The functions in this section describe the basic capabilities of a particular display. Lisp programs can use them to adapt their behavior to what the display can do. For example, a program that ordinarily uses a popup menu could use the minibuffer if popup menus are not supported.
The optional argument display in these functions specifies which
display to ask the question about. It can be a display name, a frame
(which designates the display that frame is on), or nil (which
refers to the selected frame’s display, see Input Focus).
See Color Names, Text Terminal Colors, for other functions to obtain information about displays.
This function returns t if popup menus are supported on
display, nil if not. Support for popup menus requires
that the mouse be available, since the menu is popped up by clicking
the mouse on some portion of the Emacs display.
This function returns t if display is a graphic display
capable of displaying several frames and several different fonts at
once. This is true for displays that use a window system such as X,
and false for text terminals.
This function returns t if display has a mouse available,
nil if not.
This function returns t if the screen is a color screen.
It used to be called x-display-color-p, and that name
is still supported as an alias.
This function returns t if the screen can display shades of gray.
(All color displays can do this.)
This function returns non-nil if all the face attributes in
attributes are supported (see Face Attributes).
The definition of “supported” is somewhat heuristic, but basically means that a face containing all the attributes in attributes, when merged with the default face for display, can be represented in a way that’s
Point (2) implies that a :weight black attribute will be
satisfied by any display that can display bold, as will
:foreground "yellow" as long as some yellowish color can be
displayed, but :slant italic will not be satisfied by
the tty display code’s automatic substitution of a dim face for
italic.
This function returns t if display supports selections.
Windowed displays normally support selections, but they may also be
supported in some other cases.
This function returns t if display can display images.
Windowed displays ought in principle to handle images, but some
systems lack the support for that. On a display that does not support
images, Emacs cannot display a tool bar.
This function returns the number of screens associated with the display.
This function returns the height of the screen in pixels. On a character terminal, it gives the height in characters.
For graphical terminals, note that on multi-monitor setups this refers to the pixel height for all physical monitors associated with display. See Multiple Terminals.
This function returns the width of the screen in pixels. On a character terminal, it gives the width in characters.
For graphical terminals, note that on multi-monitor setups this refers to the pixel width for all physical monitors associated with display. See Multiple Terminals.
This function returns the height of the screen in millimeters,
or nil if Emacs cannot get that information.
For graphical terminals, note that on multi-monitor setups this refers to the height for all physical monitors associated with display. See Multiple Terminals.
This function returns the width of the screen in millimeters,
or nil if Emacs cannot get that information.
For graphical terminals, note that on multi-monitor setups this refers to the width for all physical monitors associated with display. See Multiple Terminals.
This variable allows the user to specify the dimensions of graphical
displays returned by display-mm-height and
display-mm-width in case the system provides incorrect values.
This function returns the backing store capability of the display. Backing store means recording the pixels of windows (and parts of windows) that are not exposed, so that when exposed they can be displayed very quickly.
Values can be the symbols always, when-mapped, or
not-useful. The function can also return nil
when the question is inapplicable to a certain kind of display.
This function returns non-nil if the display supports the
SaveUnder feature. That feature is used by pop-up windows
to save the pixels they obscure, so that they can pop down
quickly.
This function returns the number of planes the display supports. This is typically the number of bits per pixel. For a tty display, it is log to base two of the number of colors supported.
This function returns the visual class for the screen. The value is
one of the symbols static-gray (a limited, unchangeable number
of grays), gray-scale (a full range of grays),
static-color (a limited, unchangeable number of colors),
pseudo-color (a limited number of colors), true-color (a
full range of colors), and direct-color (a full range of
colors).
This function returns the number of color cells the screen supports.
These functions obtain additional information about the window
system in use where Emacs shows the specified display. (Their
names begin with x- for historical reasons.)
This function returns the list of version numbers of the GUI window system running on display, such as the X server on GNU and Unix systems. The value is a list of three integers: the major and minor version numbers of the protocol, and the distributor-specific release number of the window system software itself. On GNU and Unix systems, these are normally the version of the X protocol and the distributor-specific release number of the X server software. On MS-Windows, this is the version of the Windows OS.
This function returns the vendor that provided the window system software (as a string). On GNU and Unix systems this really means whoever distributes the X server. On MS-Windows this is the vendor ID string of the Windows OS (Microsoft).
When the developers of X labeled software distributors as “vendors”, they showed their false assumption that no system could ever be developed and distributed noncommercially.