Command Line Arguments
**********************

GNU Emacs supports command line arguments to request various actions when invoking Emacs.  These are for compatibility with other editors and for sophisticated activities.  We don't recommend using them for ordinary editing.

Arguments starting with - are options.  Other arguments specify files to visit.  Emacs visits the specified files while it starts up.  The last file name on your command line becomes the current buffer; the other files are also present in other buffers.  As usual, the special argument -- says that all subsequent arguments are file names, not options, even if they start with -.

Emacs command options can specify many things, such as the size and position of the X window Emacs uses, its colors, and so on.  A few options support advanced usage, such as running Lisp functions on files in batch mode.  The sections of this chapter describe the available options, arranged according to their purpose.

There are two ways of writing options: the short forms that start with a single -, and the long forms that start with --.  For example, -d is a short form and --display is the corresponding long form.

The long forms with -- are easier to remember, but longer to type.  However, you don't have to spell out the whole option name; any unambiguous abbreviation is enough.  When a long option takes an argument, you can use either a space or an equal sign to separate the option name and the argument.  Thus, you can write either --display sugar-bombs:0.0 or --display=sugar-bombs:0.0. We recommend an equal sign because it makes the relationship clearer, and the tables below always show an equal sign.

Most options specify how to initialize Emacs, or set parameters for the Emacs session.  We call them initial options.  A few options specify things to do: for example, load libraries, call functions, or exit Emacs.  These are called action options.  These and file names together are called action arguments.  Emacs processes all the action arguments in the order they are written.

Action Arguments
================

Here is a table of the action arguments and options:

FILE
--visit FILE
--file FILE
     Visit FILE using find-file.  See Visiting.

+LINENUM FILE
     Visit FILE using find-file, then go to line number LINENUM in it.

-l FILE
--load=FILE
     Load a Lisp library named FILE with the function load. See Lisp Libraries.  The library can be found either in the current directory, or in the Emacs library search path as specified with EMACSLOADPATH (see General Variables).

-f FUNCTION
--funcall=FUNCTION
     Call Lisp function FUNCTION with no arguments.

--eval EXPRESSION
--execute EXPRESSION
     Evaluate Lisp expression EXPRESSION.

--insert=FILE
     Insert the contents of FILE into the current buffer.  This is like what M-x insert-file does.  See Misc File Ops.

--kill
     Exit from Emacs without asking for confirmation.

The init file can access the values of the action arguments as the elements of a list in the variable command-line-args.  The init file can override the normal processing of the action arguments, or define new ones, by reading and setting this variable.

Initial Options
===============

The initial options specify parameters for the Emacs session.  This section describes the more general initial options; some other options specifically related to the X Window System appear in the following sections.

Some initial options affect the loading of init files.  The normal actions of Emacs are to first load site-start.el if it exists, then your own init file ~/.emacs if it exists, and finally default.el if it exists; certain options prevent loading of some of these files or substitute other files for them.

-t DEVICE
--terminal=DEVICE
     Use DEVICE as the device for terminal input and output.

-d DISPLAY
--display=DISPLAY
     Use the X Window System and use the display named DISPLAY to open the initial Emacs frame.

-nw
--no-windows
     Don't communicate directly with the window system, disregarding the DISPLAY environment variable even if it is set.  This forces Emacs to run as if the display were a character terminal.

-batch
--batch
     Run Emacs in batch mode, which means that the text being edited is not displayed and the standard terminal interrupt characters such as C-z and C-c continue to have their normal effect.  Emacs in batch mode outputs to stderr only what would normally be printed in the echo area under program control.

     Batch mode is used for running programs written in Emacs Lisp from shell scripts, makefiles, and so on.  Normally the -l option or -f option will be used as well, to invoke a Lisp program to do the batch processing.

     -batch implies -q (do not load an init file).  It also causes Emacs to kill itself after all command options have been processed.  In addition, auto-saving is not done except in buffers for which it has been explicitly requested.

-q
--no-init-file
     Do not load your Emacs init file ~/.emacs, or default.el either.

