How to scroll line by line in GNU Emacs?
Solution 1:
See some of the suggestions on the Emacs Wiki:
- Emacs Wiki: Smooth Scrolling
(setq scroll-step 1
scroll-conservatively 10000)
Solution 2:
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.
Solution 3:
I'm a bit late to the party, but if you don't mind installing a package then smooth-scrolling (github, also available in MELPA) may be what you're looking for - it certainly works for me.
Once you've installed it you can pop the following in your init.el:
(require 'smooth-scrolling)
(smooth-scrolling-mode 1)
(setq smooth-scroll-margin 5)
The last line is optional; it starts scrolling near the screen edge rather than at it, so you've always got a little context around the point. Adjust to taste.
Solution 4:
My solution is not to change Emac's default scrolling, but rather to create a key sequence command from a macro. This way you have a convenient way to scroll one line at a time when you want. Not ideal, but super easy. It just happens that M-(↓) and M-(↑) are available, so that's what I used.
This is how I did it. First, you need to record a macro for one line scrolls, up and down.
Begin macro
C-x (
Scroll down one
C-u 1 C-v
Stop macro
C-x )
For scroll up one, use
C-u 1 M-v
Next you need to name the macro.
M-x name-last-kbd-macro
Give it a name when prompted like:
down-one-line
Then just use the following to bind a key sequence to that command name:
M-x global-set-key
And upon prompting, use something like:
M-(down arrow)
Then it will ask you which command you want to bind, and you should give it the name you invented earlier, e.g., down-one-line.
Here is where I got this information. You can also find instructions below and elsewhere about adding your macro to the .emacs file.
Here for macro definition explanation
Here for how to control scrolling