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1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
4
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
7
8 \f
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
12
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
14
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
17
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 to list them.
21
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
24
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
27
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30
31 \f
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
33
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
36
37 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
38 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
39 Postscript files are included.
40
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
42 `dired-ref.tex'.
43
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
46
47 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
48 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
49 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
50 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
51 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
52 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
53
54 +++
55 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
56 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
57 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
58 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
59
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
62
63 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
64 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
65 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
66 character is still bound as before.
67
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
69 using that menu.
70
71 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
72 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
73
74 +++
75 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
76 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
77 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
78 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
79 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
80 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
81 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
82
83 +++
84 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
85 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
86 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
87 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
88 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
89 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
90 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
91 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
92 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
93
94 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
95 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
96
97 +++
98 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
99 point in a pop-up window.
100
101 +++
102 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
103 displays all characters in that character set.
104
105 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
106 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
107
108 +++
109 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
110 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
111 defined on newcomment.el.
112
113 +++
114 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
115
116 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
117 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
118
119 +++
120 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
121 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
122 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
123 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
124
125 +++
126 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
127 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
128 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
129 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
130
131 +++
132 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
133 on the display using several methods
134
135 +++
136 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
137 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
138 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
139
140 +++
141 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
142 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
143
144 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
145
146 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
147 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
148
149 +++
150 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
151 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
152 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
153 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
154
155 +++
156 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
157 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
158 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
159
160 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
161 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
162
163 +++
164 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
165 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
166 this behavior.
167
168 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
169 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
170 Emacs dump core.
171
172 +++
173 ** New X resources recognized
174
175 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
176 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
177 is useful for debugging X problems.
178
179 Example:
180
181 emacs.synchronous: true
182
183 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
184 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
185 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
186 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
187 visual class names are
188
189 TrueColor
190 PseudoColor
191 DirectColor
192 StaticColor
193 GrayScale
194 StaticGray
195
196 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
197 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
198 meaning.
199
200 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
201 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
202 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
203 visual.
204
205 Example:
206
207 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
208
209 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
210 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
211 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
212 resource values are `true' or `on'.
213
214 Example:
215
216 emacs.privateColormap: true
217
218 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
219 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
220 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
221
222 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
223 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
224 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
225 be customized.
226
227 +++
228 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
229
230 +++
231 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
232 all frames except the selected one.
233
234 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
235 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
236
237 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
238 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
239 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
240 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
241
242 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
243 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
244
245 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
246 read mail from the menu etc.
247
248 +++
249 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
250 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
251
252 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
253
254 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
255 macros
256
257 Key binding Macro
258 -------------------------
259 C-c C-c C-s @strong
260 C-c C-c C-e @emph
261 C-c C-c u @url
262 C-c C-c q @quotation
263 C-c C-c m @email
264
265 ** Changes in Outline mode.
266
267 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
268 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
269 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
270
271 ** Changes to Emacs Server
272
273 +++
274 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
275 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
276 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
277 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
278 buffers to kill, as before.
279
280 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
281 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
282 this way.
283
284 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
285
286 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
287 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
288 use. Default is 1000.
289
290 +++
291 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
292 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
293
294 +++
295 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
296 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
297 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
298 buffers.
299
300 +++
301 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
302 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
303 .emacs file.
304
305 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
306 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
307
308 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
309 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
310 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
311
312 ** Faces and frame parameters.
313
314 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
315 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
316 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
317 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
318 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
319 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
320 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
321
322 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
323 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
324 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
325 `default' face and vice versa.
326
327 +++
328 ** New face `menu'.
329
330 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
331 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
332 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
333
334 +++
335 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
336
337 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
338 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
339 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
340 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
341
342 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
343 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
344 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
345
346 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
347 `ScreenGamma'.
348
349 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
350
351 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
352 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
353 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
354 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
355 the text.
356
357 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
358
359 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
360 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
361 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
362 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
363 specify a font.
364
365 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
366 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
367 under Lisp changes, below.
368
369 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
370
371 +++
372 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
373 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
374 otherwise, it is hollow.
375
376 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
377 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
378 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
379 customizing face `fringe'.
380
381 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
382 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
383
384 ** LessTif support.
385
386 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
387 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
388
389 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
390
391 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
392 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
393 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
394 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
395 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
396 Emacs.
397
398 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
399 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
400 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
401 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
402 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
403 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
404
405 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
406 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
407 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
408 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
409 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
410 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
411
412 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
413 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
414 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
415 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
416 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
417
418 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
419
420 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
421 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
422 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
423
424 +++
425 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
426
427 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
428 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
429 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
430 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
431 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
432 whitespace.
433
434 +++
435 ** Busy-cursor.
436
437 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
438 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
439
440 +++
441 ** Blinking cursor
442
443 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
444 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
445 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
446 the group `cursor'.
447
448 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
449
450 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
451 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
452 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
453 details.
454
455 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
456 have to do anything to activate it.
457
458 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
459
460 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
461 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
462 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
463 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
464
465 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
466
467 +++
468 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
469
470 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
471
472 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
473 LessTif/Motif one.
474
475 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
476 LessTif and Motif.
477
478 +++
479 ** Hscrolling in C code.
480
481 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
482 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
483 customized.
484
485 ** Tool bar support.
486
487 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
488 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
489
490 +++
491 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
492
493 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
494 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
495 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
496 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
497 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
498
499 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
500
501 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
502 buffers.
503
504 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
505 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
506
507 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
508
509 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
510 `*') toggles the status.
511
512 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
513
514 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
515
516 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
517 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
518 non-nil.
519
520 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
521
522 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
523 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
524 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
525 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
526 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
527 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
528 on terminals.
529
530 ** Sound support
531
532 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
533 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
534 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
535
536 +++
537 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
538 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
539 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
540 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
541 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
542 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
543
544 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
545
546 +++
547 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
548
549 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
550 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
551 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
552
553 +++
554 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
555 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
556
557 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
558 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
559 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
560
561 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
562
563 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
564 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
565 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
566 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
567
568 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
569 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
570 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
571 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
572
573 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
574 notably at the end of lines.
575
576 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
577 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
578
579 +++
580 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
581
582 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
583 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
584 after each match to get the replacement text.
585
586 +++
587 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
588 you edit the replacement string.
589
590 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
591 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
592 lisp-complete-symbol.
593
594 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
595
596 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
597 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
598 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
599 window size by setting the following variable:
600
601 - User option: max-mini-window-height
602
603 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
604 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
605 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
606
607 Default is 0.25.
608
609 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
610
611 ** Changes to hideshow.el
612
613 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
614 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
615
616 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
617
618 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
619 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
620 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
621 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
622 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
623 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
624
625 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
626 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
627 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
628 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
629
630 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
631
632 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
633 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
634 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
635 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
636 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
637
638 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
639 something like this in your .emacs.
640
641 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
642 (lambda ()
643 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
644
645 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
646
647 +++
648 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
649 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
650 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
651
652 +++
653 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
654 buffer.
655
656 +++
657 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
658 a log file.
659
660 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
661 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
662
663 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
664 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
665 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
666 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
667
668 ** Changes in Font Lock
669
670 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
671 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
672 mode.
673
674 ** Comint (subshell) changes
675
676 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
677 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
678 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
679 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
680 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
681 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
682 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
683 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
684
685 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
686 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
687
688 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
689 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
690 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
691
692 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
693 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
694 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
695
696 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
697 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
698 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
699 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
700
701 ** Changes to Rmail mode
702
703 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
704 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
705 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
706 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
707 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
708 as correspondent.
709
710 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
711 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
712 regexp matching your mail addresses.
713
714 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
715 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
716 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
717 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
718 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
719
720 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
721 like `j'.
722
723 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
724 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
725 digest message.
726
727 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
728 in which folder to put messages automatically.
729
730 ** Changes to TeX mode
731
732 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
733 `latex-mode'.
734
735 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
736
737 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
738 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
739 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
740 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
741 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
742 can be edited from that buffer.
743
744 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
745 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
746 `A' to use all marked entries).
747
748 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
749 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
750
751 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
752 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
753 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
754 been cited.
755
756 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
757 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
758 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
759 in column 1 are always made leaves.
760
761 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
762 has the following new features:
763
764 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
765 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
766 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
767 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
768
769 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
770 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
771 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
772 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
773 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
774 defaults to 1.
775
776 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
777 file names.
778
779 +++
780 ** Tooltips.
781
782 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
783 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
784 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
785
786 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
787 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
788 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
789 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
790
791 +++
792 ** Customize changes
793
794 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
795 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
796 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
797
798 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
799 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
800 default).
801
802 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
803 between custom options. Example:
804
805 (defcustom default-input-method nil
806 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
807 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
808 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
809 :group 'mule
810 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
811 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
812
813 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
814 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
815 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
816
817 ** New features in evaluation commands
818
819 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
820 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
821 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
822 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
823 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
824
825 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
826 code when called with a prefix argument.
827
828 ** Ispell changes
829
830 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
831 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
832 spell-checks the current buffer.
833
834 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
835 added.
836
837 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
838 correction is made and re-checked.
839
840 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
841
842 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
843 cases.
844
845 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
846 on syntax errors.
847
848 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
849 end of the buffer.
850
851 ** Dired changes
852
853 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
854 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
855 is, delete only empty directories.
856
857 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
858 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
859 copy directories recursively.
860
861 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
862 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
863 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
864
865 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
866 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
867 directory.
868
869 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
870 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
871 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
872 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
873 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
874
875 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
876 from ls switches.
877
878 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
879 use the -f option when sending mail.
880
881 ** CC mode changes.
882
883 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
884 current user setups (although it's believed that these
885 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
886 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
887 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
888 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
889 release.
890
891 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
892 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
893 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
894 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
895 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
896 have to bother.
897
898 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
899 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
900 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
901 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
902 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
903 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
904
905 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
906 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
907 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
908 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
909 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
910 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
911 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
912 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
913
914 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
915 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
916 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
917 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
918 above.
919
920 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
921 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
922 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
923 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
924 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
925 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
926 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
927 function documentation for more info.
928
929 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
930 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
931 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
932 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
933 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
934 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
935 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
936 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
937
938 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
939
940 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
941 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
942
943 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
944 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
945 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
946 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
947 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
948 style system.
949
950 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
951 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
952 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
953 as far as possible.
954
955 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
956 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
957 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
958 chapter about this in the manual.
959
960 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
961 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
962 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
963 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
964 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
965
966 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
967 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
968 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
969
970 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
971 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
972
973 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
974 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
975 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
976 inside CC Mode.
977
978 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
979 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
980 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
981 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
982 cc-mode/).
983
984 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
985 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
986 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
987 literals.
988
989 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
990 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
991 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
992 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
993 this function.
994
995 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
996 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
997 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
998 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
999 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1000
1001 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1002 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1003 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1004
1005 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1006
1007 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1008 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1009 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1010 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1011
1012 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1013 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1014 the column specified by comment-column.
1015
1016 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1017 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1018 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1019 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1020 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1021 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1022
1023 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1024 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1025 arguments.
1026
1027 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1028
1029 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1030 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1031 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1032 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1033 Provan).
1034
1035 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1036
1037 ** Makefile mode changes
1038
1039 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1040
1041 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1042 Fontlock mode is active.
1043
1044 ** Isearch changes
1045
1046 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1047 so that searches can be resumed.
1048
1049 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1050 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1051 that started the search.
1052
1053 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1054 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1055
1056 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1057
1058 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1059 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1060 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1061 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1062 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1063 `secondary-selection'.
1064
1065 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1066 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1067 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1068 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1069 usual snappy response.
1070
1071 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1072 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1073 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1074 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1075
1076 ** Changes in sort.el
1077
1078 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1079 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1080 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1081 numeric base.
1082
1083 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1084
1085 +++
1086 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1087 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1088 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1089
1090 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1091 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1092
1093 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1094 output ^M at the end of lines.
1095
1096 ** Shell script mode changes.
1097
1098 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1099 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1100 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1101
1102 ** Etags changes.
1103
1104 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1105
1106 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1107 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1108 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1109 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1110 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1111
1112 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1113 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1114
1115 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1116 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1117
1118 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1119 types.
1120
1121 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1122
1123 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1124
1125 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1126 are now tagged.