--no-site-file
     Do not load site-start.el.  The options -q, -u and -batch have no effect on the loading of this file---this is the only option that blocks it.

-u USER
--user=USER
     Load USER's Emacs init file ~USER/.emacs instead of your own.

--debug-init
     Enable the Emacs Lisp debugger for errors in the init file.

--unibyte
     Set up to do almost everything with single-byte buffers and strings. All buffers and strings are unibyte unless you (or a Lisp program) explicitly ask for a multibyte buffer or string.  (Note that Emacs always loads Lisp files in multibyte mode, even if --unibyte is specified; see Enabling Multibyte.)  Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same effect.

--multibyte
     Inhibit the effect of EMACS_UNIBYTE, so that Emacs uses multibyte characters by default, as usual.

Command Argument Example
========================

Here is an example of using Emacs with arguments and options.  It assumes you have a Lisp program file called hack-c.el which, when loaded, performs some useful operation on the current buffer, expected to be a C program.

     emacs -batch foo.c -l hack-c -f save-buffer >& log

This says to visit foo.c, load hack-c.el (which makes changes in the visited file), save foo.c (note that save-buffer is the function that C-x C-s is bound to), and then exit back to the shell (because of -batch).  -batch also guarantees there will be no problem redirecting output to log, because Emacs will not assume that it has a display terminal to work with.

Resuming Emacs with Arguments
=============================

You can specify action arguments for Emacs when you resume it after a suspension.  To prepare for this, put the following code in your .emacs file (see Hooks):

     (add-hook 'suspend-hook 'resume-suspend-hook)
     (add-hook 'suspend-resume-hook 'resume-process-args)

As further preparation, you must execute the shell script emacs.csh (if you use csh as your shell) or emacs.bash (if you use bash as your shell).  These scripts define an alias named edit, which will resume Emacs giving it new command line arguments such as files to visit.

Only action arguments work properly when you resume Emacs.  Initial arguments are not recognized---it's too late to execute them anyway.

Note that resuming Emacs (with or without arguments) must be done from within the shell that is the parent of the Emacs job.  This is why edit is an alias rather than a program or a shell script.  It is not possible to implement a resumption command that could be run from other subjobs of the shell; no way to define a command that could be made the value of EDITOR, for example.  Therefore, this feature does not take the place of the Emacs Server feature (see Emacs Server).

The aliases use the Emacs Server feature if you appear to have a server Emacs running.  However, they cannot determine this with complete accuracy.  They may think that a server is still running when in actuality you have killed that Emacs, because the file /tmp/.esrv... still exists.  If this happens, find that file and delete it.

Environment Variables
=====================

The environment is a feature of the operating system; it consists of a collection of variables with names and values.  Each variable is called an environment variable; environment variable names are case-sensitive, and it is conventional to use upper case letters only.  The values are all text strings.

What makes the environment useful is that subprocesses inherit the environment automatically from their parent process.  This means you can set up an environment variable in your login shell, and all the programs you run (including Emacs) will automatically see it. Subprocesses of Emacs (such as shells, compilers, and version-control software) inherit the environment from Emacs, too.

Inside Emacs, the command M-x getenv gets the value of an environment variable.  M-x setenv sets a variable in the Emacs environment.  The way to set environment variables outside of Emacs depends on the operating system, and especially the shell that you are using.  For example, here's how to set the environment variable ORGANIZATION to not very much using Bash:

     export ORGANIZATION="not very much"

and here's how to do it in csh or tcsh:

     setenv ORGANIZATION "not very much"

When Emacs is set-up to use the X Window System, it inherits the use of a large number of environment variables from the X libraries.  See the X documentation for more information.

General Variables
-----------------

Here is an alphabetical list of specific environment variables that have special meanings in Emacs, giving the name of each variable and its meaning.  Most of these variables are also used by some other programs.  Emacs does not require any of these environment variables to be set, but it uses their values if they are set.

CDPATH
     Used by the cd command to search for the directory you specify, when you specify a relative directory name.

DOMAINNAME
     The name of the Internet domain that the machine running Emacs is located in.  Used by the Gnus package.

