To see what faces are currently defined, and what they look like,
type M-x list-faces-display. It's possible for a given face to
look different in different frames; this command shows the appearance
in the frame in which you type it. With a prefix argument, this
prompts for a regular expression, and displays only faces with names
matching that regular expression.
Here are the standard faces for specifying text appearance. You can
apply them to specific text when you want the effects they produce.
default
This face is used for ordinary text that doesn't specify any face.
bold
This face uses a bold variant of the default font.
italic
This face uses an italic variant of the default font.
bold-italic
This face uses a bold italic variant of the default font.
underline
This face underlines text.
fixed-pitch
This face forces use of a fixed-width font. It's reasonable to
customize this face to use a different fixed-width font, if you like,
but you should not make it a variable-width font.
variable-pitch
This face forces use of a variable-width font.
shadow
This face is used for making the text less noticeable than the surrounding
ordinary text. Usually this can be achieved by using shades of gray in
contrast with either black or white default foreground color.
Here's an incomplete list of faces used to highlight parts of the
text temporarily for specific purposes. (Many other modes define
their own faces for this purpose.)
highlight
This face is used for highlighting portions of text, in various modes.
For example, mouse-sensitive text is highlighted using this face.
isearch
This face is used for highlighting the current Isearch match
(see Incremental Search).
query-replace
This face is used for highlighting the current Query Replace match
(see Replace).
lazy-highlight
This face is used for lazy highlighting of Isearch and Query Replace
matches other than the current one.
region
This face is used for displaying a selected region (see Mark).
secondary-selection
This face is used for displaying a secondary X selection (see Secondary Selection).
trailing-whitespace
The face for highlighting excess spaces and tabs at the end of a line
when show-trailing-whitespace is non-nil; see
Useless Whitespace.
nobreak-space
The face for displaying the character “nobreak space.”
escape-glyph
The face for highlighting the ‘\’ or ‘^’ that indicates
a control character. It's also used when ‘\’ indicates a
nobreak space or nobreak (soft) hyphen.
These faces control the appearance of parts of the Emacs frame.
They exist as faces to provide a consistent way to customize the
appearance of these parts of the frame.
mode-line
This face is used for the mode line of the currently selected window,
and for menu bars when toolkit menus are not used. By default, it's
drawn with shadows for a “raised” effect on graphical displays, and
drawn as the inverse of the default face on non-windowed terminals.
mode-line-inactive
Like mode-line, but used for mode lines of the windows other
than the selected one (if mode-line-in-non-selected-windows is
non-nil). This face inherits from mode-line, so changes
in that face affect mode lines in all windows.
mode-line-highlight
Like highlight, but used for portions of text on mode lines.
mode-line-buffer-id
This face is used for buffer identification parts in the mode line.
header-line
Similar to mode-line for a window's header line, which appears
at the top of a window just as the mode line appears at the bottom.
Most windows do not have a header line—only some special modes, such
Info mode, create one.
vertical-border
This face is used for the vertical divider between windows.
By default this face inherits from the mode-line-inactive face
on character terminals. On graphical displays the foreground color of
this face is used for the vertical line between windows without
scrollbars.
minibuffer-prompt
This face is used for the prompt strings displayed in the minibuffer.
By default, Emacs automatically adds this face to the value of
minibuffer-prompt-properties, which is a list of text
properties used to display the prompt text. (This variable takes
effect when you enter the minibuffer.)
fringe
The face for the fringes to the left and right of windows on graphic
displays. (The fringes are the narrow portions of the Emacs frame
between the text area and the window's right and left borders.)
See Fringes.
scroll-bar
This face determines the visual appearance of the scroll bar.
See Scroll Bars.
border
This face determines the color of the frame border.
cursor
This face determines the color of the cursor.
mouse
This face determines the color of the mouse pointer.
tool-bar
This face determines the color of tool bar icons. See Tool Bars.
This face determines the colors and font of Emacs's menus. See Menu Bars. This has no effect in Emacs built with GTK and in the
MS-Windows/Mac ports; you need to use system-wide styles and options
to change the appearance of GTK, Windows, or Mac menus. Setting the
font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported; attempts to
set the font are ignored in this case.