1127
1128 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1129 variables are tagged.
1130
1131 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1132
1133 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1134 for PSWrap.
1135
1136 ** Changes in etags.el
1137
1138 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1139 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1140 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1141
1142 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1143 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1144
1145 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1146 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1147 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1148 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1149
1150 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1151
1152 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1153 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1154
1155 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1156
1157 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1158 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1159 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1160
1161 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1162 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1163
1164 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1165 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1166
1167 +++
1168 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1169 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1170 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1171
1172 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1173 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1174 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1175 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1176
1177 +++
1178 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1179 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1180 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1181
1182 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1183
1184 +++
1185 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1186
1187 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1188 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1189 expression from that list, are not checked.
1190
1191 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1192 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1193 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1194 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1195
1196 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1197
1198 ** New modes and packages
1199
1200 +++
1201 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1202 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1203 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1204 on certain projects.
1205
1206 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1207 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1208
1209 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1210
1211 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1212 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1213 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1214 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1215 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1216 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1217 corresponding file is read.
1218
1219 +++
1220 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1221 Emacs is idle.
1222
1223 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1224 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1225
1226 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1227 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1228 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1229
1230 +++
1231 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1232 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1233 separate Texinfo file.
1234
1235 +++
1236 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1237 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1238 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1239 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1240 enter checkin log messages.
1241
1242 +++
1243 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1244 without invoking external programs.
1245
1246 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1247 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1248 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1249 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1250 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1251
1252 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1253 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1254
1255 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1256 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1257
1258 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1259 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1260 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1261 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1262 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1263 single step.
1264
1265 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1266 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1267 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1268 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1269
1270 +++
1271 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1272 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1273 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1274
1275 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1276 PostScript.
1277
1278 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1279
1280 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1281
1282 ; comment (until end of line)
1283 A non-terminal
1284 "C" terminal
1285 ?C? special
1286 $A default non-terminal
1287 $"C" default terminal
1288 $?C? default special
1289 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1290 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1291 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1292 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1293 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1294 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1295 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1296 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1297 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1298 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1299 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1300 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1301 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1302 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1303 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1304
1305 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1306
1307 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1308 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1309 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1310 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1311 equal signs of assignments.
1312
1313 +++
1314 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1315 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1316
1317 +++
1318 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1319 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1320 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1321 customize the package.
1322
1323 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1324
1325 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1326 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1327 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1328 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1329 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1330 which answers different needs.
1331
1332 +++
1333 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1334 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1335 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1336 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1337 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1338 to be enabled.
1339
1340 +++
1341 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1342 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1343
1344 +++
1345 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1346
1347 +++
1348 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1349
1350 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1351
1352 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1353 Pascal) language.
1354
1355 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1356 the text at point.
1357
1358 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1359
1360 +++
1361 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1362
1363 *** whitespace.el ???
1364
1365 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1366 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1367 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1368 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1369 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1370 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1371 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1372
1373 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1374
1375 Here is an example of columns:
1376
1377 horse apple bus
1378 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1379 porcupine strawberry airplane
1380
1381 Doing the following settings:
1382
1383 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1384 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1385 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1386 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1387
1388
1389 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1390
1391 M-x delimit-columns-region
1392
1393 It results:
1394
1395 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1396 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1397 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1398
1399 delim-col has the following options:
1400
1401 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1402 before all columns.
1403
1404 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1405 between each column.
1406
1407 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1408 after all columns.
1409
1410 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1411 each column.
1412
1413 delim-col has the following commands:
1414
1415 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1416 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1417
1418 +++
1419 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1420 were operated on recently.
1421
1422 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1423
1424 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1425 recentf at Emacs startup.
1426
1427 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1428 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1429 file list can be displayed:
1430
1431 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1432 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1433 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1434
1435 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1436 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1437
1438 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1439 text.
1440
1441 +++
1442 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1443 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1444 specific to Message mode.
1445
1446 +++
1447 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1448 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1449 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1450
1451 +++
1452 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1453 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1454 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1455
1456 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1457 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1458
1459 +++
1460 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1461
1462 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1463 minibuffer with completion.
1464
1465 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1466 with the diary features.
1467
1468 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1469 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1470
1471 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1472 Fill mode.
1473
1474 ** Withdrawn packages
1475
1476 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1477 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1478
1479 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1480
1481 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1482
1483 \f
1484 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1485 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1486
1487 +++
1488 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1489 is running in batch mode. For example,
1490
1491 (message "%s" (read t))
1492
1493 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1494 to standard output.
1495
1496 +++
1497 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1498 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1499
1500 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1501 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1502 frame or window.
1503
1504 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1505 were added
1506
1507 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1508
1509 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1510 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1511
1512 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1513
1514 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1515 comparison is done with `eq'.
1516
1517 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1518
1519 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1520 has been changed.
1521
1522 +++
1523 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1524 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1525 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1526
1527 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1528 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1529
1530 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1531 function was declared obsolete.
1532
1533 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1534 retained as an alias).
1535
1536 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1537 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1538 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1539
1540 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1541
1542 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1543
1544 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1545 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1546
1547 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1548
1549 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1550
1551 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1552
1553 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1554 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1555 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1556 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1557 returned.
1558
1559 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1560 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1561 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1562 minibuffer even if it is active.
1563
1564 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1565 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1566 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1567 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1568 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1569 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1570
1571 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1572 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1573 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1574 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1575 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1576 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1577 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1578
1579 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1580 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1581 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1582
1583 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1584 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1585 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1586 Default value is nil.
1587
1588 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1589 meaning no limit.
1590
1591 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1592 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1593 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1594
1595 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1596 of a primitive.
1597
1598 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1599 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1600 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1601 than replacing the local map.
1602
1603 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1604 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1605
1606 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1607
1608 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1609 promised long ago.
1610
1611 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1612 \f
1613 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1614
1615 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1616 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1617 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1618 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1619
1620 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1621 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1622 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1623 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1624
1625 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1626 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1627 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1628 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1629
1630 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1631 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1632 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1633
1634 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1635 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1636 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1637 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1638 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1639 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1640 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1641 eight-bit-graphic.
1642
1643 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1644
1645 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1646 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1647 character set as previously.
1648
1649 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1650 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1651 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1652
1653 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1654 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1655 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1656 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1657
1658 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1659 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1660
1661 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1662 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1663 "fontset-default".
1664
1665 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1666 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1667
1668 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1669 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1670 buffers and strings.
1671
1672 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1673 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1674 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1675 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1676 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1677 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1678 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1679 also been deleted.
1680
1681 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1682 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1683 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1684
1685 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1686 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1687 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1688 may differ between buffer and string text.
1689
1690 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1691 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1692
1693 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1694 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1695 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1696 `composition' from STRING.
1697
1698 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1699 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1700
1701 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1702 obsolete.
1703
1704 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1705 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1706 character set is not used.
1707
1708 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1709 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1710 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1711
1712 +++
1713 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1714 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1715 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1716
1717 +++
1718 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1719 that offset in the file before writing.
1720
1721 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1722 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1723
1724 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1725 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1726 from which the command was issued.
1727
1728 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1729 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1730 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1731 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1732 operate on.
1733
1734 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1735 to `window-buffer-height'.
1736
1737 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1738
1739 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1740 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1741 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1742
1743 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1744 respectively.
1745
1746 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1747 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1748
1749 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1750 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1751 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1752
1753 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1754 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1755 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1756 is currently displayed in some window.
1757
1758 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1759 argument function's results.
1760
1761 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1762 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1763
1764 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1765 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1766
1767 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1768 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1769
1770 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1771 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1772 as follows:
1773
1774 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1775 nil don't display a cursor
1776 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1777 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1778 others display a box cursor.
1779
1780 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1781 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1782 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1783 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1784
1785 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1786 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1787 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1788 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1789
1790 Example:
1791
1792 (string-to-syntax "()")
1793 => (4 . 41)
1794
1795 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1796 other than 10.
1797
1798 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1799 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1800
1801 #b1111
1802 => 15
1803 #b-1111
1804 => -15
1805
1806 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1807
1808 #o666
1809 => 438
1810
1811 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1812
1813 #xbeef
1814 => 48815
1815
1816 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1817
1818 #2R-111
1819 => -7
1820 #25rah
1821 => 267
1822
1823 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1824 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1825 and isn't a string.
1826
1827 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1828 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1829 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1830 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1831
1832 +++
1833 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1834
1835 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1836 for a regexp in a string.
1837
1838 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1839 `mouse-position-function'.
1840
1841 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1842 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1843
1844 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1845 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1846
1847 +++
1848 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1849 returns it.
1850
1851 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1852 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1853
1854 +++
1855 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1856 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1857 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1858 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1859 mode.
1860
1861 +++
1862 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1863 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1864
1865 +++
1866 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1867 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1868 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1869 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1870 been performed."
1871
1872 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1873 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1874 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1875 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1876
1877 +++
1878 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1879 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1880 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1881
1882 +++
1883 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1884 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1885 specified table.
1886
1887 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1888
1889 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1890 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1891 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1892 what BODY returns.
1893
1894 +++
1895 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1896 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1897
1898 +++
1899 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1900 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1901
1902 +++
1903 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1904 instead of being optional.
1905
1906 +++
1907 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1908 modify read-only text.
1909
1910 +++
1911 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1912
1913 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1914 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1915 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1916 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1917 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1918
1919 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1920 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1921 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1922 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1923 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1924 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1925 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1926
1927 +++
1928 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1929 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1930 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1931 start sequences.
1932
1933 +++
1934 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1935 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1936
1937 +++
1938 ** New function `propertize'
1939
1940 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1941 strings with text properties.
1942
1943 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1944
1945 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1946 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1947 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1948 specified value of that property. Example:
1949
1950 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1951
1952 +++
1953 ** push and pop macros.
1954
1955 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1956 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1957 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1958
1959 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1960 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1961 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1962
1963 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1964
1965 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1966 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1967
1968 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1969 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1970 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1971 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1972
1973 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1974 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1975 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1976 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1977
1978 +++
1979 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1980 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1981
1982 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1983 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1984 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1985 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1986 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1987 space, and DEL.
1988 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1989 and DEL.
1990 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1991 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1992 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1993 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1994 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1995 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1996 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1997 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1998 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1999 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
2000 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2001 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2002 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2003 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
2004 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2005
2006 +++
2007 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2008
2009 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2010
2011 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2012
2013 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2014 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2015
2016 :test TEST
2017
2018 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2019 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2020 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2021
2022 :size SIZE
2023
2024 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2025 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2026
2027 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2028
2029 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2030 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2031 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2032 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2033 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2034
2035 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2036
2037 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2038 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2039 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2040
2041 :weakness WEAK
2042
2043 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2044 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2045 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2046 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2047 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2048
2049 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2050
2051 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2052
2053 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2054
2055 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2056
2057 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2058
2059 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2060 values are shared.
2061
2062 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2063
2064 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2065
2066 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2067
2068 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2069
2070 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2071
2072 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2073
2074 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2075
2076 Returns the size of TABLE.
2077
2078 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2079
2080 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2081
2082 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2083
2084 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2085
2086 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2087
2088 Clear TABLE.
2089
2090 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2091
2092 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2093 not found.
2094
2095 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2096
2097 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2098 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2099
2100 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2101
2102 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2103
2104 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2105
2106 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2107 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2108
2109 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2110
2111 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2112
2113 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2114
2115 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2116 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2117 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2118 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2119 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2120
2121 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2122
2123 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2124 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2125 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2126
2127 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2128 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2129
2130 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2131 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2132
2133 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2134 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2135
2136 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2137 'case-fold-string-hash))
2138
2139 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2140
2141 +++
2142 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2143
2144 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2145 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2146 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2147
2148 +++
2149 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2150
2151 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2152 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2153
2154 +++
2155 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2156 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2157 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2158 is too short to reach that column.
2159
2160 +++
2161 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2162 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2163 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2164 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2165
2166 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2167 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2168 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2169
2170 +++
2171 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2172 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2173
2174 +++
2175 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2176 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2177
2178 +++
2179 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2180 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2181 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2182 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2183 temporary-file-directory instead.