EMACS_UNIBYTE
     Defining this environment variable with a nonempty value directs Emacs to do almost everything with single-byte buffers and strings.  It is equivalent to using the --unibyte command-line option on each invocation.  See Initial Options.

EMACSDATA
     Directory for the architecture-independent files that come with Emacs. This is used to initialize the Lisp variable data-directory.

EMACSDOC
     Directory for the documentation string file, DOC-EMACSVERSION.  This is used to initialize the Lisp variable doc-directory.

EMACSLOADPATH
     A colon-separated list of directories to search for Emacs Lisp files---used to initialize load-path.

EMACSPATH
     A colon-separated list of directories to search for executable files---used to initialize exec-path.

ESHELL
     Used for shell-mode to override the SHELL environment variable.

HISTFILE
     The name of the file that shell commands are saved in between logins. This variable defaults to ~/.history if you use (t)csh as shell, to ~/.bash_history if you use bash, to ~/.sh_history if you use ksh, and to ~/.history otherwise.

HOME
     The location of the user's files in the directory tree; used for expansion of file names starting with a tilde (~).  On MS-DOS, it defaults to the directory from which Emacs was started, with /bin removed from the end if it was present.

HOSTNAME
     The name of the machine that Emacs is running on.

INCPATH
     A colon-separated list of directories.  Used by the complete package to search for files.

INFOPATH
     A colon-separated list of directories in which to search for Info files.

LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LANG
     The user's preferred locale.  (The first of these environment variables with a nonempty value specifies the locale.)  A locale name which contains 8859-N, 8859_N or 8859N, where N is between 1 and 4, automatically specifies the Latin-N language environment when Emacs starts up.  If N is 9, that specifies Latin-5.

     The locale value you specify with one of these three variables is matched against entries in locale-language-names, locale-charset-language-names, and locale-preferred-coding-systems, to select a default language environment and coding system.  See Language Environments.

LOGNAME
     The user's login name.  See also USER.

MAIL
     The name of the user's system mail inbox.

MAILRC
     Name of file containing mail aliases.  (The default is ~/.mailrc.)

MH
     Name of setup file for the mh system.  (The default is ~/.mh_profile.)

NAME
     The real-world name of the user.

NNTPSERVER
     The name of the news server.  Used by the mh and Gnus packages.

ORGANIZATION
     The name of the organization to which you belong.  Used for setting the `Organization:' header in your posts from the Gnus package.

PATH
     A colon-separated list of directories in which executables reside. (On MS-DOS, it is semicolon-separated instead.)  This is used to initialize the Emacs Lisp variable exec-path.

PWD
     If set, this should be the default directory when Emacs was started.

REPLYTO
     If set, this specifies an initial value for the variable mail-default-reply-to.  See Mail Headers.

SAVEDIR
     The name of a directory in which news articles are saved by default. Used by the Gnus package.

SHELL
     The name of an interpreter used to parse and execute programs run from inside Emacs.

TERM
     The name of the terminal that Emacs is running on.  The variable must be set unless Emacs is run in batch mode.  On MS-DOS, it defaults to internal, which specifies a built-in terminal emulation that handles the machine's own display.  If the value of TERM indicates that Emacs runs in non-windowed mode from xterm or a similar terminal emulator, the background mode defaults to light, and Emacs will choose colors that are appropriate for a light background.

TERMCAP
     The name of the termcap library file describing how to program the terminal specified by the TERM variable.  This defaults to /etc/termcap.

TMPDIR
     Used by the Emerge package as a prefix for temporary files.

TZ
     This specifies the current time zone and possibly also daylight savings information.  On MS-DOS, if TZ is not set in the environment when Emacs starts, Emacs defines a default value as appropriate for the country code returned by DOS.  MS Windows does not use TZ at all.

USER
     The user's login name.  See also LOGNAME.  On MS-DOS, this defaults to root.

VERSION_CONTROL
     Used to initialize the version-control variable (see Backup Names).

Miscellaneous Variables
-----------------------

These variables are used only on particular configurations:

COMSPEC
     On MS-DOS, the name of the command interpreter to use.  This is used to make a default value for the SHELL environment variable.

