Merging Faces for Display

Here are all the ways to specify which face to use for display of text:

• With defaults. Each frame has a default face, which is used for all text that doesn't somehow specify another face. (We may change this in a forthcoming Emacs version to serve as a default for all text.)
• With text properties. A character may have a face property; if so, it is displayed with that face. See section Properties with Special Meanings. If the character has a mouse-face property, that is used instead of the face property when the mouse is "near enough" to the character.
• With overlays. An overlay may have face and mouse-face properties too; they apply to all the text covered by the overlay.
• With a region that is active. In Transient Mark mode, the region is highlighted with a particular face (see region-face, below).
• With special glyphs. Each glyph can specify a particular face number. See section Glyphs.

If these various sources together specify more than one face for a particular character, Emacs merges the attributes of the various faces specified. The attributes of the faces of special glyphs come first; then comes the face for region highlighting, if appropriate; then come attributes of faces from overlays, followed by those from text properties, and last the default face.

When multiple overlays cover one character, an overlay with higher priority overrides those with lower priority. See section Overlays.

If an attribute such as the font or a color is not specified in any of the above ways, the frame's own font or color is used.

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