-;; Provides a global minor mode (toggled by M-x hl-line-mode) to
-;; highlight, in a windowing system, the line on which point is
-;; (except in a minibuffer window) to satisfy a request for a feature
-;; of Lesser Editors.
-
-;; You probably don't really want this; if the cursor is difficult to
-;; spot, try changing its colour or using a cursor blinking
-;; <URL:http://www.wonderworks.com/download/blinking-cursor.el.gz> or
-;; jiggling <URL:http://www.eskimo.com/%7Eseldon> package. (Cursor
-;; blinking will be built in to Emacs 21.) The hookery involved here
-;; might slow Emacs noticeably on a slow machine.
-
-;; An overlay is used, active only on the selected window. Hooks are
-;; added to `pre-command-hook' and `post-command-hook' to activate and
-;; deactivate (by deleting) the overlay. `hl-line-unhighlight', on
-;; `pre-command-hook', deactivates it unconditionally in case the
-;; command changes the selected window. (It does so rather than
-;; keeping track of changes in the selected window).
-;; `hl-line-highlight', on `post-command-hook', activates it again
-;; across the window width.
+;; Provides a local minor mode (toggled by M-x hl-line-mode) and
+;; a global minor mode (toggled by M-x global-hl-line-mode) to
+;; highlight, on a suitable terminal, the line on which point is. The
+;; global mode highlights the current line in the selected window only
+;; (except when the minibuffer window is selected). This was
+;; implemented to satisfy a request for a feature of Lesser Editors.
+;; The local mode is sticky: it highlights the line about the buffer's
+;; point even if the buffer's window is not selected. Caveat: the
+;; buffer's point might be different from the point of a non-selected
+;; window. Set the variable `hl-line-sticky-flag' to nil to make the
+;; local mode behave like the global mode.
+
+;; You probably don't really want to use the global mode; if the
+;; cursor is difficult to spot, try changing its colour, relying on
+;; `blink-cursor-mode' or both. The hookery used might affect
+;; response noticeably on a slow machine. The local mode may be
+;; useful in non-editing buffers such as Gnus or PCL-CVS though.
+
+;; An overlay is used. In the non-sticky cases, this overlay is
+;; active only on the selected window. A hook is added to
+;; `post-command-hook' to activate the overlay and move it to the line
+;; about point. To get the non-sticky behavior, `hl-line-unhighlight'
+;; is added to `pre-command-hook' as well. This function deactivates
+;; the overlay unconditionally in case the command changes the
+;; selected window. (It does so rather than keeping track of changes
+;; in the selected window).
+
+;; You could make variable `global-hl-line-mode' buffer-local and set
+;; it to nil to avoid highlighting specific buffers, when the global
+;; mode is used.
+
+;; By default the whole line is highlighted. The range of highlighting
+;; can be changed by defining an appropriate function as the
+;; buffer-local value of `hl-line-range-function'.