2184
2185 +++
2186 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2187 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2188 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2189 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2190
2191 +++
2192 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2193 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2194
2195 +++
2196 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2197
2198 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2199 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2200 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2201
2202 +++
2203 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2204
2205 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2206 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2207 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2208 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2209 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2210 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2211
2212 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2213 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2214 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2215 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2216
2217 +++
2218 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2219
2220 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2221 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2222 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2223 result string.
2224
2225 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2226 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2227
2228 Example:
2229
2230 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2231 (s2 "world"))
2232 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2233 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2234 (format s1 s2))
2235
2236 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2237
2238 +++
2239 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2240
2241 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2242 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2243 argument in it.
2244
2245 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2246 (arg "world"))
2247 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2248 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2249 (message msg arg))
2250
2251 +++
2252 ** Sound support
2253
2254 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2255 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2256
2257 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2258 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2259 to enable sound support.
2260
2261 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2262 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2263 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2264 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2265 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2266
2267 The following sound properties are supported:
2268
2269 - `:file FILE'
2270
2271 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2272 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2273
2274 - `:data DATA'
2275
2276 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2277 may be present, but not both.
2278
2279 - `:volume VOLUME'
2280
2281 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2282 0..1. This property is optional.
2283
2284 Other properties are ignored.
2285
2286 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2287
2288 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2289 a keyword symbol.
2290
2291 ** Changes to garbage collection
2292
2293 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2294 of live and free strings.
2295
2296 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2297 strings that have been consed so far.
2298
2299 \f
2300 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2301 Lisp Manual
2302
2303 +++
2304 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2305
2306 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2307 image.
2308
2309 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2310
2311 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2312
2313 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2314 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2315 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2316 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2317 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2318
2319 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2320 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2321
2322 +++
2323 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2324 optional.
2325
2326 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2327
2328 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2329 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2330 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2331 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2332
2333 \f
2334 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2335
2336 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2337 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2338 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2339 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2340
2341 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2342 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2343
2344 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2345 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2346 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2347 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2348 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2349 just display it black instead.
2350
2351 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2352 a line like
2353
2354 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2355
2356 in your `.emacs'.
2357
2358 ** New face implementation.
2359
2360 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2361 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2362
2363 +++
2364 *** New faces.
2365
2366 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2367
2368 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2369
2370 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2371 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2372
2373 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2374
2375 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2376
2377 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2378
2379 6. Foreground color.
2380
2381 7. Background color.
2382
2383 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2384
2385 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2386
2387 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2388
2389 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2390
2391 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2392 color.
2393
2394 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2395 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2396
2397 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2398 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2399 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2400 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2401 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2402 attributes mentioned above.
2403
2404 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2405 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2406 created frames.
2407
2408 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2409 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2410 `fully-specified'.
2411
2412 +++
2413 *** Face merging.
2414
2415 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2416 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2417 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2418 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2419 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2420 results in a fully-specified face.
2421
2422 +++
2423 *** Face realization.
2424
2425 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2426 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2427 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2428 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2429 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2430 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2431
2432 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2433 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2434 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2435 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2436
2437 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2438 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2439 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2440 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2441 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2442
2443 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2444 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2445 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2446 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2447 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2448 Emacs.
2449
2450 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2451 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2452 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2453 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2454
2455 ++++
2456 **** Clearing face caches.
2457
2458 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2459 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2460 unused fonts.
2461
2462 +++
2463 *** Font selection.
2464
2465 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2466 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2467 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2468
2469 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2470 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2471 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2472 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2473 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2474
2475 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2476 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2477 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2478
2479 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2480
2481 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2482 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2483 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2484 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2485 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2486 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2487 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2488
2489 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2490 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2491 face doesn't exist.
2492
2493 +++
2494 **** Scalable fonts
2495
2496 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2497 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2498 servers.
2499
2500 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2501 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2502 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2503 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2504 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2505 that list. Example:
2506
2507 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2508
2509 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2510
2511 +++
2512 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2513
2514 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2515
2516 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2517 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2518 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2519
2520 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2521 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2522 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2523 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2524 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2525 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2526 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2527 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2528 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2529 of the face font sort order.
2530
2531 - Function: x-font-family-list
2532
2533 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2534 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2535 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2536 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2537
2538 - Variable: font-list-limit
2539
2540 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2541 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2542 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2543
2544 +++
2545 *** Setting face attributes.
2546
2547 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2548 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2549 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2550 `face-attribute'.
2551
2552 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2553 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2554
2555 The following attributes are recognized:
2556
2557 `:family'
2558
2559 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2560 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2561 and `?' are allowed.
2562
2563 `:width'
2564
2565 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2566 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2567 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2568 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2569
2570 `:height'
2571
2572 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2573 1/10 pt.
2574
2575 `:weight'
2576
2577 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2578 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2579 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2580
2581 `:slant'
2582
2583 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2584 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2585 `reverse-oblique'.
2586
2587 `:foreground', `:background'
2588
2589 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2590
2591 `:underline'
2592
2593 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2594 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2595 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2596 don't underline.
2597
2598 `:overline'
2599
2600 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2601 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2602 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2603 overline.
2604
2605 `:strike-through'
2606
2607 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2608 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2609 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2610 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2611
2612 `:box'
2613
2614 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2615 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2616 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2617 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2618 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2619 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2620 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2621 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2622 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2623 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2624 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2625 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2626 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2627 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2628 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2629 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2630 box.
2631
2632 `:inverse-video'
2633
2634 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2635 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2636
2637 `:stipple'
2638
2639 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2640 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2641 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2642 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2643 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2644 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2645
2646 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2647 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2648
2649 `:font'
2650
2651 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2652 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2653 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2654 versions of Emacs.
2655
2656 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2657 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2658 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2659
2660 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2661 `defface'.
2662
2663 *** Face attributes and X resources
2664
2665 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2666 from X resources:
2667
2668 Face attribute X resource class
2669 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2670 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2671 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2672 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2673 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2674 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2675 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2676 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2677 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2678 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2679 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2680 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2681 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2682 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2683 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2684 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2685 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2686 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2687 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2688 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2689
2690 +++
2691 *** Text property `face'.
2692
2693 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2694 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2695 specification can be
2696
2697 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2698
2699 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2700 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2701 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2702 for face attribute names.
2703
2704 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2705 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2706 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2707
2708 +++
2709 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2710
2711 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2712 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2713 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2714 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2715 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2716 used to clear the mapping table.
2717
2718 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2719
2720 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2721 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2722 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2723 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2724 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2725 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2726 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2727 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2728 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2729 modify their color-related behavior.
2730
2731 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2732 any frame type.
2733
2734 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2735
2736 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2737 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2738 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2739 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2740 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2741 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2742 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2743 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2744 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2745
2746 +++
2747 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2748
2749 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2750
2751 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2752 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2753 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2754
2755 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2756
2757 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2758 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2759 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2760
2761 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2762 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2763 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2764 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2765 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2766 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2767 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2768 functions.
2769
2770 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2771 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2772 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2773
2774 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2775
2776 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2777
2778 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2779
2780 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2781 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2782 constrained position if that is is different.
2783
2784 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2785 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2786 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2787 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2788 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2789 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2790 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2791 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2792 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2793
2794 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2795 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2796 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2797 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2798 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2799
2800 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2801 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2802
2803 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2804
2805 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2806
2807 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2808 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2809 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2810
2811 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2812
2813 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2814 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2815 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2816 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2817 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2818
2819 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2820
2821 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2822 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2823 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2824 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2825 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2826
2827 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2828
2829 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2830 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2831 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2832
2833 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2834
2835 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2836 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2837 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2838
2839 +++
2840 ** Image support.
2841
2842 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2843 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2844 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2845 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2846
2847 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2848 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2849 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2850 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2851 area.
2852
2853 IMAGE is an image specification.
2854
2855 *** Image specifications
2856
2857 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2858 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2859 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2860 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2861 described below are ignored.
2862
2863 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2864
2865 `:ascent ASCENT'
2866
2867 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2868 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2869 to use for its ascent.
2870
2871 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2872 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2873
2874 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2875 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2876 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2877 overlays that apply to the image.
2878
2879 `:margin MARGIN'
2880
2881 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2882 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2883
2884 `:relief RELIEF'
2885
2886 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2887 around an image.
2888
2889 `:algorithm ALGO'
2890
2891 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2892 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2893 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2894 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2895
2896 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2897
2898 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2899 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2900 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2901 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2902 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2903 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2904 background of the image.
2905
2906 `:file FILE'
2907
2908 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2909 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2910 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2911 may be present in the image specification.
2912
2913 `:data DATA'
2914
2915 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2916 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2917 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2918 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2919
2920 *** Supported image types
2921
2922 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2923
2924 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2925 properties supported are
2926
2927 `:foreground FG'
2928
2929 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2930 is the frame's foreground.
2931
2932 `:background FG'
2933
2934 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2935 the frame's background color.
2936
2937 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2938 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2939 instead of a `:file' property.
2940
2941 `:width WIDTH'
2942
2943 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2944
2945 `:height HEIGHT'
2946
2947 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2948
2949 `:data DATA'
2950
2951 DATA must be either
2952
2953 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2954 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2955
2956 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2957
2958 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2959 bitmap.
2960
2961 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2962 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2963 in the file.
2964
2965 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2966
2967 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2968 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2969 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2970 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2971
2972 Additional image properties supported are:
2973
2974 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2975
2976 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2977 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2978 name.
2979
2980 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2981 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2982
2983 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2984 to display compressed images.
2985
2986 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2987
2988 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2989 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2990 defined.
2991
2992 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2993
2994 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2995 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2996 are:
2997
2998 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2999
3000 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
3001 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3002 properties defined.
3003
3004 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3005
3006 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3007 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3008
3009 Additional image properties supported are:
3010
3011 `:index INDEX'
3012
3013 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3014 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3015
3016 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3017 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3018 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3019 every 0.1 seconds.
3020
3021 (defun show-anim (file max)
3022 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3023 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3024
3025 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3026 (when (= idx max)
3027 (setq idx 0))
3028 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3029 (save-excursion
3030 (set-buffer buffer)
3031 (goto-char (point-min))
3032 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3033 (insert-image img "x"))
3034 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3035
3036 **** PNG, image type `png'
3037
3038 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3039 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3040 properties defined.
3041
3042 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3043
3044 Additional image properties supported are:
3045
3046 `:pt-width WIDTH'
3047
3048 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3049 integer. This is a required property.
3050
3051 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
3052
3053 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3054 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3055
3056 `:bounding-box BOX'
3057
3058 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3059 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3060 files. This is an required property.
3061
3062 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3063 lisp/gs.el.
3064
3065 *** Lisp interface.
3066
3067 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3068 which are supported in the current configuration.
3069
3070 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3071 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3072 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3073 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3074 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3075
3076 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3077
3078 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3079 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3080 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3081 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3082 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3083 buffer.
3084
3085 +++
3086 ** Display margins.
3087
3088 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3089 and images.
3090
3091 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3092 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3093 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3094 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3095 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3096 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3097 of the display margins.
3098
3099 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3100 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3101 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3102 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3103 in this file).
3104
3105 +++
3106 ** Help display
3107
3108 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3109 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3110 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3111 that have a `help-echo' property.
3112
3113 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3114 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3115 the window in which the help was found.
3116
3117 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3118 `help-echo' text property was found.
3119
3120 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3121 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3122
3123 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3124 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3125 mouse.
3126
3127 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3128 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3129
3130 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3131 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3132 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3133 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3134 used as help string.
3135
3136 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3137 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3138 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3139
3140 +++
3141 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3142
3143 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3144 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3145
3146 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3147 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3148 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3149 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3150 used.
3151
3152 (global-set-key [A-down]
3153 #'(lambda ()
3154 (interactive)
3155 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3156 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3157 (global-set-key [A-up]
3158 #'(lambda ()
3159 (interactive)
3160 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3161 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3162
3163 +++
3164 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3165
3166 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3167 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3168 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3169 is called with one argument, POS.
3170
3171 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3172 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3173 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3174 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3175 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3176
3177 +++
3178 ** Tool bar support.
3179
3180 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3181 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3182 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3183 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3184 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3185 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3186
3187 *** Tool bar item definitions
3188
3189 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3190 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3191 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3192
3193 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3194 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3195 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3196 property (see below).
3197
3198 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3199 binding are currently ignored.
