GNU Info

(emacs)Horizontal Scrolling

---

Next: Follow Mode Prev: Scrolling Up: Display

---

Enter node , (file) or (file)node

Horizontal Scrolling
====================

   "Horizontal scrolling" means shifting all the lines sideways within
a window--so that some of the text near the left margin is not
displayed at all.  Emacs does this automatically in any window that
uses line truncation rather than continuation: whenever point moves off
the left or right edge of the screen, Emacs scrolls the buffer
horizontally to make point visible.

   When a window has been scrolled horizontally, text lines are
truncated rather than continued (Note: Continuation Lines), with a `$'
appearing in the first column when there is text truncated to the left,
and in the last column when there is text truncated to the right.

   You can use these commands to do explicit horizontal scrolling.

`C-x <'
     Scroll text in current window to the left (`scroll-left').

`C-x >'
     Scroll to the right (`scroll-right').

   The command `C-x <' (`scroll-left') scrolls the selected window to
the left by N columns with argument N.  This moves part of the
beginning of each line off the left edge of the window.  With no
argument, it scrolls by almost the full width of the window (two
columns less, to be precise).

   `C-x >' (`scroll-right') scrolls similarly to the right.  The window
cannot be scrolled any farther to the right once it is displayed
normally (with each line starting at the window's left margin);
attempting to do so has no effect.  This means that you don't have to
calculate the argument precisely for `C-x >'; any sufficiently large
argument will restore the normal display.

   If you scroll a window horizontally by hand, that sets a lower bound
for automatic horizontal scrolling.  Automatic scrolling will continue
to scroll the window, but never farther to the right than the amount
you previously set by `scroll-left'.

   To disable automatic horizontal scrolling, set the variable
`automatic-hscrolling' to `nil'.