5. Minor Display Modes

For some buffers, a list of files and tags makes no sense. This could be because files are not currently in reference (such as web pages), or that the files you might be interested have special properties (such as email folders.)

In these cases, a minor display mode is needed. A minor display mode will override any major display mode currently being displayed for the duration of the specialized buffer's use. Minor display modes will follow the general rules of their major counterparts in terms of key bindings and visuals, but will have specialized behaviors.

5.1 RMAIL

When using RMAIL, speedbar will display two sections. The first is a layer one reply button. Clicking here will initialize a reply buffer showing only this email address in the `To:' field.

The second section lists all RMAIL folders in the same directory as your main RMAIL folder. The general rule is that RMAIL folders always appear in all caps, or numbers. It is possible to save mail in folders with lower case letters, but there is no clean way of detecting such RMAIL folders without opening them all.

Each folder can be visited by clicking the name. You can move mail from the current RMAIL folder into a different folder by clicking the `<M>' button. The `M' stands for Move.

In this way you can manage your existing RMAIL folders fairly easily using the mouse.

5.2 Info

When browsing Info files, all local relevant information is displayed in the info buffer and a topical high-level view is provided in speedbar. All top-level info nodes are shown in the speedbar frame, and can be jumped to by clicking the name.

You can open these nodes with the `[+]' button to see what sub-topics are available. Since these sub-topics are not examined until you click the `[+]' button, sometimes a `[?]' will appear when you click on a `[+]', indicating that there are no sub-topics.

5.3 GDB

If you are debugging an application with GDB in Emacs, speedbar can show you the current stack when the current buffer is the `*gdb*' buffer. Usually, it will just report that there is no stack, but when the application is stopped, the current stack will be shown.

You can click on any stack element and gdb will move to that stack level. You can then check variables local to that level at the GDB prompt.

This mode has the unfortunate side-effect of breaking GDB's repeat feature when you hit RET since your previous command is overridden with a stack fetching command.

This document was generated by XEmacs shared group account on December, 19 2009 using texi2html 1.65.