29. Frames

A frame is a rectangle on the screen that contains one or more Emacs windows. A frame initially contains a single main window (plus perhaps a minibuffer window), which you can subdivide vertically or horizontally into smaller windows.

When Emacs runs on a text-only terminal, it starts with one terminal frame. If you create additional ones, Emacs displays one and only one at any given time--on the terminal screen, of course.

When Emacs communicates directly with a supported window system, such as X, it does not have a terminal frame; instead, it starts with a single window frame, but you can create more, and Emacs can display several such frames at once as is usual for window systems.

Function: framep object

This predicate returns a non-nil value if object is a frame, and nil otherwise. For a frame, the value indicates which kind of display the frame uses:

x

The frame is displayed in an X window.

t

A terminal frame on a character display.

mac

The frame is displayed on a Macintosh.

w32

The frame is displayed on MS-Windows 9X/NT.

pc

The frame is displayed on an MS-DOS terminal.

29.1 Creating Frames		Creating additional frames.
29.2 Multiple Displays		Creating frames on other displays.
29.3 Frame Parameters		Controlling frame size, position, font, etc.
29.4 Frame Titles		Automatic updating of frame titles.
29.5 Deleting Frames		Frames last until explicitly deleted.
29.6 Finding All Frames		How to examine all existing frames.
29.7 Frames and Windows		A frame contains windows; display of text always works through windows.
29.8 Minibuffers and Frames		How a frame finds the minibuffer to use.
29.9 Input Focus		Specifying the selected frame.
29.10 Visibility of Frames		Frames may be visible or invisible, or icons.
29.11 Raising and Lowering Frames		Raising a frame makes it hide other windows; lowering it makes the others hide them.
29.12 Frame Configurations		Saving the state of all frames.
29.13 Mouse Tracking		Getting events that say when the mouse moves.
29.14 Mouse Position		Asking where the mouse is, or moving it.
29.15 Pop-Up Menus		Displaying a menu for the user to select from.
29.16 Dialog Boxes		Displaying a box to ask yes or no.
29.17 Pointer Shapes		Specifying the shape of the mouse pointer.
29.18 Window System Selections		Transferring text to and from other X clients.
29.19 Color Names		Getting the definitions of color names.
29.20 Text Terminal Colors		Defining colors for text-only terminals.
29.21 X Resources		Getting resource values from the server.
29.22 Display Feature Testing		Determining the features of a terminal.

See section 38. Emacs Display, for information about the related topic of controlling Emacs redisplay.