Minor Modes

The editing modes described in the previous section were "Major modes", each mode was designed for a particular class of file. Minor modes work on top of the major modes, each minor mode provides a single extra feature for editing the buffer they are used in. For example overwrite-mode is a minor mode which makes any keys you type overwrite the character beneath the cursor, instead of inserting themselves before the cursor.

The names of the minor modes currently active in the current buffer are displayed in the status line, to the right of the name of the major mode.

• Overwrite mode: Typed characters overwrite the character beneath them.
• Fill mode: Automatically break long lines as they are typed.
• Auto-Save mode: How to disable auto-saving of a buffer.
• Latin-1 mode: Displaying European characters.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.