NAME
     On MS-DOS, this variable defaults to the value of the USER variable.

TEMP
TMP
     On MS-DOS, these specify the name of the directory for storing temporary files in.

EMACSTEST
     On MS-DOS, this specifies a file to use to log the operation of the internal terminal emulator.  This feature is useful for submitting bug reports.

EMACSCOLORS
     Used on MS-DOS systems to set screen colors early, so that the screen won't momentarily flash the default colors when Emacs starts up.  The value of this variable should be two-character encoding of the foreground (the first character) and the background (the second character) colors of the default face.  Each character should be the hexadecimal code for the desired color on a standard PC text-mode display.

     The PC display usually supports only eight background colors.  However, Emacs switches the DOS display to a mode where all 16 colors can be used for the background, so all four bits of the background color are actually used.

WINDOW_GFX
     Used when initializing the Sun windows system.

Specifying the Display Name
===========================

The environment variable DISPLAY tells all X clients, including Emacs, where to display their windows.  Its value is set up by default in ordinary circumstances, when you start an X server and run jobs locally.  Occasionally you may need to specify the display yourself; for example, if you do a remote login and want to run a client program remotely, displaying on your local screen.

With Emacs, the main reason people change the default display is to let them log into another system, run Emacs on that system, but have the window displayed at their local terminal.  You might need to use login to another system because the files you want to edit are there, or because the Emacs executable file you want to run is there.

The syntax of the DISPLAY environment variable is HOST:DISPLAY.SCREEN, where HOST is the host name of the X Window System server machine, DISPLAY is an arbitrarily-assigned number that distinguishes your server (X terminal) from other servers on the same machine, and SCREEN is a rarely-used field that allows an X server to control multiple terminal screens.  The period and the SCREEN field are optional.  If included, SCREEN is usually zero.

For example, if your host is named glasperle and your server is the first (or perhaps the only) server listed in the configuration, your DISPLAY is glasperle:0.0.

You can specify the display name explicitly when you run Emacs, either by changing the DISPLAY variable, or with the option -d DISPLAY or --display=DISPLAY.  Here is an example:

     emacs --display=glasperle:0 &

You can inhibit the direct use of X with the -nw option.  This is also an initial option.  It tells Emacs to display using ordinary ASCII on its controlling terminal.

Sometimes, security arrangements prevent a program on a remote system from displaying on your local system.  In this case, trying to run Emacs produces messages like this:

     Xlib:  connection to "glasperle:0.0" refused by server

You might be able to overcome this problem by using the xhost command on the local system to give permission for access from your remote machine.

Font Specification Options
==========================

By default, Emacs displays text in the font named 9x15, which makes each character nine pixels wide and fifteen pixels high.  You can specify a different font on your command line through the option -fn NAME.

-fn NAME
     Use font NAME as the default font.

--font=NAME
     --font is an alias for -fn.

Under X, each font has a long name which consists of eleven words or numbers, separated by dashes.  Some fonts also have shorter nicknames---9x15 is such a nickname.  You can use either kind of name.  You can use wildcard patterns for the font name; then Emacs lets X choose one of the fonts that match the pattern.  Here is an example, which happens to specify the font whose nickname is 6x13:

     emacs -fn "-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-*-*-*-c-60-iso8859-1" &

You can also specify the font in your .Xdefaults file:

     emacs.font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-*-*-*-c-60-iso8859-1

A long font name has the following form:

     -MAKER-FAMILY-WEIGHT-SLANT-WIDTHTYPE-STYLE...
     ...-PIXELS-HEIGHT-HORIZ-VERT-SPACING-WIDTH-CHARSET

maker
     This is the name of the font manufacturer.

family
     This is the name of the font family---for example, courier.

weight
     This is normally bold, medium or light.  Other words may appear here in some font names.

slant
     This is r (roman), i (italic), o (oblique), ri (reverse italic), or ot (other).

widthtype
     This is normally condensed, extended, semicondensed or normal.  Other words may appear here in some font names.

style
     This is an optional additional style name.  Usually it is empty---most long font names have two hyphens in a row at this point.

