How to scroll line by line in GNU Emacs?

user_62699 0
Viewed 35755

To put it simply, I'm trying to get scrolling in emacs like in vim and most other editors; when I'm for example, two lines from the bottom/top, and I press down/up (Ctrl-p,n, ↑,↓) it goes only one line up or down, not half the screen.

emacs
15 Answers
ars_26110

If you want to position the screen exactly, you can use Ctrl-L.

  • By default it positions the current line in the middle of the screen.

  • ESC 0 Ctrl-L positions the current line at the top.

user_492460

I rebind my arrow keys to perform scrolling operations.

(global-set-key [up] (lambda () (interactive) (scroll-down 1)))
(global-set-key [down] (lambda () (interactive) (scroll-up 1)))

(global-set-key [left] (lambda () (interactive) (scroll-right tab-width t)))
(global-set-key [right] (lambda () (interactive) (scroll-left tab-width t)))
user_186360

I have the following in my .emacs file to enable a nice ctrl-up, ctrl-down scrolling behavior. I also use this for the mousewheel.

(defun scroll-down-in-place (n)
  (interactive "p")
  (previous-line n)
  (scroll-down n))

(defun scroll-up-in-place (n)
  (interactive "p")
  (next-line n)
  (scroll-up n))

(global-set-key [mouse-4] 'scroll-down-in-place)
(global-set-key [mouse-5] 'scroll-up-in-place)
(global-set-key [C-up] 'scroll-down-in-place)
(global-set-key [C-down] 'scroll-up-in-place)
Alex_B_61800

M-x customize-variable scroll-conservatively

Set it to 1.

You don't really want to do this, though.

jrockway_84570

If you don't mind using the mouse and have a scroll wheel, you can customize the variable mouse-wheel-scroll-amount by either:

C-h v mouse-wheel-scroll-amount (click on customize, change value to "Specific # of lines" 1, ApplyAndSave.)

or add to .emacs the line: '(mouse-wheel-scroll-amount '(1 ((shift) . 1) ((meta)) ((control) . text-scale)))

There are lots of possibilities listed at https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Scrolling

user_20452950

After playing a bit with the available configuration (emacs 26.3), I got to the following set of values:

(setq scroll-step 1
      scroll-preserve-screen-position t
      scroll-margin 10
      scroll-conservatively 10
      maximum-scroll-margin 0.0
      scroll-up-aggressively 0.0
      scroll-down-aggressively 0.0)

I believe the values for scroll-margin and scroll-conservatively do not matter much because the maximum-scroll-margin clamps them down. They just need to be equal (maybe?).

Scroll happens line by line, even on the end of the file (worst case for me). The only missing feature was that with this the margin on top and bottom are lost.

Its a compromise and, for me, smooth scrolling is worth it.

user_17115170
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