3200
3201 The following properties are recognized:
3202
3203 `:enable FORM'.
3204
3205 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3206 or disabled.
3207
3208 `:visible FORM'
3209
3210 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3211
3212 `:filter FUNCTION'
3213
3214 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3215 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3216 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3217
3218 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3219
3220 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3221 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3222
3223 `:image IMAGES'
3224
3225 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3226 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3227 meaning of each of the four elements:
3228
3229 Index Use when item is
3230 ----------------------------------------
3231 0 enabled and selected
3232 1 enabled and deselected
3233 2 disabled and selected
3234 3 disabled and deselected
3235
3236 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3237 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3238
3239 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3240
3241 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3242 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3243
3244 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3245
3246 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3247 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3248 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3249
3250 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3251 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3252
3253 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3254 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3255 pixels. Default is 1.
3256
3257 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3258 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3259
3260 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3261
3262 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3263 a tool bar item. If
3264
3265 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3266 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3267 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3268
3269 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3270
3271 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3272
3273 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3274 item.
3275
3276 ** Mode line changes.
3277
3278 +++
3279 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3280
3281 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3282 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3283 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3284
3285 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3286 a `local-map' text property.
3287
3288 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3289 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3290
3291 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3292 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3293 `local-map' property.
3294
3295 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3296 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3297 example.
3298
3299 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3300 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3301
3302 +++
3303 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3304 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3305
3306 +++
3307 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3308
3309 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3310 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3311 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3312 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3313 line.
3314
3315 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3316 `header-line'.
3317
3318 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3319 position in the header-line.
3320
3321 +++
3322 ** Text property `display'
3323
3324 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3325 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3326 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3327 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3328
3329 *** Variable width and height spaces
3330
3331 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3332 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3333 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3334 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3335 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3336 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3337 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3338
3339 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3340 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3341 properties described below.
3342
3343 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3344 characters having the `display' property.
3345
3346 - :width WIDTH
3347
3348 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3349 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3350
3351 - :relative-width FACTOR
3352
3353 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3354 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3355 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3356 width of that character by FACTOR.
3357
3358 - :align-to HPOS
3359
3360 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3361 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3362
3363 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3364
3365 - :height HEIGHT
3366
3367 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3368 normal line height.
3369
3370 - :relative-height FACTOR
3371
3372 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3373 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3374
3375 - :ascent ASCENT
3376
3377 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3378 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3379 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3380 equal to 100.
3381
3382 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3383
3384 *** Images
3385
3386 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3387 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3388 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3389 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3390 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3391 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3392 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3393 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3394 as display specification.
3395
3396 *** Other display properties
3397
3398 - :space-width FACTOR
3399
3400 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3401 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3402 integer or float.
3403
3404 - :height HEIGHT
3405
3406 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3407
3408 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3409 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3410 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3411 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3412 a font is available counts as a step.
3413
3414 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3415 as tall as the frame's default font.
3416
3417 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3418 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3419
3420 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3421 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3422
3423 - :raise FACTOR
3424
3425 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3426 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3427 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3428 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3429 `:height' subproperty.
3430
3431 *** Conditional display properties
3432
3433 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3434 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3435 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3436 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3437 the text having the `display' property.
3438
3439 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3440 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3441
3442 +++
3443 ** New menu separator types.
3444
3445 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3446 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3447 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3448 to specify other menu separator types.
3449
3450 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3451
3452 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3453 separator occurs.
3454
3455 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3456
3457 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3458
3459 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3460
3461 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3462
3463 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3464
3465 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3466
3467 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3468
3469 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3470
3471 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3472
3473 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3474 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3475
3476 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3477
3478 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3479
3480 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3481
3482 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3483
3484 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3485
3486 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3487
3488 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3489
3490 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3491
3492 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3493
3494 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3495
3496 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3497
3498 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3499
3500 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3501
3502 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3503
3504 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3505 the corresponding single-line separators.
3506
3507 +++
3508 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3509
3510 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3511 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3512 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3513 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3514 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3515 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3516 default foreground is black.
3517
3518 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3519 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3520 `ScrollBarBackground').
3521
3522 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3523 settings for scroll bar colors.
3524
3525 +++
3526 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3527 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3528
3529 ---
3530 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3531 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3532 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3533 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3534 the original window start.
3535
3536 ---
3537 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3538 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3539 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3540
3541 +++
3542 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3543
3544 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3545 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3546 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3547 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3548
3549 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3550 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3551
3552 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3553
3554 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3555 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3556 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3557 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3558 temporarily to nil, for example
3559
3560 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3561 (enlarge-window 10))
3562
3563 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3564 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3565
3566 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3567 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3568 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3569 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3570 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3571 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3572
3573
3574 ^L
3575 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3576
3577 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3578 input.
3579
3580 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3581
3582 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3583
3584 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3585 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3586 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3587 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3588 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3589
3590 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3591 been added.
3592
3593 ^L
3594 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3595
3596 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3597
3598 ^L
3599 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3600
3601 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3602 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3603 \f
3604 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3605
3606 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3607
3608 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3609 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3610 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3611
3612 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3613 is the one that is used.
3614
3615 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3616 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3617 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3618 separate from the command's regular output.
3619 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3620 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3621 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3622 the buffer name.
3623
3624 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3625 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3626 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3627 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3628
3629 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3630 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3631 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3632 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3633
3634 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3635 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3636 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3637 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3638
3639 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3640 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3641 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3642 they never ignore case.
3643
3644 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3645 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3646 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3647 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3648 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3649 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3650 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3651
3652 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3653 the same format that was used in the file before.
3654
3655 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3656 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3657
3658 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3659 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3660 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3661
3662 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3663 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3664 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3665 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3666 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3667 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3668 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3669
3670 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3671 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3672 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3673 format. You can now customize these variables.
3674
3675 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3676 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3677 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3678 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3679
3680 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3681 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3682 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3683
3684 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3685 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3686 doesn't have any effect.
3687
3688 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3689 not one per buffer.
3690
3691 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3692 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3693 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3694
3695 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3696 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3697 `auto-show-mode' command.
3698
3699 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3700 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3701 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3702 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3703 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3704
3705 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3706 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3707
3708 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3709 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3710 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3711
3712 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3713 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3714 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3715 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3716
3717 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3718
3719 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3720 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3721 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3722 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3723 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3724
3725 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3726 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3727
3728 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3729 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3730 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3731 `?' on other systems.
3732
3733 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3734 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3735 Unix.
3736
3737 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3738 current codepage when it starts.
3739
3740 ** Mail changes
3741
3742 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3743 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3744 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3745 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3746 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3747 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3748 latin-1:
3749
3750 MIME-version: 1.0
3751 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3752 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3753
3754 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3755 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3756 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3757 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3758 buffer-file-coding-system.
3759
3760 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3761 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3762 mail.
3763
3764 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3765 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3766 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3767 list of possible coding systems.
3768
3769 ** CC Mode changes
3770
3771 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3772 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3773 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3774 docstring for details.
3775
3776 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3777 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3778 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3779 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3780 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3781
3782 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3783 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3784
3785 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3786 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3787
3788 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3789 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3790 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3791 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3792 anonymous classes.
3793
3794 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3795 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3796
3797 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3798 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3799 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3800 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3801
3802 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3803 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3804 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3805 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3806 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3807
3808 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3809
3810 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3811
3812 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3813 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3814
3815 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3816
3817 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3818 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3819 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3820 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3821 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3822
3823 ** Gnus changes.
3824
3825 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3826 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3827 Gnus manual for the full story.
3828
3829 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3830 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3831 group, which is created automatically.
3832
3833 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3834 values.
3835
3836 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3837
3838 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3839 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3840
3841 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3842 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3843
3844 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3845
3846 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3847 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3848
3849 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3850
3851 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3852 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3853
3854 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3855 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3856
3857 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3858 control over simplification.
3859
3860 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3861
3862 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3863 limit.
3864
3865 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3866
3867 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3868
3869 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3870 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3871 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3872
3873 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3874 `a' forces normal posting method.
3875
3876 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3877 -- `W d'.
3878
3879 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3880 to a non-nil value.
3881
3882 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3883 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3884
3885 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3886 has been added.
3887
3888 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3889
3890 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3891
3892 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3893 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3894
3895 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3896 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3897
3898 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3899
3900 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3901 been added.
3902
3903 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3904 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3905
3906 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3907 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3908
3909 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3910
3911 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3912
3913 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3914
3915 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3916
3917 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3918 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3919 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3920
3921 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3922 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3923 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3924 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3925 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3926
3927 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3928 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3929 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3930 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3931
3932 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3933 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3934 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3935 mismatch.
3936
3937 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3938
3939 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3940 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3941
3942 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3943 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3944 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3945 removed from the label.
3946
3947 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3948 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3949
3950 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3951 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3952
3953 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3954 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3955 expressions.
3956
3957 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3958
3959 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3960
3961 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3962 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3963
3964 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3965 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3966 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3967
3968 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3969 changes with a special face.
3970
3971 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3972 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3973 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3974 \f
3975 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3976
3977 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3978 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3979 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3980 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3981 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3982
3983 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3984 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3985 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3986
3987 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3988 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3989 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3990 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3991 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3992 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3993 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3994 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3995 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3996
3997 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3998 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3999 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
4000 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
4001 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
4002 program.
4003
4004 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
4005 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
4006 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
4007 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4008 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4009 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4010
4011 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4012 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4013 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4014 was not documented clearly before.
4015
4016 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4017 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4018 \f
4019 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4020
4021 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4022 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4023 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4024 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4025
4026 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4027 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4028 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4029
4030 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4031
4032 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4033 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4034
4035 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4036 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4037 integers.
4038
4039 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4040 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4041 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4042 file names and attributes are returned.
4043
4044 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4045 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4046 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4047 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4048 returns the result.
4049
4050 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4051 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4052
4053 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4054
4055 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4056 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4057 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4058 optionally.
4059
4060 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4061 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4062
4063 **
4064 The new function process-running-child-p
4065 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4066 terminal to its own child process.
4067
4068 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4069 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4070 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4071 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4072
4073 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4074 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4075
4076 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4077 :included is an alias for :visible.
4078
4079 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4080 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4081 to move or copy menu entries.
4082
4083 ** Multibyte editing changes
4084
4085 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4086 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4087 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4088 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4089 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4090 (setq char (sref str idx)
4091 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4092 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4093
4094 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4095 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4096 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4097
4098 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4099 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4100 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4101
4102 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4103
4104 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4105 across the boundary.
4106
4107 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4108 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4109 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4110 contains 8-bit characters.
4111 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4112 contains invalid characters.
4113
4114 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4115 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4116 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4117 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4118 way.
4119
4120 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4121 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4122 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4123 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4124
4125 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4126 compose Thai characters in a string.
4127
4128 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4129 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4130 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4131 menus should always use the third argument.
4132
4133 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4134 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4135 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4136 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4137
4138 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4139 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4140 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4141 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4142
4143 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4144 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4145 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4146 echo area contents.
4147
4148 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4149
4150 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4151 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4152 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4153
4154 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4155 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4156 means to clear out that attribute.
4157
4158 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4159 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4160
4161 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4162 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4163 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4164 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4165
4166 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4167 the gap of the current buffer.
4168
4169 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4170 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4171 current buffer.
4172
4173 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4174 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4175 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4176 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4177 \f
4178 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4179
4180 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4181 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4182 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4183 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4184 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4185
4186 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4187 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4188 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4189 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4190 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4191
4192 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4193 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4194 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4195
4196 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4197 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4198 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4199 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4200 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4201 results.
4202
4203 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4204 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4205 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4206 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4207 \f
4208 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4209
4210 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4211 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4212 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4213 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4214
4215 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4216 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4217 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4218 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4219 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4220 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4221 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4222 region.
4223
4224 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4225 selective undo.
4226
4227 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4228 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4229 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4230 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4231 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4232
4233 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4234 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4235 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4236 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4237
4238 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4239 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4240 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4241 something that most users not do.
4242
4243 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4244 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4245 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4246 applications.
4247
4248 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4249 pasting operations.
4250
4251 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4252 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4253 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4254 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4255 `ps-printer-name'.
4256
4257 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4258 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4259 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4260 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4261 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4262 hits a new word.