pixels
     This is the font height, in pixels.

height
     This is the font height on the screen, measured in tenths of a printer's point---approximately 1/720 of an inch.  In other words, it is the point size of the font, times ten.  For a given vertical resolution, HEIGHT and PIXELS are proportional; therefore, it is common to specify just one of them and use * for the other.

horiz
     This is the horizontal resolution, in pixels per inch, of the screen for which the font is intended.

vert
     This is the vertical resolution, in dots per inch, of the screen for which the font is intended.  Normally the resolution of the fonts on your system is the right value for your screen; therefore, you normally specify * for this and HORIZ.

spacing
     This is m (monospace), p (proportional) or c (character cell).

width
     This is the average character width, in pixels, multiplied by ten.

charset
     This is the character set that the font depicts. Normally you should use iso8859-1.

You will probably want to use a fixed-width default font---that is, a font in which all characters have the same width.  Any font with m or c in the SPACING field of the long name is a fixed-width font.  Here's how to use the xlsfonts program to list all the fixed-width fonts available on your system:

     xlsfonts -fn '*x*' | egrep "^[0-9]+x[0-9]+"
     xlsfonts -fn '*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-m*'
     xlsfonts -fn '*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-c*'

To see what a particular font looks like, use the xfd command. For example:

     xfd -fn 6x13

displays the entire font 6x13.

While running Emacs, you can set the font of the current frame (see Frame Parameters) or for a specific kind of text (see Faces).

Window Color Options
====================

On a color display, you can specify which color to use for various parts of the Emacs display.  To find out what colors are available on your system, type M-x list-colors-display, or press C-Mouse-2 and select Display Colors from the pop-up menu. If you do not specify colors, on windowed displays the default for the background is white and the default for all other colors is black.  On a monochrome display, the foreground is black, the background is white, and the border is gray if the display supports that.  On terminals, the background is usually black and the foreground is white.

Here is a list of the command-line options for specifying colors:

-fg COLOR
--foreground-color=COLOR
     Specify the foreground color.

-bg COLOR
--background-color=COLOR
     Specify the background color.

-bd COLOR
--border-color=COLOR
     Specify the color of the border of the X window.

-cr COLOR
--cursor-color=COLOR
     Specify the color of the Emacs cursor which indicates where point is.

-ms COLOR
--mouse-color=COLOR
     Specify the color for the mouse cursor when the mouse is in the Emacs window.

-r
--reverse-video
     Reverse video---swap the foreground and background colors.

For example, to use a coral mouse cursor and a slate blue text cursor, enter:

     emacs -ms coral -cr 'slate blue' &

You can reverse the foreground and background colors through the -r option or with the X resource reverseVideo.

The -fg, -bg, and -rv options function on character terminals as well as on window systems.

Options for Window Geometry
===========================

The -geometry option controls the size and position of the initial Emacs frame.  Here is the format for specifying the window geometry:

-g WIDTHxHEIGHT{+-}XOFFSET{+-}YOFFSET
     Specify window size WIDTH and HEIGHT (measured in character columns and lines), and positions XOFFSET and YOFFSET (measured in pixels).

--geometry=WIDTHxHEIGHT{+-}XOFFSET{+-}YOFFSET
     This is another way of writing the same thing.

{+-} means either a plus sign or a minus sign.  A plus sign before XOFFSET means it is the distance from the left side of the screen; a minus sign means it counts from the right side.  A plus sign before YOFFSET means it is the distance from the top of the screen, and a minus sign there indicates the distance from the bottom. The values XOFFSET and YOFFSET may themselves be positive or negative, but that doesn't change their meaning, only their direction.

Emacs uses the same units as xterm does to interpret the geometry. The WIDTH and HEIGHT are measured in characters, so a large font creates a larger frame than a small font.  The XOFFSET and YOFFSET are measured in pixels.

Since the mode line and the echo area occupy the last 2 lines of the frame, the height of the initial text window is 2 less than the height specified in your geometry.  In non-X-toolkit versions of Emacs, the menu bar also takes one line of the specified number.

