30.4.3.4 Layout Parameters

These frame parameters enable or disable various parts of the frame, or control their sizes.

border-width

The width in pixels of the frame’s outer border (see Frame Geometry).

internal-border-width

The width in pixels of the frame’s internal border (see Frame Geometry).

child-frame-border-width

The width in pixels of the frame’s internal border (see Frame Geometry) if the given frame is a child frame (see Child Frames). If this is nil, the value specified by the internal-border-width parameter is used instead.

vertical-scroll-bars

Whether the frame has scroll bars (see Scroll Bars) for vertical scrolling, and which side of the frame they should be on. The possible values are left, right, and nil for no scroll bars.

horizontal-scroll-bars

Whether the frame has scroll bars for horizontal scrolling (t and bottom mean yes, nil means no).

scroll-bar-width

The width of vertical scroll bars, in pixels, or nil meaning to use the default width.

scroll-bar-height

The height of horizontal scroll bars, in pixels, or nil meaning to use the default height.

left-fringe

right-fringe

The default width of the left and right fringes of windows in this frame (see Fringes). If either of these is zero, that effectively removes the corresponding fringe.

When you use frame-parameter to query the value of either of these two frame parameters, the return value is always an integer. When using set-frame-parameter, passing a nil value imposes an actual default value of 8 pixels.

right-divider-width

The width (thickness) reserved for the right divider (see Window Dividers) of any window on the frame, in pixels. A value of zero means to not draw right dividers.

bottom-divider-width

The width (thickness) reserved for the bottom divider (see Window Dividers) of any window on the frame, in pixels. A value of zero means to not draw bottom dividers.

menu-bar-lines

The number of lines to allocate at the top of the frame for a menu bar (see The Menu Bar). The default is one if Menu Bar mode is enabled and zero otherwise. See Menu Bars in The GNU Emacs Manual. For an external menu bar (see Frame Layout), this value remains unchanged even when the menu bar wraps to two or more lines. In that case, the menu-bar-size value returned by frame-geometry (see Frame Geometry) enables you to establish whether the menu bar actually occupies one or more lines.

tool-bar-lines

The number of lines to use for the tool bar (see Tool bars). The default is one if Tool Bar mode is enabled and zero otherwise. See Tool Bars in The GNU Emacs Manual. This value may change whenever the tool bar wraps (see Frame Layout).

tool-bar-position

The position of the tool bar. Its value can be one of top, bottom left, right. The default is top.

It can be set to bottom on Emacs built with any toolkit other than Nextstep, and left or right on builds using GTK+.

tab-bar-lines

The number of lines to use for the tab bar (see Tab Bars in The GNU Emacs Manual). The default is one if Tab Bar mode is enabled and zero otherwise. This value may change whenever the tab bar wraps (see Frame Layout).

line-spacing

Additional space to leave below each text line, in pixels (a positive integer). See Line Height, for more information.

no-special-glyphs

If this is non-nil, it suppresses the display of any truncation (see Truncation) and continuation glyphs for all the buffers displayed by this frame. This is useful to eliminate such glyphs when fitting a frame to its buffer via fit-frame-to-buffer (see Resizing Windows). This frame parameter has effect only for GUI frames shown on graphical displays, and only if the fringes are disabled. This parameter is intended as a purely-presentation feature, and in particular should not be used for frames where the user can interactively insert text, or more generally where the cursor is shown. A notable example of frames where this is used is tooltip frames (see Tooltips).