and Moving Text in the
GNU Emacs Manual.
M-d
(echo-area-kill-word)
- Kills the word following
the cursor.
M-Del
(echo-area-backward-kill-word)
- Kills the word preceding
the cursor.
C-k
(echo-area-kill-line)
- Kills the text from the
cursor to the end of the line.
C-x,
Del
(echo-area-backward-kill-line)
- Kills the text from the
cursor to the beginning of the line.
C-y
(echo-area-yank)
- Yanks back the contents
of the last kill.
M-y
(echo-area-yank-pop)
- Yanks back a previous kill,
removing the last yanked text first.
Sometimes when reading input
in the echo area, the command that needed input will only accept one of
a list of several choices. The choices represent the possible completions,
and you must respond with one of them. Since there are a limited number
of responses you can make, info
allows you to abbreviate what you type, only typing as much of the
response as is necessary to uniquely identify it. In addition, you can
request info
to fill in as much of the response as is possible; this is called
completion.
The following commands are
available when completing in the echo area.
Tab
(echo-area-complete)
SPACEBAR
- Inserts as much of a completion
as is possible.
?
(echo-area-possible-completions)
- Displays a window containing
a list of the possible completions of what you have typed so far. For exampl
98d
e,
say the available choices are the following if you typed an f,
followed by ?.
bar foliate
food forget
Possible completions would
contain the choices which begin with f.
Pressing Spacebar
or Tab
would result in fo
appearing in the echo area, since all of the choices which begin with f
continue with o.
Now, typing l
followed by pressing Tab
results in foliate
appearing in the echo area, since that is the only choice which begins
with fol.
Esc Ctrl-v
(echo-area-scroll-completions-window)
- Scrolls the completions
window, if that is visible, or, if not, the other window.
0