You do not have to specify all of the fields in the geometry specification.

If you omit both XOFFSET and YOFFSET, the window manager decides where to put the Emacs frame, possibly by letting you place it with the mouse.  For example, 164x55 specifies a window 164 columns wide, enough for two ordinary width windows side by side, and 55 lines tall.

The default width for Emacs is 80 characters and the default height is 40 lines.  You can omit either the width or the height or both.  If you start the geometry with an integer, Emacs interprets it as the width.  If you start with an x followed by an integer, Emacs interprets it as the height.  Thus, 81 specifies just the width; x45 specifies just the height.

If you start with + or -, that introduces an offset, which means both sizes are omitted.  Thus, -3 specifies the XOFFSET only.  (If you give just one offset, it is always XOFFSET.)  +3-3 specifies both the XOFFSET and the YOFFSET, placing the frame near the bottom left of the screen.

You can specify a default for any or all of the fields in .Xdefaults file, and then override selected fields with a --geometry option.

Internal and External Borders
=============================

An Emacs frame has an internal border and an external border.  The internal border is an extra strip of the background color around all four edges of the frame.  Emacs itself adds the internal border.  The external border is added by the window manager outside the internal border; it may contain various boxes you can click on to move or iconify the window.

-ib WIDTH
--internal-border=WIDTH
     Specify WIDTH as the width of the internal border.

-bw WIDTH
--border-width=WIDTH
     Specify WIDTH as the width of the main border.

When you specify the size of the frame, that does not count the borders.  The frame's position is measured from the outside edge of the external border.

Use the -ib N option to specify an internal border N pixels wide.  The default is 1.  Use -bw N to specify the width of the external border (though the window manager may not pay attention to what you specify).  The default width of the external border is 2.

Frame Titles
============

An Emacs frame may or may not have a specified title.  The frame title, if specified, appears in window decorations and icons as the name of the frame.  If an Emacs frame has no specified title, the default title is the name of the executable program (if there is only one frame) or the selected window's buffer name (if there is more than one frame).

You can specify a title for the initial Emacs frame with a command line option:

-title TITLE
--title=TITLE
-T TITLE
     Specify TITLE as the title for the initial Emacs frame.

The --name option (see Resources X) also specifies the title for the initial Emacs frame.

Icons
=====

Most window managers allow the user to ``iconify'' a frame, removing it from sight, and leaving a small, distinctive ``icon'' window in its place.  Clicking on the icon window makes the frame itself appear again. If you have many clients running at once, you can avoid cluttering up the screen by iconifying most of the clients.

-i
--icon-type
     Use a picture of a gnu as the Emacs icon.

-iconic
--iconic
     Start Emacs in iconified state.

The -i or --icon-type option tells Emacs to use an icon window containing a picture of the GNU gnu.  If omitted, Emacs lets the window manager choose what sort of icon to use---usually just a small rectangle containing the frame's title.

The -iconic option tells Emacs to begin running as an icon, rather than opening a frame right away.  In this situation, the icon window provides only indication that Emacs has started; the usual text frame doesn't appear until you deiconify it.

X Resources
===========

Programs running under the X Window System organize their user options under a hierarchy of classes and resources.  You can specify default values for these options in your X resources file, usually named ~/.Xdefaults.

Each line in the file specifies a value for one option or for a collection of related options, for one program or for several programs (optionally even for all programs).

Programs define named resources with particular meanings.  They also define how to group resources into named classes.  For instance, in Emacs, the internalBorder resource controls the width of the internal border, and the borderWidth resource controls the width of the external border.  Both of these resources are part of the BorderWidth class.  Case distinctions are significant in these names.

In ~/.Xdefaults, you can specify a value for a single resource on one line, like this:

     emacs.borderWidth: 2

Or you can use a class name to specify the same value for all resources in that class.  Here's an example:

     emacs.BorderWidth: 2

If you specify a value for a class, it becomes the default for all resources in that class.  You can specify values for individual resources as well; these override the class value, for those particular resources.  Thus, this example specifies 2 as the default width for all borders, but overrides this value with 4 for the external border:

     emacs.Borderwidth: 2
     emacs.borderwidth: 4

The order in which the lines appear in the file does not matter. Also, command-line options always override the X resources file.