4263
4264 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4265 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4266 to be confused by TeX commands.
4267
4268 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4269 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4270 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4271 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4272
4273 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4274 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4275 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4276 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4277 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4278
4279 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4280 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4281
4282 ** Changes in input method usage.
4283
4284 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4285 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4286 respectively.
4287
4288 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4289
4290 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4291 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4292
4293 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4294 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4295
4296 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4297
4298 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4299
4300 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4301 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4302
4303 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4304 given in the following case:
4305 o When you are using a complex input method.
4306 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4307
4308 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4309 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4310 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4311 setting it to t is helpful.
4312
4313 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4314
4315 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4316 keys:
4317 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4318 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4319 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4320 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4321 environment.
4322
4323 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4324 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4325 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4326 get
4327
4328 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4329
4330 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4331
4332 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4333 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4334
4335 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4336 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4337 its owner and group.
4338
4339 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4340 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4341
4342 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4343 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4344
4345 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4346 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4347 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4348 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4349
4350 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4351 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4352 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4353 for writing keyboard macros.
4354
4355 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4356 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4357 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4358 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4359 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4360 info.
4361
4362 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4363
4364 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4365 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4366 contents only.
4367
4368 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4369 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4370 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4371 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4372
4373 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4374 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4375 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4376
4377 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4378 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4379 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4380 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4381
4382 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4383 failure if the command produces no output.
4384
4385 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4386 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4387 the mouse.
4388
4389 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4390 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4391 function and variable names.
4392
4393 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4394 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4395 file-coding-system-alist.
4396
4397 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4398 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4399 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4400 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4401 according to the current fontset.
4402
4403 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4404
4405 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4406 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4407 nonascii-insert-offset.
4408
4409 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4410 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4411 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4412 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4413
4414 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4415 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4416
4417 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4418 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4419
4420 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4421 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4422 command keys.
4423
4424 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4425 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4426
4427 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4428 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4429 all variables that have documentation.
4430
4431 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4432 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4433 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4434 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4435 it should show; the default is 20.
4436
4437 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4438 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4439 of your input.
4440
4441 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4442 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4443 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4444 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4445 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4446 Newly added options are included as well.
4447
4448 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4449 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4450 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4451
4452 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4453 Customize menu.
4454
4455 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4456 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4457
4458 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4459 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4460 invoked.
4461
4462 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4463 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4464 The default is 1.
4465
4466 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4467 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4468 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4469 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4470 sensibly.
4471
4472 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4473
4474 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4475 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4476 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4477
4478 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4479 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4480 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4481 every night.
4482
4483 ** Desktop changes
4484
4485 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4486 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4487
4488 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4489 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4490
4491 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4492 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4493
4494 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4495 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4496 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4497 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4498 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4499 made invisible again.
4500
4501 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4502
4503 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4504 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4505 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4506 toggle.
4507
4508 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4509 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4510 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4511 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4512 rmail-default-body-file.
4513
4514 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4515 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4516 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4517
4518 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4519 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4520 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4521
4522 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4523 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4524 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4525 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4526 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4527 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4528
4529 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4530 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4531 provided by feedmail are:
4532
4533 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4534 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4535 there is also a queue for draft messages
4536
4537 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4538 be prompted for confirmation
4539
4540 **** does smart filling of address headers
4541
4542 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4543 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4544 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4545
4546 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4547 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4548 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4549 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4550
4551 ** Dired changes
4552
4553 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4554 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4555
4556 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4557 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4558
4559 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4560 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4561 for a specified regexp.
4562
4563 ** VC Changes
4564
4565 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4566 conveniently.
4567
4568 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4569 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4570 Dired.
4571
4572 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4573 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4574 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4575 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4576
4577 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4578 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4579 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4580 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4581 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4582
4583 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4584 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4585 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4586 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4587 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4588
4589 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4590 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4591 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4592 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4593
4594 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4595 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4596 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4597
4598 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4599 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4600 session to resolve them.
4601
4602 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4603 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4604 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4605 uses as well).
4606
4607 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4608 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4609 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4610 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4611 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4612 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4613 using ediff.
4614
4615 ** Changes in Font Lock
4616
4617 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4618 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4619 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4620 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4621 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4622
4623 ** Frame name display changes
4624
4625 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4626 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4627 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4628 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4629
4630 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4631 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4632 menu.
4633
4634 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4635
4636 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4637 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4638 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4639
4640 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4641
4642 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4643 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4644 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4645
4646 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4647 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4648 the following line.
4649
4650 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4651 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4652 previously sent input.
4653
4654 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4655 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4656 as the search string.
4657
4658 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4659 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4660
4661 ** C mode changes
4662
4663 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4664 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4665 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4666 definition.
4667
4668 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4669 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4670 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4671 style is still the default however.
4672
4673 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4674
4675 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4676 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4677 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4678
4679 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4680 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4681
4682 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4683 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4684
4685 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4686 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4687
4688 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4689 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4690
4691 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4692 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4693 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4694 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4695
4696 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4697
4698 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4699 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4700 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4701
4702 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4703 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4704 expanding dynamically.
4705
4706 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4707 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4708
4709 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4710 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4711 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4712 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4713
4714 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4715
4716 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4717
4718 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4719 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4720 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4721 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4722 against the first word in the title.
4723
4724 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4725 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4726 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4727 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4728 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4729 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4730
4731 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4732 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4733 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4734 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4735
4736 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4737
4738 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4739 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4740 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4741 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4742 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4743 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4744
4745 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4746 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4747
4748 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4749 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4750 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4751
4752 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4753 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4754
4755 ** Ispell changes.
4756
4757 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4758 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4759 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4760
4761 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4762 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4763 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4764 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4765 include:
4766
4767 o URLs are automatically skipped
4768 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4769
4770 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4771
4772 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4773
4774 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4775 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4776 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4777 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4778
4779 *** New recursive parser.
4780
4781 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4782 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4783 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4784
4785 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4786
4787 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4788 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4789 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4790
4791 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4792
4793 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4794
4795 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4796
4797 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4798
4799 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4800
4801 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4802 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4803
4804 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4805
4806 *** References to external documents.
4807
4808 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4809 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4810 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4811 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4812 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4813 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4814 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4815
4816 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4817
4818 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4819 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4820
4821 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4822 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4823
4824 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4825
4826 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4827 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4828
4829 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4830
4831 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4832 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4833 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4834 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4835 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4836 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4837 more.
4838
4839 *** Support for the varioref package
4840
4841 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4842
4843 *** New hooks
4844
4845 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4846 and citations are created. These hooks are
4847 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4848 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4849
4850 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4851
4852 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4853 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4854
4855 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4856
4857 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4858 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4859 fontified, use
4860
4861 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4862
4863 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4864 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4865 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4866 directories that contain the same file name.
4867
4868 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4869 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4870 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4871 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4872 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4873 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4874 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4875 directory.
4876
4877 ** New modes and packages
4878
4879 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4880 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4881 it, but some do not.
4882
4883 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4884 code.
4885
4886 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4887 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4888 around in a buffer.
4889
4890 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4891
4892 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4893 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4894 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4895 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4896
4897 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4898 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4899 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4900
4901 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4902 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4903 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4904 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4905 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4906 the like.
4907
4908 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4909 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4910
4911 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4912 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4913 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4914 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4915
4916 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4917
4918 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4919 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4920 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4921 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4922 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4923 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4924 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4925 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4926 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4927 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4928 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4929
4930 Platform-specific modes:
4931
4932 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4933 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4934 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4935 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4936 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4937 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4938 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4939 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4940 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4941 \f
4942 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4943
4944 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4945 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4946 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4947 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4948
4949 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4950 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4951 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4952
4953 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4954 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4955 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4956 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4957
4958 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4959 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4960 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4961 environment.
4962
4963 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4964 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4965 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4966 current input method for reading this one event.
4967
4968 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4969 now control whether to output certain characters as
4970 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4971 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4972 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4973 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4974 \f
4975 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4976
4977 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4978 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4979
4980 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4981 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4982 always increases point by 1.
4983
4984 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4985 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4986
4987 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4988
4989 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4990 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4991 default value changed. For example,
4992
4993 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4994 :type 'integer
4995 :group 'foo
4996 :version "20.3")
4997
4998 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4999 :version "20.3")
5000
5001 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
5002 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
5003 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
5004 `:version' in the top level group.
5005
5006 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5007
5008 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5009 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5010
5011 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5012 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5013 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5014 to themselves.
5015
5016 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5017 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5018 values whatever.
5019
5020 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5021 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5022 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5023
5024 ** Frame-local variables.
5025
5026 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5027 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5028 local bindings for that variable.
5029
5030 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5031 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5032 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5033 parameter name.
5034
5035 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5036 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5037 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5038 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5039
5040 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5041 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5042 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5043 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5044
5045 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5046 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5047 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5048 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5049 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5050
5051 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5052 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5053 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5054 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5055
5056 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5057 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5058
5059 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5060 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5061 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5062
5063 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5064 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5065 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5066 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5067
5068 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5069 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5070 empty input.
5071
5072 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5073 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5074 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5075 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5076 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5077
5078 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5079 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5080 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5081 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5082
5083 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5084 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5085 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5086 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5087 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5088
5089 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5090 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5091 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5092 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5093
5094 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5095 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5096 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5097
5098 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5099 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5100 was directed to display this buffer.
5101
5102 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5103 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5104 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5105 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5106 set-window-configuration.
5107
5108 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5109 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5110 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5111 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5112
5113 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5114 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5115 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5116
5117 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5118 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5119 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5120
5121 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5122 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5123
5124 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5125 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5126
5127 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5128 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5129 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5130
5131 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5132 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5133 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5134 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5135
5136 ** Menu changes
5137
5138 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5139 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5140 better supported.
5141
5142 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5143 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5144 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5145 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5146 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5147
5148 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5149
5150 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5151 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5152 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5153 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5154
5155 The format is:
5156 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5157 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5158 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5159 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5160 The supported properties include
5161
5162 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5163 item is enabled.
5164 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5165 item should appear in the menu.
5166 :filter FILTER-FN
5167 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5168 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5169 It should return a binding to use instead.
5170 :keys DESCRIPTION
5171 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5172 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5173 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5174 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5175 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5176 keyboard binding.
5177 :key-sequence nil
5178 This means that the command normally has no
5179 keyboard equivalent.
5180 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5181 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5182 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5183 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5184 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5185
5186 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5187 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5188
5189 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5190
5191 ** New event types
5192
5193 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5194 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5195 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5196 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5197
5198 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5199
5200 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5201 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5202 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5203 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5204 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5205 forward, away from the user.
5206
5207 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5208
5209 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5210 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5211 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5212 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5213 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5214
5215 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5216
5217 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5218 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5219 that were dragged and dropped.
5220
5221 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5222
5223 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5224
5225 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5226 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5227 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5228
5229 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5230 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5231 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5232
5233 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5234 in Emacs 19 and before.
5235
5236 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5237 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5238
5239 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5240 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5241 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5242 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5243
5244 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5245 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5246 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5247 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5248 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5249
5250 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5251 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5252 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5253 consistent with the new representation.
5254
5255 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5256 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5257 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5258 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5259
5260 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5261 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5262 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5263
5264 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5265 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5266 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5267
5268 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5269 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5270 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5271
5272 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5273 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5274
5275 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5276 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5277
5278 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5279 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5280 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5281 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5282
5283 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5284 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5285
5286 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5287 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5288 buffer or string being searched.
5289
5290 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5291 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5292 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5293 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5294 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5295 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5296 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5297
5298 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5299
5300 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5301 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5302 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5303 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5304 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5305 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5306 define-coding-system-alias.
5307
5308 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5309 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5310 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5311 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5312 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5313 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5314 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5315 `iso-8859-1'.
5316
5317 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5318 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5319 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5320 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5321
5322 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5323 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5324 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5325 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5326
5327 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5328 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5329 This function requires a user interaction.
5330
5331 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5332 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5333 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5334 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5335 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5336 select-safe-coding-system.
5337
5338 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5339 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5340 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5341 was done.
5342
5343 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5344 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5345 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5346
5347 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5348 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5349 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5350 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5351
5352 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5353 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5354 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5355 converted.
