---

12 The Echo Area

Hemlock provides a number of facilities for displaying information and prompting the user for it. Most of these work through a small window displayed at the bottom of the screen. This is called the echo area and is supported by a buffer and a window. This buffer’s modeline (see section modelines) is referred to as the status line, which, unlike other buffers’ modelines, is used to show general status about the editor, Lisp, or world.

Hemlock Variable: Default Status Line Fields ¶

This is the initial list of modeline-field objects stored in the echo area buffer.

Hemlock Variable: Echo Area Height (initial value 3) ¶

This variable determines the initial height in lines of the echo area window.

• Echo Area Functions
• Prompting Functions
• Control of Parsing Behavior
• Defining New Prompting Functions
• Some Echo Area Commands