The string emacs in the examples above is also a resource name.  It actually represents the name of the executable file that you invoke to run Emacs.  If Emacs is installed under a different name, it looks for resources under that name instead of emacs.

-name NAME
--name=NAME
     Use NAME as the resource name (and the title) for the initial Emacs frame.  This option does not affect subsequent frames, but Lisp programs can specify frame names when they create frames.

     If you don't specify this option, the default is to use the Emacs executable's name as the resource name.

-xrm RESOURCE-VALUES
--xrm=RESOURCE-VALUES
     Specify X resource values for this Emacs job (see below).

For consistency, -name also specifies the name to use for other resource values that do not belong to any particular frame.

The resources that name Emacs invocations also belong to a class; its name is Emacs.  If you write Emacs instead of emacs, the resource applies to all frames in all Emacs jobs, regardless of frame titles and regardless of the name of the executable file.  Here is an example:

     Emacs.BorderWidth: 2
     Emacs.borderWidth: 4

You can specify a string of additional resource values for Emacs to use with the command line option -xrm RESOURCES.  The text RESOURCES should have the same format that you would use inside a file of X resources.  To include multiple resource specifications in DATA, put a newline between them, just as you would in a file. You can also use #include "FILENAME" to include a file full of resource specifications.  Resource values specified with -xrm take precedence over all other resource specifications.

The following table lists the resource names that designate options for Emacs, each with the class that it belongs to:

background (class Background)
     Background color name.

bitmapIcon (class BitmapIcon)
     Use a bitmap icon (a picture of a gnu) if on, let the window manager choose an icon if off.

borderColor (class BorderColor)
     Color name for the external border.

borderWidth (class BorderWidth)
     Width in pixels of the external border.

cursorColor (class Foreground)
     Color name for text cursor (point).

font (class Font)
     Font name for text (or fontset name, see Fontsets).

foreground (class Foreground)
     Color name for text.

geometry (class Geometry)
     Window size and position.  Be careful not to specify this resource as emacs*geometry, because that may affect individual menus as well as the Emacs frame itself.

     If this resource specifies a position, that position applies only to the initial Emacs frame (or, in the case of a resource for a specific frame name, only that frame).  However, the size if specified here applies to all frames.

iconName (class Title)
     Name to display in the icon.

internalBorder (class BorderWidth)
     Width in pixels of the internal border.

lineSpacing (class LineSpacing)
     Additional space (leading) between lines in pixels.

menuBar (class MenuBar)
     Give frames menu bars if on; don't have menu bars if off.

toolBar (class ToolBar)
     Number of lines to reserve for the tool bar.  A zero value suppresses the tool bar.  If the value is non-zero and auto-resize-tool-bars is non-nil, the tool bar's size will be changed automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.

minibuffer (class Minibuffer)
     If none, don't make a minibuffer in this frame. It will use a separate minibuffer frame instead.

paneFont (class Font)
     Font name for menu pane titles, in non-toolkit versions of Emacs.

pointerColor (class Foreground)
     Color of the mouse cursor.

reverseVideo (class ReverseVideo)
     Switch foreground and background default colors if on, use colors as specified if off.

screenGamma (class ScreenGamma)
     Gamma correction for colors, equivalent to the frame parameter screen-gamma.

selectionFont (class Font)
     Font name for pop-up menu items, in non-toolkit versions of Emacs.  (For toolkit versions, see Lucid Resources, also see Motif Resources.)

synchronous (class Synchronous)
     Run Emacs in synchronous mode if on.  Synchronous mode is useful for debugging X problems.

title (class Title)
     Name to display in the title bar of the initial Emacs frame.

verticalScrollBars (class ScrollBars)
     Give frames scroll bars if on; don't have scroll bars if off.

Here are resources for controlling the appearance of particular faces (see Faces):

FACE.attributeFont
     Font for face FACE.

FACE.attributeForeground
     Foreground color for face FACE.

FACE.attributeBackground
     Background color for face FACE.