5356
5357 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5358 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5359
5360 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5361 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5362 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5363 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5364 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5365 range of characters.
5366
5367 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5368 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5369
5370 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5371 in the current buffer at position POS.
5372
5373 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5374 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5375 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5376 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5377 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5378 binding input-method-function to nil.
5379
5380 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5381 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5382 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5383 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5384 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5385
5386 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5387 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5388
5389 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5390 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5391
5392 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5393 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5394 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5395 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5396 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5397 \f
5398 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5399
5400 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5401 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5402 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5403 tree structure.
5404
5405 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5406 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5407
5408 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5409 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5410 in your .emacs file.)
5411
5412 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5413 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5414
5415 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5416 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5417
5418 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5419 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5420 kills the region.
5421
5422 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5423 delete the character before point, as usual.
5424
5425 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5426 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5427 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5428
5429 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5430 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5431 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5432 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5433 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5434 past.)
5435
5436 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5437 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5438 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5439 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5440 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5441
5442 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5443 and is an alias for it.
5444
5445 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5446 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5447
5448 ** Scrolling changes
5449
5450 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5451 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5452
5453 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5454 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5455 where it started.
5456
5457 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5458 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5459 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5460 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5461
5462 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5463 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5464 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5465 recenters the window.
5466
5467 ** International character set support (MULE)
5468
5469 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5470 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5471 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5472 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5473 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5474 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5475
5476 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5477 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5478 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5479 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5480 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5481
5482 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5483 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5484 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5485 language, to make it possible to type them.
5486
5487 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5488 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5489
5490 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5491 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5492
5493 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5494
5495 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5496
5497 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5498 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5499 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5500 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5501 characters for their work until they want to change.
5502
5503 *** Input methods
5504
5505 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5506 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5507 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5508 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5509 support several input methods.
5510
5511 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5512 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5513 work.
5514
5515 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5516 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5517 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5518 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5519 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5520 letter.
5521
5522 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5523 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5524 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5525 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5526 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5527
5528 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5529 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5530 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5531 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5532
5533 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5534 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5535 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5536 the first guess is wrong.
5537
5538 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5539 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5540
5541 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5542 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5543 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5544 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5545
5546 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5547 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5548 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5549 translate automatically to and from either one.
5550
5551 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5552
5553 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5554 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5555 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5556 what you want.
5557
5558 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5559 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5560 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5561 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5562
5563 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5564 character conversion as well.
5565
5566 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5567
5568 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5569 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5570 requires using many fonts.
5571
5572 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5573 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5574
5575 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5576 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5577 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5578 you would use a font.
5579
5580 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5581 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5582 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5583
5584 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5585 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5586 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5587 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5588 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5589
5590 *** Defining fontsets.
5591
5592 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5593 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5594 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5595
5596 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5597 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5598 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5599 standard fontset are created automatically.
5600
5601 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5602 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5603 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5604 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5605 name is `fontset-startup'.
5606
5607 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5608 The resource value should have this form:
5609 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5610 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5611 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5612 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5613 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5614 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5615 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5616 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5617 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5618
5619 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5620 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5621 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5622
5623 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5624 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5625 following resource,
5626 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5627 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5628 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5629 Here is the substitution rule:
5630 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5631 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5632 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5633 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5634 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5635
5636 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5637 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5638 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5639
5640 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5641 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5642 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5643 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5644 fontsets.
5645
5646 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5647 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5648
5649 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5650 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5651 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5652 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5653 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5654 system for new files that you create.
5655
5656 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5657 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5658 whole Emacs session.
5659
5660 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5661 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5662 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5663
5664 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5665 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5666 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5667 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5668 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5669
5670 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5671 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5672 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5673 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5674 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5675
5676 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5677 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5678
5679 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5680 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5681
5682 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5683 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5684
5685 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5686 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5687 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5688 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5689 of the file.
5690
5691 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5692 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5693 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5694 translated into that character code.
5695
5696 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5697 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5698
5699 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5700
5701 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5702 the coding system for keyboard input.
5703
5704 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5705 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5706 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5707
5708 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5709
5710 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5711 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5712 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5713 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5714 designed to work with terminals.
5715
5716 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5717 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5718 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5719 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5720 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5721 in the corresponding buffer.
5722
5723 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5724
5725 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5726 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5727 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5728
5729 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5730 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5731 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5732 want to use.
5733
5734 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5735 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5736
5737 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5738 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5739 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5740 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5741
5742 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5743 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5744 related information.
5745
5746 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5747 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5748 scripts.
5749
5750 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5751 information about the support for a particular language.
5752 You specify the language as an argument.
5753
5754 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5755 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5756 first dash.
5757
5758 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5759 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5760 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5761 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5762
5763 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5764 B big5 (Chinese)
5765 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5766 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5767 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5768 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5769 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5770 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5771 K euc-korea (Korean)
5772 R koi8 (Russian)
5773 Q tibetan
5774 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5775 T lao
5776 T tis620 (Thai)
5777 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5778 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5779 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5780 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5781 z hz (Chinese)
5782
5783 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5784 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5785 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5786 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5787
5788 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5789 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5790
5791 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5792 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5793 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5794 Rmail files themselves.
5795
5796 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5797 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5798
5799 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5800 for sending mail:
5801
5802 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5803 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5804 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5805 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5806 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5807
5808 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5809 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5810 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5811 translations.
5812
5813 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5814 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5815 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5816 without any conversion.
5817
5818 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5819 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5820 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5821 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5822
5823 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5824 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5825
5826 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5827 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5828
5829 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5830 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5831
5832 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5833 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5834 in the buffer before point.
5835
5836 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5837 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5838 you are using.
5839
5840 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5841 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5842
5843 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5844
5845 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5846 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5847
5848 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5849 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5850 can become a bottleneck.
5851
5852 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5853 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5854 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5855 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5856 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5857 so useful that the change is worth while.
5858
5859 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5860 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5861 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5862 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5863
5864 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5865 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5866 show-paren-mode.
5867
5868 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5869 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5870 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5871
5872 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5873 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5874 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5875
5876 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5877 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5878 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5879
5880 ** Changes in View mode.
5881
5882 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5883 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5884
5885 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5886 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5887
5888 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5889 previous state.
5890
5891 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5892 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5893
5894 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5895 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5896 not just the selected window.
5897
5898 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5899 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5900 turns View mode on or off.
5901
5902 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5903 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5904 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5905
5906 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5907 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5908
5909 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5910 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5911 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5912 which version to compare with.
5913
5914 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5915 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5916
5917 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5918 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5919 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5920 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5921
5922 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5923 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5924 blocks, all of them or none.
5925
5926 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5927 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5928 confirmation first.
5929
5930 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5931 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5932 However, the mode will not be changed if
5933 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5934 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5935 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5936 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5937
5938 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5939
5940 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5941 these commands do not change the major mode.
5942
5943 ** M-x occur changes.
5944
5945 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5946 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5947
5948 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5949 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5950 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5951
5952 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5953 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5954 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5955 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5956 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5957
5958 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5959 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5960 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5961 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5962
5963 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5964 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5965 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5966
5967 ** Outline mode changes.
5968
5969 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5970
5971 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5972
5973 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5974 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5975 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5976 was already active.
5977
5978 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5979 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5980 get confused by it.
5981
5982 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5983 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5984
5985 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5986
5987 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5988 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5989 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5990 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5991
5992 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5993 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5994 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5995
5996 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5997 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5998 values.
5999
6000 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
6001 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
6002 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
6003 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
6004
6005 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
6006 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
6007 can be. The default value is 30.
6008
6009 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6010
6011 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6012 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6013 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6014 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6015 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6016 behavior.
6017
6018 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6019 compose-mail-other-frame.
6020
6021 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6022 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6023 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6024 buffer that shows the original message.
6025
6026 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6027 with separator lines around the contents.
6028
6029 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6030 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6031 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6032 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6033
6034 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6035
6036 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6037 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6038 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6039 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6040
6041 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6042 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6043 /etc/passwd.
6044
6045 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6046 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6047 /etc/passwd.
6048
6049 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6050 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6051 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6052 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6053
6054 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6055 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6056 be taken to be magic.
6057
6058 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6059 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6060 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6061
6062 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6063 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6064
6065 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6066 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6067
6068 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6069
6070 new key dired.el binding old key
6071 ------- ---------------- -------
6072 * c dired-change-marks c
6073 * m dired-mark m
6074 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6075 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6076 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6077 * u dired-unmark u
6078 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6079 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6080 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6081 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6082 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6083 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6084
6085 ** Rmail changes.
6086
6087 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6088 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6089 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6090 each time you run it.
6091
6092 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6093 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6094
6095 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6096 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6097 means to move in the opposite direction.
6098
6099 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6100 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6101
6102 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6103 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6104 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6105 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6106 for output.
6107
6108 ** Gnus changes.
6109
6110 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6111
6112 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6113 Gnus.
6114
6115 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6116 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6117
6118 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6119 article mode line.
6120
6121 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6122
6123 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6124
6125 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6126
6127 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6128 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6129 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6130
6131 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6132
6133 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6134
6135 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6136 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6137
6138 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6139 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6140 used to pick articles.
6141
6142 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6143 another have been added.
6144
6145 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6146
6147 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6148 generating lines in buffers.
6149
6150 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6151 `M-C-_'.
6152
6153 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6154
6155 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6156
6157 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6158
6159 *** Scores can be decayed.
6160
6161 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6162
6163 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6164 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6165
6166 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6167 the native server.
6168
6169 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6170
6171 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6172 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6173
6174 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6175
6176 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6177 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6178
6179 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6180 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6181
6182 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6183 a group.
6184
6185 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6186 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6187
6188 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6189
6190 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6191
6192 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6193
6194 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6195
6196 Use the `Y c' command.
6197
6198 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6199
6200 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6201
6202 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6203
6204 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6205 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6206
6207 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6208
6209 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6210
6211 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6212 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6213
6214 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6215
6216 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6217 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6218 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6219 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6220 this issue.)
6221
6222 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6223 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6224 particular news group. This can be done by:
6225
6226 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6227
6228 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6229 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6230 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6231 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6232 for reading and posting).
6233
6234 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6235 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6236 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6237 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6238 there.
6239
6240 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6241 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6242
6243 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6244 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6245 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6246 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6247 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6248
6249 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6250 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6251
6252 ** CC mode changes.
6253
6254 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6255 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6256 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6257 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6258 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6259 loaded.
6260
6261 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6262 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6263 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6264 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6265 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6266 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6267
6268 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6269 of the current buffer.
6270
6271 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6272 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6273 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6274
6275 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6276 style that the Python developers like.
6277
6278 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6279 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6280 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6281
6282 ** VC Changes [new]
6283
6284 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6285 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6286 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6287
6288 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6289 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6290 developers.
6291
6292 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6293 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6294
6295 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6296 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6297 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6298 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6299
6300 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6301 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6302
6303 ** Calendar changes.
6304
6305 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6306 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6307 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6308
6309 ** ps-print changes
6310
6311 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6312
6313 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6314
6315 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6316 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6317 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6318 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6319 It defaults to `letter'.
6320 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6321
6322 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6323 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6324 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6325
6326 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6327 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6328 It defaults to 1.
6329
6330 *** Horizontal layout
6331
6332 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6333 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6334 All are measured in points.
6335
6336 *** Vertical layout
6337
6338 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6339 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6340 All are measured in points.
6341
6342 *** Headers
6343
6344 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6345 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6346 margin above the text.
6347
6348 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6349 framing box is printed around the header.
6350
6351 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6352 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6353
6354 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6355 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6356 `ps-header-font-size'.
6357
6358 *** Font managing
6359
6360 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6361 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6362 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6363 elements to this alist.
6364
6365 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6366 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6367
6368 ** hideshow changes.
6369
6370 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6371 C++, ; for lisp).
6372
6373 *** Support for java-mode added.
6374
6375 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6376 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6377
6378 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6379 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6380 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6381
6382 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6383 robust and a lot faster.
6384
6385 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6386
6387 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6388 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6389 documentation for more details.
6390
6391 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6392
6393 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6394 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6395 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6396 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6397 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6398
6399 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6400 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6401 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6402 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6403
6404 ** Font Lock mode
6405
6406 *** Custom support
6407
6408 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6409 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6410 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6411 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6412 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6413 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6414
6415 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6416
6417 *** Maximum decoration
6418
6419 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6420 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6421 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6422 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6423 to get the old behavior.
