38.9.2 Overlay Properties

Overlay properties are like text properties in that the properties that alter how a character is displayed can come from either source. But in most respects they are different. See Text Properties, for comparison.

Text properties are considered a part of the text; overlays and their properties are specifically considered not to be part of the text. Thus, copying text between various buffers and strings preserves text properties, but does not try to preserve overlays. Changing a buffer's text properties marks the buffer as modified, while moving an overlay or changing its properties does not. Unlike text property changes, overlay property changes are not recorded in the buffer's undo list.

Since more than one overlay can specify a property value for the same character, Emacs lets you specify a priority value of each overlay. You should not make assumptions about which overlay will prevail when there is a conflict and they have the same priority.

These functions read and set the properties of an overlay:

See also the function get-char-property which checks both overlay properties and text properties for a given character. See Examining Properties.

Many overlay properties have special meanings; here is a table of them:

priority

This property's value (which should be a nonnegative integer number) determines the priority of the overlay. No priority, or nil, means zero.

The priority matters when two or more overlays cover the same character and both specify the same property; the one whose priority value is larger overrides the other. For the face property, the higher priority overlay's value does not completely override the other value; instead, its face attributes override the face attributes of the lower priority face property.

Currently, all overlays take priority over text properties. Please avoid using negative priority values, as we have not yet decided just what they should mean.

window

If the window property is non-nil, then the overlay applies only on that window.

category

If an overlay has a category property, we call it the category of the overlay. It should be a symbol. The properties of the symbol serve as defaults for the properties of the overlay.

face

This property controls the way text is displayed—for example, which font and which colors. See Faces, for more information.

In the simplest case, the value is a face name. It can also be a list; then each element can be any of these possibilities:

• A face name (a symbol or string).
• A property list of face attributes. This has the form (keyword value …), where each keyword is a face attribute name and value is a meaningful value for that attribute. With this feature, you do not need to create a face each time you want to specify a particular attribute for certain text. See Face Attributes.
• A cons cell, either of the form (foreground-color . color-name) or (background-color . color-name). These elements specify just the foreground color or just the background color.

  (foreground-color . color-name) has the same effect as (:foreground color-name); likewise for the background.

mouse-face

This property is used instead of face when the mouse is within the range of the overlay.

display

This property activates various features that change the way text is displayed. For example, it can make text appear taller or shorter, higher or lower, wider or narrower, or replaced with an image. See Display Property.

help-echo

If an overlay has a help-echo property, then when you move the mouse onto the text in the overlay, Emacs displays a help string in the echo area, or in the tooltip window. For details see Text help-echo.

modification-hooks

This property's value is a list of functions to be called if any character within the overlay is changed or if text is inserted strictly within the overlay.

The hook functions are called both before and after each change. If the functions save the information they receive, and compare notes between calls, they can determine exactly what change has been made in the buffer text.

When called before a change, each function receives four arguments: the overlay, nil, and the beginning and end of the text range to be modified.

When called after a change, each function receives five arguments: the overlay, t, the beginning and end of the text range just modified, and the length of the pre-change text replaced by that range. (For an insertion, the pre-change length is zero; for a deletion, that length is the number of characters deleted, and the post-change beginning and end are equal.)

If these functions modify the buffer, they should bind inhibit-modification-hooks to t around doing so, to avoid confusing the internal mechanism that calls these hooks.

Text properties also support the modification-hooks property, but the details are somewhat different (see Special Properties).

insert-in-front-hooks

This property's value is a list of functions to be called before and after inserting text right at the beginning of the overlay. The calling conventions are the same as for the modification-hooks functions.

insert-behind-hooks

This property's value is a list of functions to be called before and after inserting text right at the end of the overlay. The calling conventions are the same as for the modification-hooks functions.

invisible

The invisible property can make the text in the overlay invisible, which means that it does not appear on the screen. See Invisible Text, for details.

intangible

The intangible property on an overlay works just like the intangible text property. See Special Properties, for details.

isearch-open-invisible

This property tells incremental search how to make an invisible overlay visible, permanently, if the final match overlaps it. See Invisible Text.

isearch-open-invisible-temporary

This property tells incremental search how to make an invisible overlay visible, temporarily, during the search. See Invisible Text.

before-string

This property's value is a string to add to the display at the beginning of the overlay. The string does not appear in the buffer in any sense—only on the screen.

after-string

This property's value is a string to add to the display at the end of the overlay. The string does not appear in the buffer in any sense—only on the screen.

line-prefix

This property specifies a display spec to prepend to each non-continuation line at display-time. See Truncation.

wrap-prefix

This property specifies a display spec to prepend to each continuation line at display-time. See Truncation.

evaporate

If this property is non-nil, the overlay is deleted automatically if it becomes empty (i.e., if its length becomes zero). If you give an empty overlay a non-nil evaporate property, that deletes it immediately.

local-map

If this property is non-nil, it specifies a keymap for a portion of the text. The property's value replaces the buffer's local map, when the character after point is within the overlay. See Active Keymaps.

keymap

The keymap property is similar to local-map but overrides the buffer's local map (and the map specified by the local-map property) rather than replacing it.

The local-map and keymap properties do not affect a string displayed by the before-string, after-string, or display properties. This is only relevant for mouse clicks and other mouse events that fall on the string, since point is never on the string. To bind special mouse events for the string, assign it a local-map or keymap text property. See Special Properties.