FACE.attributeUnderline
     Underline flag for face FACE.  Use on or true for yes.

Lucid Menu X Resources
======================

If the Emacs installed at your site was built to use the X toolkit with the Lucid menu widgets, then the menu bar is a separate widget and has its own resources.  The resource names contain pane.menubar (following, as always, the name of the Emacs invocation or Emacs which stands for all Emacs invocations).  Specify them like this:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.RESOURCE:  VALUE

For example, to specify the font 8x16 for the menu-bar items, write this:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.font:  8x16

Resources for non-menubar toolkit pop-up menus have menu*, in like fashion.  For example, to specify the font 8x16 for the pop-up menu items, write this:

     Emacs.menu*.font:	8x16

For dialog boxes, use dialog instead of menu:

     Emacs.dialog*.font:	8x16

Experience shows that on some systems you may need to add shell. before the pane.menubar or menu*.  On some other systems, you must not add shell..

Here is a list of the specific resources for menu bars and pop-up menus:

font
     Font for menu item text.

foreground
     Color of the foreground.

background
     Color of the background.

buttonForeground
     In the menu bar, the color of the foreground for a selected item.

horizontalSpacing
     Horizontal spacing in pixels between items.  Default is 3.

verticalSpacing
     Vertical spacing in pixels between items.  Default is 1.

arrowSpacing
     Horizontal spacing between the arrow (which indicates a submenu) and the associated text.  Default is 10.

shadowThickness
     Thickness of shadow line around the widget.

margin
     The margin of the menu bar, in characters.  The default of 4 makes the menu bar appear like the LessTif/Motif one.

Motif Menu X Resources
======================

If the Emacs installed at your site was built to use the X toolkit with the Motif widgets, then the menu bar is a separate widget and has its own resources.  The resource names contain pane.menubar (following, as always, the name of the Emacs invocation or Emacs which stands for all Emacs invocations).  Specify them like this:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.SUBWIDGET.RESOURCE:  VALUE

Each individual string in the menu bar is a subwidget; the subwidget's name is the same as the menu item string.  For example, the word Files in the menu bar is part of a subwidget named emacs.pane.menubar.Files.  Most likely, you want to specify the same resources for the whole menu bar.  To do this, use * instead of a specific subwidget name.  For example, to specify the font 8x16 for the menu-bar items, write this:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.*.fontList:  8x16

This also specifies the resource value for submenus.

Each item in a submenu in the menu bar also has its own name for X resources; for example, the Files submenu has an item named Save Buffer.  A resource specification for a submenu item looks like this:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.popup_*.MENU.ITEM.RESOURCE: VALUE

For example, here's how to specify the font for the Save Buffer item:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.popup_*.Files.Save Buffer.fontList: 8x16

For an item in a second-level submenu, such as Check Message under Spell under Edit, the resource fits this template:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.popup_*.popup_*.MENU.RESOURCE: VALUE

For example,

     Emacs.pane.menubar.popup_*.popup_*.Spell.Check Message: VALUE

It's impossible to specify a resource for all the menu-bar items without also specifying it for the submenus as well.  So if you want the submenu items to look different from the menu bar itself, you must ask for that in two steps.  First, specify the resource for all of them; then, override the value for submenus alone.  Here is an example:

     Emacs.pane.menubar.*.fontList:  8x16
     Emacs.pane.menubar.popup_*.fontList: 8x16

For toolkit pop-up menus, use menu* instead of pane.menubar.  For example, to specify the font 8x16 for the pop-up menu items, write this:

     Emacs.menu*.fontList:  8x16

Here is a list of the specific resources for menu bars and pop-up menus:

armColor
     The color to show in an armed button.

fontList
     The font to use.

marginBottom
marginHeight
marginLeft
marginRight
marginTop
marginWidth
     Amount of space to leave around the item, within the border.

borderWidth
     The width of border around the menu item, on all sides.

shadowThickness
     The width of the border shadow.

bottomShadowColor
     The color for the border shadow, on the bottom and the right.

topShadowColor
     The color for the border shadow, on the top and the left.