6424
6425 *** New support
6426
6427 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6428
6429 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6430 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6431
6432 *** Configurable support
6433
6434 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6435 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6436 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6437 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6438 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6439 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6440 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6441
6442 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6443 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6444 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6445
6446 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6447
6448 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6449 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6450 for any mode.
6451
6452 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6453
6454 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6455
6456 in your ~/.emacs.
6457
6458 *** New faces
6459
6460 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6461 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6462 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6463 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6464
6465 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6466
6467 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6468 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6469 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6470
6471 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6472
6473 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6474 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6475 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6476 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6477 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6478 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6479 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6480
6481 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6482 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6483 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6484 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6485 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6486 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6487
6488 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6489
6490 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6491 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6492 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6493 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6494
6495 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6496 settings.
6497
6498 ** Ada mode changes.
6499
6500 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6501 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6502 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6503 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6504 stubs.
6505
6506 *** There are two new commands:
6507 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6508 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6509
6510 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6511 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6512 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6513
6514 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6515 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6516 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6517
6518 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6519 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6520 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6521 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6522
6523 ** Scheme mode changes.
6524
6525 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6526 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6527 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6528 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6529 have any effect.
6530
6531 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6532 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6533 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6534 variables as buffer-local variables.
6535
6536 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6537 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6538
6539 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6540
6541 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6542 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6543 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6544 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6545
6546 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6547 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6548 buffer in Emacs.
6549
6550 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6551 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6552 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6553 option takes precedence.
6554
6555 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6556 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6557 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6558
6559 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6560 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6561 the current defun.
6562
6563 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6564 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6565
6566 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6567 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6568 necessary).
6569
6570 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6571 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6572 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6573 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6574 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6575 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6576
6577 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6578 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6579 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6580 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6581
6582 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6583 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6584 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6585 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6586 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6587
6588 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6589 since it applies only to the current frame.
6590
6591 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6592 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6593 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6594
6595 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6596 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6597 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6598 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6599 instead of just the file you are editing.
6600
6601 ** RefTeX mode
6602
6603 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6604 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6605 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6606 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6607 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6608
6609 C-c ( reftex-label
6610 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6611 knows which kind of label is needed.
6612
6613 C-c ) reftex-reference
6614 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6615 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6616
6617 C-c [ reftex-citation
6618 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6619 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6620
6621 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6622 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6623
6624 C-c = reftex-toc
6625 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6626 can quickly jump to every section.
6627
6628 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6629 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6630 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6631 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6632 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6633
6634 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6635
6636 *** Info documentation is now available.
6637
6638 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6639 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6640
6641 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6642 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6643
6644 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6645 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6646
6647 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6648 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6649 appropriate functions.
6650
6651 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6652 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6653
6654 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6655 been cleaned.
6656
6657 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6658 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6659
6660 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6661 shall be delimited.
6662
6663 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6664 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6665 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6666
6667 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6668 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6669 prefixed with `ALT'.
6670
6671 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6672 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6673 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6674 documentation).
6675
6676 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6677 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6678 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6679
6680 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6681 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6682
6683 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6684 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6685 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6686
6687 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6688
6689 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6690
6691 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6692 from alien sources.
6693
6694 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6695 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6696 crossref entries.
6697
6698 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6699 region.
6700
6701 *** Added support for imenu.
6702
6703 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6704 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6705 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6706 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6707
6708 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6709 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6710
6711 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6712
6713 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6714
6715 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6716 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6717 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6718 as an argument.
6719
6720 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6721 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6722
6723 ** browse-url changes
6724
6725 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6726 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6727 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6728 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6729 customization variables.
6730
6731 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6732
6733 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6734 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6735 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6736
6737 ** Changes in Ediff
6738
6739 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6740 pops up the Info file for this command.
6741
6742 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6743 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6744 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6745 directories).
6746
6747 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6748 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6749 files in the same directory.
6750
6751 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6752 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6753 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6754
6755 ** Changes in Viper
6756
6757 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6758 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6759 instead of vip-.
6760 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6761 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6762 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6763 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6764 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6765 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6766 color when Viper is in insert state.
6767 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6768 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6769 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6770
6771 ** Etags changes.
6772
6773 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6774 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6775 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6776 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6777 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6778
6779 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6780
6781 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6782 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6783
6784 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6785 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6786 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6787
6788 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6789 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6790 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6791 methods and protocols.
6792
6793 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6794 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6795 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6796 paragraph name.
6797
6798 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6799 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6800 at least M times and as many as N times.
6801
6802 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6803 in files has changed slightly.
6804
6805 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6806 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6807 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6808 with old time-stamp-format values.
6809
6810 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6811 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6812 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6813 reasons.
6814
6815 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6816 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6817 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6818 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6819 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6820 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6821
6822 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6823 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6824 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6825
6826 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6827 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6828 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6829 recommended now will continue to work then.
6830
6831 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6832 details.
6833
6834 ** There are some additional major modes:
6835
6836 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6837 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6838 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6839
6840 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6841 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6842 into Emacs.
6843
6844 ** New Lisp packages include:
6845
6846 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6847
6848 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6849 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6850
6851 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6852
6853 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6854 in shell buffers.
6855
6856 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6857 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6858 and `elint-defun'.
6859
6860 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6861 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6862 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6863 strings or comments.
6864
6865 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6866 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6867 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6868 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6869 at these points.
6870
6871 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6872 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6873
6874 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6875 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6876
6877 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6878
6879 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6880 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6881
6882 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6883
6884 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6885
6886 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6887
6888 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6889 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6890
6891 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6892 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6893 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6894 original place after inserting the copy.
6895
6896 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6897 on the buffer.
6898
6899 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6900 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6901 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6902
6903 Enable mouse-drag with:
6904 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6905 -or-
6906 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6907
6908 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6909 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6910
6911 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6912 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6913
6914 *** ogonek
6915
6916 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6917 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6918 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6919 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6920 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6921 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6922 instance) and vice versa.
6923
6924 To use this package load it using
6925 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6926 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6927 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6928 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6929 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6930 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6931
6932 *** Interface to ph.
6933
6934 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6935
6936 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6937 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6938 these servers.
6939
6940 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6941
6942 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6943 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6944 while the real cursor does not move.
6945
6946 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6947 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6948
6949 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6950 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6951
6952 ** movemail change
6953
6954 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6955 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6956 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6957 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6958
6959 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6960 \f
6961 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6962
6963 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6964
6965 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6966 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6967 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6968 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6969 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6970
6971 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6972 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6973 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6974 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6975 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6976 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6977 \f
6978 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6979
6980 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6981 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6982 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6983 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6984
6985 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6986 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6987
6988 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6989 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6990 "win".
6991
6992 ** Basic Lisp changes
6993
6994 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6995 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6996
6997 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6998 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6999 or by the user.
7000
7001 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
7002
7003 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
7004
7005 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7006 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7007
7008 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7009 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7010 its argument.
7011
7012 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7013
7014 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7015
7016 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7017
7018 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7019 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7020 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7021 `format' function.
7022
7023 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7024 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7025 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7026
7027 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7028 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7029 adding one of these suffixes.
7030
7031 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7032 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7033 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7034
7035 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7036 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7037
7038 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7039
7040 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7041 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7042
7043 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7044 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7045
7046 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7047
7048 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7049 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7050
7051 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7052 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7053 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7054 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7055
7056 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7057 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7058 of the last form.
7059
7060 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7061 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7062 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7063 as the last form.
7064
7065 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7066 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7067 matches.
7068
7069 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7070
7071 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7072 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7073 Then it returns that string.
7074
7075 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7076
7077 (with-output-to-string
7078 (princ "The buffer is ")
7079 (princ (buffer-name)))
7080
7081 returns "The buffer is foo".
7082
7083 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7084 is non-nil.
7085
7086 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7087 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7088 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7089
7090 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7091 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7092
7093 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7094 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7095 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7096 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7097 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7098 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7099
7100 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7101 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7102 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7103 characters".
7104
7105 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7106 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7107 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7108 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7109 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7110
7111 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7112 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7113 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7114 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7115
7116 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7117 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7118
7119 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7120
7121 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7122 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7123 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7124 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7125 guaranteed.
7126
7127 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7128 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7129 character).
7130
7131 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7132
7133 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7134 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7135 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7136 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7137 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7138
7139 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7140
7141 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7142 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7143 more than the number of characters.
7144
7145 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7146 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7147 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7148 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7149 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7150 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7151
7152 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7153 and returns a string containing those characters.
7154
7155 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7156 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7157 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7158 character, sref signals an error.
7159
7160 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7161 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7162 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7163
7164 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7165 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7166 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7167
7168 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7169 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7170 to a vector of the characters in it.
7171
7172 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7173 of a string. You call it as follows:
7174
7175 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7176
7177 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7178 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7179 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7180 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7181 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7182
7183 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7184 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7185
7186 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7187 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7188
7189 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7190 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7191 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7192 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7193
7194 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7195
7196 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7197
7198 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7199 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7200 are not included in the resulting value.
7201
7202 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7203 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7204 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7205 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7206
7207 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7208 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7209 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7210 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7211 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7212 column START-COLUMN.
7213
7214 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7215 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7216 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7217 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7218 changed text, before the change.
7219
7220 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7221 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7222 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7223
7224 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7225
7226 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7227
7228 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7229 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7230
7231 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7232 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7233 which identify the character within that character set.
7234
7235 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7236 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7237 opposite of split-char.
7238
7239 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7240 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7241
7242 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7243 of all the characters in a string.
7244
7245 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7246 and specifying coding systems.
7247
7248 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7249 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7250 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7251 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7252 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7253 as what to do about code conversion.)
7254
7255 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7256 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7257
7258 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7259 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7260 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7261
7262 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7263 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7264 to match against a file name.
7265
7266 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7267 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7268 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7269 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7270 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7271 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7272
7273 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7274 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7275
7276 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7277 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7278
7279 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7280 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7281 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7282 service names.
7283
7284 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7285 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7286 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7287 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7288 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7289 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7290
7291 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7292 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7293
7294 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7295 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7296 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7297 start the subprocess.
7298
7299 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7300 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7301 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7302 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7303 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7304
7305 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7306 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7307 subprocess.
7308
7309 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7310 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7311 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7312 connection permanently or until overridden.
7313
7314 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7315 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7316 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7317 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7318 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7319 system for one operation at a time.
7320
7321 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7322 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7323
7324 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7325 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7326 The value is a cons cell,
7327 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7328 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7329 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7330 input to the subprocess.
7331
7332 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7333 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7334
7335 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7336 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7337 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7338
7339 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7340 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7341 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7342 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7343 customization.
7344
7345 Thus, instead of writing
7346
7347 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7348 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7349
7350 you would now write this:
7351
7352 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7353 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7354 :type 'boolean
7355 :group foo)
7356
7357 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7358 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7359 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7360 for a description of them.
7361
7362 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7363 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7364
7365 (defgroup ispell nil
7366 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7367 :group 'processes)
7368
7369 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7370 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7371 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7372 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7373 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7374
7375 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7376 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7377 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7378 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7379 first-level subgroups.
7380
7381 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7382
7383 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7384 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7385
7386 ** easy-mmode
7387
7388 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7389 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7390 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7391 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7392 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7393 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7394
7395 ** Text property changes
7396
7397 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7398 text property.
7399
7400 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7401 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7402 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7403 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7404 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7405
7406 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7407 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7408 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7409 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7410
7411 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7412 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7413 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7414
7415 ** Changes in invisibility features
7416
7417 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7418 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7419 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7420 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7421 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7422 make the overlay visible.
7423
7424 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7425 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7426 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7427 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7428 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7429 t when it should hide it.
7430
7431 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7432
7433 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7434 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7435 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7436 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7437 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7438 Here is an example of how to do this:
7439
7440 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7441 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7442 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7443 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7444
7445 ...
7446 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7447
7448 ...
7449 ;; When done with the overlays:
7450 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7451 ;; Or respectively:
7452 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7453
7454 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7455
7456 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7457 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7458 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7459 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7460
7461 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7462 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7463 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7464
7465 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7466 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7467
7468 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7469 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7470
7471 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7472 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7473 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7474
7475 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7476 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7477 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7478 determine the syntax type of the character.
