### 3.2.4 Customization of the Emacs interface

Emacs provides a convenient interface to customize the behavior of Emacs and the SINGULAR Emacs interface for your own needs. You enter the customize environment by either calling `M-x customize` (on XEmacs you afterwards have to enter `emacs` in the minibuffer area) or by selecting the menu item `Options->Customize->Emacs...` for XEmacs, and the menu item `Help->Customize->Toplevel Customization Group` for Emacs, resp. A brief introduction to the customization mode comes up with the customization buffer. All customizable parameters are hierarchically grouped and you can browse through all these groups and change the values of the parameters using the mouse. At the end you can safe your settings to a file making your changes permanent.

To change the settings of the SINGULAR Emacs interface you can either select the item `Preferences` of the `Singular` menu, call `M-x customize-group` and give the argument `singular-interactive` in the minibuffer area, or browse from the top-level customization group through the path `External->Singular->Singular interactive`.

The SINGULAR interface customization buffer is divided into four groups:

- Singular Faces

  Here you can specify various faces used if font-lock-mode is enabled (which, by default, is).

- Singular Sections And Foldings

  Here you can specify special faces for SINGULAR input and output and change the text used as replacement for folded sections.

  For doing this, you also might find handy the function `customize-face-at-point`, which lets you customize the face at the current position of point. This function is automatically defined if you run `ESingular`). Otherwise, you should add its definition (see below) to your personal `.emacs` file.

- Singular Interactive Miscellaneous

  Here you can specify various things such as the behavior of the cursor keys, the name of the special SINGULAR startup file, the appearance of the help window, or the default values for the `singular` command.

- Singular Demo Mode

  Here you can specify how chunks of the demo file are divided, or specify a default directory for demo files.

When you run `ESingular`, the settings of customized variables are saved in the file `$HOME/.emacs-singular-cust`. Otherwise, the settings are appended to your `.emacs` file. Among others, this means that the customized settings of `ESingular` are not automatically taken over by a "normal" Emacs, and vice versa.

User manual for Singular version 4.4.1, 2025, generated by texi2html.