39.22.3 Active Display Table

Each window can specify a display table, and so can each buffer. The window’s display table, if there is one, takes precedence over the buffer’s display table. If neither exists, Emacs tries to use the standard display table; if that is nil, Emacs uses the usual character display conventions (see Usual Display).

Note that display tables affect how the mode line is displayed, so if you want to force redisplay of the mode line using a new display table, call force-mode-line-update (see Mode Line Format).

function window-display-table \&optional window

This function returns window’s display table, or nil if there is none. The default for window is the selected window.

function set-window-display-table window table

This function sets the display table of window to table. The argument table should be either a display table or nil.

variable buffer-display-table

This variable is automatically buffer-local in all buffers; its value specifies the buffer’s display table. If it is nil, there is no buffer display table.

variable standard-display-table

The value of this variable is the standard display table, which is used when Emacs is displaying a buffer in a window with neither a window display table nor a buffer display table defined, or when Emacs is outputting text to the standard output or error streams. Although its default is typically nil, in an interactive session if the terminal cannot display curved quotes, its default maps curved quotes to ASCII approximations. See Text Quoting Style.

The disp-table library defines several functions for changing the standard display table.