7479
7480 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7481 of the current buffer.
7482
7483 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7484 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7485 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7486
7487 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7488 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7489 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7490 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7491 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7492
7493 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7494 text property.
7495
7496 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7497 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7498 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7499
7500 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7501 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7502 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7503 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7504 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7505
7506 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7507 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7508 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7509
7510 ** Changes in face features
7511
7512 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7513 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7514
7515 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7516 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7517
7518 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7519 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7520
7521 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7522 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7523
7524 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7525 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7526 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7527 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7528 overlay property).
7529
7530 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7531 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7532
7533 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7534
7535 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7536 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7537 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7538 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7539
7540 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7541 begins with ~.
7542
7543 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7544 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7545
7546 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7547 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7548
7549 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7550 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7551
7552 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7553 character code conversion as well as other things.
7554
7555 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7556 (formerly it did not).
7557
7558 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7559 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7560
7561 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7562 instead of constant strings.
7563
7564 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7565 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7566 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7567
7568 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7569 in the same way as before.
7570
7571 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7572 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7573 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7574
7575 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7576 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7577 else, and returns nil.
7578
7579 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7580 directory cannot be listed.
7581
7582 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7583
7584 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7585 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7586 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7587 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7588 ways:
7589
7590 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7591 It is available through the history command M-n.
7592
7593 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7594 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7595 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7596 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7597 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7598
7599 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7600 argument in this way.
7601
7602 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7603 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7604 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7605
7606 ** Echo area features
7607
7608 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7609 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7610 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7611 after the echo area is cleared.
7612
7613 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7614 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7615
7616 ** Keyboard input features
7617
7618 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7619 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7620
7621 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7622 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7623 by keyboard macros.
7624
7625 ** Frame-related changes
7626
7627 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7628 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7629 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7630
7631 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7632 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7633 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7634
7635 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7636 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7637 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7638 in the selected frame.
7639
7640 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7641 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7642 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7643
7644 ** X Windows features
7645
7646 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7647 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7648 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7649
7650 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7651 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7652
7653 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7654 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7655 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7656
7657 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7658 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7659
7660 ** Subprocess features
7661
7662 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7663 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7664 automatically.
7665
7666 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7667 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7668
7669 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7670 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7671
7672 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7673 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7674
7675 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7676 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7677 goes after the other menu items.
7678
7679 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7680 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7681 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7682 are in use.
7683
7684 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7685 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7686
7687 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7688 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7689 form.
7690
7691 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7692 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7693 but its hook is still run.
7694
7695 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7696 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7697
7698 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7699 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7700 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7701
7702 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7703 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7704 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7705 warned.
7706
7707 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7708 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7709
7710 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7711 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7712 functions like display-time.
7713
7714 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7715 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7716
7717 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7718 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7719 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7720
7721 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7722 if there is an error in compilation.
7723
7724 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7725 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7726 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7727 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7728
7729 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7730 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7731 the *scratch* buffer.
7732
7733 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7734 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7735 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7736 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7737
7738 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7739 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7740 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7741
7742 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7743 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7744 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7745 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7746
7747 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7748 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7749 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7750
7751 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7752 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7753 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7754 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7755 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7756 files at all.
7757
7758 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7759 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7760 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7761 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7762
7763 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7764 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7765 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7766 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7767
7768 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7769
7770 ** imenu.el changes.
7771
7772 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7773 item from menu created by imenu.
7774
7775 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7776 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7777 select one of those items.
7778 \f
7779 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7780 \f
7781 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7782
7783 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7784 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7785
7786 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7787 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7788 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7789 \f
7790 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7791
7792 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7793 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7794
7795 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7796 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7797 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7798 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7799 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7800 all caps.
7801
7802 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7803 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7804
7805 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7806 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7807 as in previous Emacs versions.
7808
7809 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7810 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7811 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7812 frames.
7813
7814 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7815 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7816 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7817 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7818 accident.
7819
7820 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7821 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7822 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7823 line and then executing the macro.
7824
7825 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7826
7827 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7828 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7829 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7830 characters.
7831
7832 ** Font Lock mode
7833
7834 *** Font Lock support modes
7835
7836 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7837 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7838 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7839 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7840 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7841
7842 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7843
7844 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7845
7846 in your ~/.emacs.
7847
7848 *** lazy-lock
7849
7850 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7851 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7852 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7853 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7854 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7855 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7856 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7857
7858 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7859
7860 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7861
7862 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7863
7864 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7865
7866 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7867 paren and key.
7868
7869 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7870 supported.
7871
7872 ** Gnus changes.
7873
7874 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7875 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7876 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7877 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7878
7879 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7880 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7881
7882 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7883 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7884 obsolete.
7885
7886 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7887 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7888
7889 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7890
7891 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7892
7893 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7894
7895 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7896 referred.
7897
7898 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7899
7900 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7901
7902 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7903
7904 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7905
7906 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7907 buffers.
7908
7909 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7910
7911 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7912
7913 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7914
7915 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7916
7917 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7918
7919 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7920
7921 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7922
7923 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7924 is possible.
7925
7926 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7927
7928 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7929 groups of groups.
7930
7931 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7932
7933 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7934 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7935
7936 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7937
7938 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7939
7940 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7941
7942 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7943
7944 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7945 expiration times.
7946
7947 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7948
7949 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7950 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7951
7952 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7953 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7954 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7955
7956 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7957 articles with the `*' command.
7958
7959 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7960
7961 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7962
7963 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7964
7965 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7966
7967 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7968 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7969
7970 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7971 buffer.
7972
7973 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7974
7975 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7976
7977 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7978
7979 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7980
7981 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7982
7983 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7984
7985 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7986
7987 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7988
7989 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7990
7991 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7992 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7993
7994 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7995 refetching.
7996
7997 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7998
7999 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
8000 buffer to allow easier treatment.
8001
8002 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
8003
8004 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
8005
8006 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8007
8008 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8009 articles.
8010
8011 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8012
8013 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8014
8015 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8016 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8017
8018 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8019
8020 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8021
8022 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8023
8024 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8025
8026 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8027
8028 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8029 in greater detail.
8030 \f
8031 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8032
8033 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8034 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8035 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8036 exists.
8037
8038 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8039 as well as lists.
8040
8041 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8042 of a given keymap.
8043
8044 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8045 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8046 keymap or nil.
8047
8048 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8049 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8050 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8051 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8052 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8053 alias.
8054 \f
8055 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8056
8057 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8058
8059 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8060 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8061 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8062 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8063 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8064
8065 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8066 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8067 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8068
8069 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8070
8071 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8072 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8073 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8074 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8075 chapter of the manual for details.
8076
8077 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8078 customization variables take effect.
8079
8080 ** Marking with the mouse.
8081
8082 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8083 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8084 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8085
8086 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8087
8088 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8089
8090 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8091 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8092
8093 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8094 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8095 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8096 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8097 applications, these problems are significant.
8098
8099 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8100 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8101 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8102 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8103 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8104
8105 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8106 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8107
8108 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8109 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8110 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8111 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8112 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8113 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8114
8115 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8116
8117 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8118 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8119 minibuffer contains.
8120
8121 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8122
8123 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8124 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8125 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8126 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8127
8128 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8129 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8130 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8131 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8132
8133 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8134 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8135
8136 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8137 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8138 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8139
8140 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8141 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8142 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8143 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8144
8145 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8146
8147 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8148 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8149
8150 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8151
8152 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8153 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8154 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8155 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8156 immediately after the selected one.
8157
8158 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8159 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8160
8161 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8162
8163 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8164 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8165 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8166 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8167 recover-session.
8168
8169 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8170 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8171 will not work.
8172
8173 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8174 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8175 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8176 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8177 now that the bug is fixed.
8178
8179 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8180
8181 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8182 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8183 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8184 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8185
8186 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8187 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8188 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8189 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8190
8191 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8192 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8193 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8194
8195 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8196 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8197 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8198 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8199 remain normal.
8200
8201 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8202 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8203
8204 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8205 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8206 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8207 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8208
8209 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8210 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8211 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8212 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8213 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8214 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8215
8216 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8217 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8218 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8219 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8220
8221 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8222 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8223 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8224
8225 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8226 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8227 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8228 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8229 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8230 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8231 to a limitation in font-lock).
8232
8233 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8234
8235 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8236 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8237 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8238 this example:
8239
8240 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8241 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8242
8243 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8244
8245 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8246
8247 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8248
8249 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8250
8251 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8252 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8253 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8254 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8255 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8256 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8257
8258 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8259 does the same job.
8260
8261 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8262 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8263
8264 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8265 text.
8266
8267 ** Font Lock mode
8268
8269 *** Global Font Lock mode
8270
8271 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8272 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8273 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8274 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8275 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8276
8277 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8278
8279 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8280
8281 in your ~/.emacs.
8282
8283 *** Local Refontification
8284
8285 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8286 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8287 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8288 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8289
8290 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8291 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8292 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8293 above and below point.
8294
8295 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8296
8297 ** Follow mode
8298
8299 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8300 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8301 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8302 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8303 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8304 follow-mode.
8305
8306 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8307
8308 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8309 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8310
8311 ** hide-show changes.
8312
8313 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8314 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8315 normal hooks.
8316
8317 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8318 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8319
8320 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8321 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8322 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8323
8324 ** MSDOS Changes
8325
8326 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8327 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8328
8329 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8330 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8331
8332 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8333
8334 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8335 pressing both mouse buttons.
8336
8337 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8338 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8339 are:
8340
8341 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8342 now works.
8343
8344 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8345
8346 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8347 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8348
8349 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8350
8351 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8352
8353 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8354
8355 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8356
8357 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8358 \f
8359 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8360
8361 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8362 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8363 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8364 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8365 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8366
8367 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8368
8369 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8370 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8371 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8372 be different.
8373
8374 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8375 than `system-type'.
8376
8377 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8378
8379 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8380 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8381
8382 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8383 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8384
8385 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8386 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8387 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8388
8389 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8390 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8391 like this:
8392
8393 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8394
8395 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8396 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8397 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8398
8399 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8400 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8401 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8402
8403 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8404 up if too much time passes.
8405
8406 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8407
8408 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8409 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8410 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8411 form in BODY.
8412
8413 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8414 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8415 call looks like this:
8416
8417 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8418
8419 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8420 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8421 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8422 ARGS.
8423
8424 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8425 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8426 command.
8427
8428 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8429 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8430 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8431 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8432
8433 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8434 idle for SECS seconds.
8435
8436 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8437 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8438 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8439 instead.
8440
8441 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8442 there is no answer within a certain time.
8443
8444 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8445
8446 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8447 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8448 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8449
8450 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8451 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8452 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8453 arguments in between are ignored.
8454
8455 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8456 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8457
8458 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8459 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8460 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8461 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8462 version.
8463
8464 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8465 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8466 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8467 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8468 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8469 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8470
8471 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8472 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8473 systems with limited file name syntax.
8474
8475 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8476 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8477 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8478 completions.el:
8479
8480 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8481 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8482 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8483
8484 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8485 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8486 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8487 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8488 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8489
8490 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8491 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8492 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8493
8494 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8495 marker from its buffer position.
8496
8497 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8498 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8499 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8500
8501 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8502 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8503 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8504 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8505 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8506 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8507
8508 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8509 errors that happen often during editing.
8510
8511 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8512 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8513 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8514
8515 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8516 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8517
8518 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8519 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8520 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8521 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8522 and not get-buffer-window.
8523
8524 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8525 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8526 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8527
8528 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8529 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8530 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8531 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8532 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8533 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8534 over and over for the same text.
8535
8536 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8537
8538 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8539 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8540
8541 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8542 ;; $HEADER: text $
8543
8544 in addition to the normal
8545
8546 ;; HEADER: text
8547
8548 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8549 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8550 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8551
8552
8553 \f
8554 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8555
8556 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8557 Copyright information:
8558
8559 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8560
8561 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8562 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8563 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8564 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8565
8566 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8567 of this document, or of portions of it,
8568 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8569 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8570 \f
8571 Local variables:
8572 mode: outline
8573 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8574 end: