1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
14 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
15 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
18 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
19 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if they these are available.
21 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
22 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
24 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
25 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
27 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
29 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
30 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
31 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
32 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
34 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
35 a version-dependent component.
37 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
38 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
39 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
40 character is still bound as before.
42 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
45 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
46 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to executable-chmod.
48 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
49 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
50 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
51 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
52 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
53 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
54 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
56 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
57 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
58 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
59 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
60 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
61 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
62 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
63 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
64 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
66 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
67 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
69 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
70 point in a pop-up window.
72 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
73 displays all characters in that character set.
75 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
76 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
78 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
81 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
83 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
84 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
86 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
87 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
88 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
89 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
91 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
92 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
93 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
94 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
96 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
97 on the display using several methods
99 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
100 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
101 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
103 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
104 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
106 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
108 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
109 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
111 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
112 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
113 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
114 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
116 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
117 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
118 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
120 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
121 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
123 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
124 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
127 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
128 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
131 ** New X resources recognized
133 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
134 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
135 is useful for debugging X problems.
139 emacs.synchronous: true
141 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
142 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
143 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
144 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
145 visual class names are
154 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
155 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
158 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
159 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
160 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
165 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
167 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
168 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
169 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
170 resource values are `true' or `on'.
174 emacs.privateColormap: true
176 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
177 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
178 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
180 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
181 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
182 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
185 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
187 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
188 all frames except the selected one.
190 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
191 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
193 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
194 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
195 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
196 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
198 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
199 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
201 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
202 read mail from the menu etc.
204 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
205 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
207 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
209 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
213 -------------------------
220 ** Changes in Outline mode.
222 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
223 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
224 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
226 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
227 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
229 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
230 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
231 several other special buffers.
233 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
234 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
237 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
238 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
240 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
241 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
242 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
244 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
245 is running in batch mode. For example,
247 (message "%s" (read t))
249 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
252 ** Faces and frame parameters.
254 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
255 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
256 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
257 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
258 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
259 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
260 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
262 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
263 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
264 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
265 `default' face and vice versa.
269 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
270 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
271 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
273 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
275 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
276 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
277 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
278 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
280 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
281 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
282 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
284 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
287 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
289 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
290 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
291 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
292 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
295 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
297 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
298 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
299 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
300 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
303 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
304 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
305 under Lisp changes, below.
307 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
309 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
310 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
313 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
314 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
315 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
316 customizing face `fringe'.
318 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
319 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
323 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
324 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
326 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
328 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
329 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
330 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
331 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
332 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
335 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
336 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
337 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
338 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
339 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
340 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
342 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
343 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
344 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
345 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
346 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
347 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
349 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
350 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
351 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
352 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
353 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
355 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
357 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
358 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
359 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
361 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
363 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
364 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
365 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
366 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
367 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
372 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
373 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
377 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
378 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
379 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
382 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
384 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
385 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
386 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
389 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
390 have to do anything to activate it.
392 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
394 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
395 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
396 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
397 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
399 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
401 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
403 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
405 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
408 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
411 ** Hscrolling in C code.
413 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
414 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
419 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
420 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
422 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
424 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
425 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
426 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
427 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
428 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
430 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
432 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
435 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
436 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
438 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
440 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
441 toggles the read-only status.
443 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
445 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
447 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
448 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
451 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
453 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
454 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
455 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
456 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
457 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
458 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
463 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
464 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
465 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
467 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
468 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
469 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
470 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
471 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
472 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
474 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
476 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
478 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
479 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
480 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
482 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
483 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
485 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
486 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
487 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
489 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
491 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
492 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
493 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
494 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
496 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
497 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
498 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
499 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
501 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
502 notably at the end of lines.
504 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
505 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
507 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
509 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
510 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
511 after each match to get the replacement text.
513 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
514 you edit the replacement string.
516 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
517 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
518 lisp-complete-symbol.
520 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
522 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
523 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
524 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
525 window size by setting the following variable:
527 - User option: max-mini-window-height
529 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
530 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
531 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
535 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
537 ** Changes to hideshow.el
539 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
540 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
542 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
544 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
545 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
546 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
547 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
548 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
549 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
551 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
552 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
553 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
554 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
556 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
558 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
559 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
560 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
561 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
562 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
564 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
565 something like this in your .emacs.
567 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
569 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
571 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
573 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
574 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
575 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
577 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
578 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
580 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
581 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
583 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
584 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
585 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
588 ** Changes in Font Lock
590 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
591 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
594 ** Comint (subshell) changes
596 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
597 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
599 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
600 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
601 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
603 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
604 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
605 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
607 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and
608 scheme-interaction-mode now highlight user input, and support choosing
609 previous input with mouse-2. To control this feature, see the
610 user-option `comint-highlight-input'.
612 ** Changes to Rmail mode
614 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
615 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
616 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
617 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
618 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
621 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
622 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
623 regexp matching your mail addresses.
625 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
626 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
627 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
628 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
629 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
631 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
634 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
635 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
638 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
639 in which folder to put messages automatically.
641 ** Changes to TeX mode
643 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
646 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
648 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
649 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
650 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
651 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
652 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
653 can be edited from that buffer.
655 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
656 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
657 `A' to use all marked entries).
659 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
660 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
662 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
663 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
664 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
667 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
668 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
669 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
670 in column 1 are always made leaves.
672 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
673 has the following new features:
675 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
676 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
677 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
678 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
680 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
681 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
682 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
683 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
684 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
687 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
692 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
693 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
694 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
696 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
697 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
698 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
699 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
703 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
704 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
705 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
707 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
708 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
711 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
712 between custom options. Example:
714 (defcustom default-input-method nil
715 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
716 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
717 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
719 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
720 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
722 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
723 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
724 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
726 ** New features in evaluation commands
728 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
729 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
730 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
731 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
732 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
734 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
735 code when called with a prefix argument.
739 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
740 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
741 is, delete only empty directories.
743 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
744 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
745 copy directories recursively.
747 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
748 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
749 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
751 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
752 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
755 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
756 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
757 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
758 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
759 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
761 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
764 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
765 use the -f option when sending mail.
769 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
770 current user setups (although it's believed that these
771 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
772 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
773 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
774 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
777 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
778 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
779 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
780 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
781 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
784 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
785 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
786 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
787 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
788 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
789 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
791 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
792 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
793 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
794 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
795 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
796 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
797 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
798 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
800 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
801 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
802 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
803 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
806 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
807 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
808 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
809 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
810 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
811 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
812 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
813 function documentation for more info.
815 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
816 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
817 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
818 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
819 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
820 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
821 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
822 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
824 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
826 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
827 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
829 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
830 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
831 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
832 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
833 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
836 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
837 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
838 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
841 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
842 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
843 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
844 chapter about this in the manual.
846 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
847 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
848 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
849 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
850 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
852 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
853 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
854 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
856 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
857 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
859 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
860 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
861 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
864 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
865 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
866 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
867 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
870 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
871 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
872 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
875 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
876 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
877 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
878 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
881 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
882 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
883 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
884 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
887 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
888 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
889 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
891 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
893 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
894 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
895 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
896 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
898 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
899 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
900 the column specified by comment-column.
902 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
903 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
904 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
905 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
906 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
907 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
909 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
910 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
913 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
915 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
916 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
917 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
918 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
921 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
923 ** Makefile mode changes
925 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
927 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
928 Fontlock mode is active.
932 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
933 so that searches can be resumed.
935 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
936 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
937 that started the search.
939 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
940 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
942 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
944 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
945 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
946 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
947 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
948 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
949 `secondary-selection'.
951 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
952 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
953 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
954 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
955 usual snappy response.
957 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
958 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
959 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
960 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
962 ** Changes in sort.el
964 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
965 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
966 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
969 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
971 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
972 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
973 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
975 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
976 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
978 ** Shell script mode changes.
980 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
981 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
982 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
986 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
988 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
989 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
990 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
991 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
992 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
994 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
995 declarations when given the --declarations option.
997 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
998 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1000 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1003 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1005 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1007 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1010 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1011 variables are tagged.
1013 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1015 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1018 ** Changes in etags.el
1020 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1021 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1022 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1024 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1025 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1027 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1028 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1029 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1030 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1032 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1034 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1035 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1037 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1039 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1040 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1041 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1043 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1044 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1046 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1047 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1049 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1050 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1051 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1053 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1054 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1055 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1056 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1058 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1059 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1060 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1062 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1064 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1066 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1067 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1068 expression from that list, are not checked.
1070 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1071 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1072 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1073 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1075 ** New modes and packages
1077 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1078 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1080 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1081 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1082 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1084 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1085 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1086 separate Texinfo file.
1088 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
1089 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1090 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
1091 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
1092 used to enter checkin log messages.
1094 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1095 without invoking external programs.
1097 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1098 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1099 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1100 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1101 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1103 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1104 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1106 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1107 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1109 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1110 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1111 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1112 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1113 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1116 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1117 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1118 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1119 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1121 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1122 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1123 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1125 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1128 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1130 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1132 ; comment (until end of line)
1136 $A default non-terminal
1137 $"C" default terminal
1138 $?C? default special
1139 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1140 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1141 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1142 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1143 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1144 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1145 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1146 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1147 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1148 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1149 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1150 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1151 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1152 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1153 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1155 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1157 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1158 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1159 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1160 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1161 equal signs of assignments.
1163 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1164 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1166 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1167 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1168 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1169 customize the package.
1171 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1173 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1174 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1175 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1176 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1177 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1178 which answers different needs.
1180 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1181 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1182 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1183 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1184 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1187 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1188 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1190 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1192 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1194 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1196 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1199 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1202 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1204 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1206 *** whitespace.el ???
1208 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1209 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1210 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1211 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1212 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1213 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1214 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1216 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1218 Here is an example of columns:
1221 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1222 porcupine strawberry airplane
1224 Doing the following settings:
1226 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1227 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1228 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1229 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1232 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1234 M-x delimit-columns-region
1238 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1239 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1240 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1242 delim-col has the following options:
1244 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1247 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1248 between each column.
1250 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1253 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1256 delim-col has the following commands:
1258 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1259 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1261 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1262 were operated on recently.
1264 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1266 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1267 recentf at Emacs startup.
1269 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1270 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1271 file list can be displayed:
1273 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1274 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1275 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1277 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1278 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1280 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1283 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1284 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1285 specific to Message mode.
1287 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1288 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1289 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1291 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1292 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1293 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1295 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1296 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1298 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1300 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1301 minibuffer with completion.
1303 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1304 with the diary features.
1306 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1307 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1309 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1312 ** Withdrawn packages
1314 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1315 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1317 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1319 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1322 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1323 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1325 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1328 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1330 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1331 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1333 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1335 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1336 comparison is done with `eq'.
1338 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1340 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1343 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1344 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1345 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1347 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1348 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1350 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1351 function was declared obsolete.
1353 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1354 retained as an alias).
1356 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1357 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1358 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1360 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1362 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1364 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1365 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1367 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1369 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1371 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1373 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1374 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1375 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1376 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1379 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1380 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1381 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1382 minibuffer even if it is active.
1384 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1385 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1386 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1387 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1388 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1389 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1391 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1392 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1393 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1394 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1395 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1396 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1397 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1399 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key
1400 and event names in angle brackets.
1402 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1403 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1404 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1405 Default value is nil.
1407 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1410 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1411 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1412 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1414 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1417 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1418 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1419 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1420 than replacing the local map.
1422 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1423 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1425 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1427 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1430 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1432 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1434 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1435 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1436 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1437 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1439 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1440 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1441 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1442 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1444 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1445 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1446 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1448 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1449 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1450 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1451 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1452 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1453 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1454 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1457 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1459 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1460 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1461 character set as previously.
1463 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1464 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1465 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1467 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1468 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1469 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1470 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1472 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1473 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1475 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1476 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1479 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1480 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1482 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1483 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1484 buffers and strings.
1486 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1487 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1488 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1489 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1490 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1491 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1492 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1495 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1496 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1497 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1499 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1500 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1501 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1502 may differ between buffer and string text.
1504 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1505 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1507 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1508 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1509 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1510 `composition' from STRING.
1512 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1513 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1515 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1518 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1519 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1520 character set is not used.
1522 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1523 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1524 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1527 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1528 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1529 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1532 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1533 that offset in the file before writing.
1535 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1536 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1538 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1539 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1540 from which the command was issued.
1542 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1543 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1544 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1545 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1548 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1549 to `window-buffer-height'.
1551 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1553 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1554 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1555 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1557 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1560 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1561 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1563 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1564 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1565 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1567 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1568 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1569 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1570 is currently displayed in some window.
1572 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1573 argument function's results.
1575 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1576 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1578 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1579 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1581 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1582 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1584 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1585 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1588 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1589 nil don't display a cursor
1590 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1591 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1592 others display a box cursor.
1594 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1595 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1596 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1597 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1599 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1600 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1601 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1602 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1606 (string-to-syntax "()")
1609 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1612 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1613 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1620 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1625 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1630 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1637 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1638 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1641 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1642 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1643 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1644 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1647 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1649 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1650 for a regexp in a string.
1652 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1653 `mouse-position-function'.
1655 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1656 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1658 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1659 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1662 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1665 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1666 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1669 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1670 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1671 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1672 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1676 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1677 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1680 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1681 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1682 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1683 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1686 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1687 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1688 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1689 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1692 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1693 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1694 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1697 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1698 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1701 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1703 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1704 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1705 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1709 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1710 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1713 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1714 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1717 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1718 instead of being optional.
1721 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1722 modify read-only text.
1725 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1727 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1728 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1729 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1730 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1731 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1733 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1734 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1735 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1736 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1737 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1738 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1739 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1742 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1743 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1744 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1748 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1749 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1752 ** New function `propertize'
1754 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1755 strings with text properties.
1757 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1759 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1760 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1761 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1762 specified value of that property. Example:
1764 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1767 ** push and pop macros.
1769 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1770 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1771 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1773 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1774 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1775 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1777 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1779 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1780 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1782 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1783 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1784 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1785 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1787 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1788 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1789 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1790 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1793 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1794 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1796 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1797 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1798 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1799 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1800 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1802 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1804 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1805 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1806 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1807 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1808 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1809 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1810 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1811 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1812 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1813 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1814 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1815 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1816 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1817 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1818 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1821 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1823 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1825 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1827 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1828 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1832 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1833 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1834 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1838 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1839 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1841 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1843 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1844 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1845 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1846 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1847 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1849 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1851 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1852 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1853 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1857 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
1858 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
1859 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
1860 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
1861 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1863 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1865 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1867 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1869 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1871 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1873 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1876 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1878 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1880 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1882 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1884 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1886 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1888 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1890 Returns the size of TABLE.
1892 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1894 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1896 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1898 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1900 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1904 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1906 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1909 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1911 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1912 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1914 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1916 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1918 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1920 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1921 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1923 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1925 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1927 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1929 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1930 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
1931 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
1932 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1933 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1935 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1937 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1938 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1939 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1941 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1942 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1944 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1945 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1947 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1948 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1950 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
1951 'case-fold-string-hash))
1953 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1956 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1958 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1959 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1960 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1963 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1965 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1966 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1969 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
1970 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
1971 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
1972 is too short to reach that column.
1975 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
1976 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
1977 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
1978 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
1980 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
1981 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
1982 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
1985 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
1986 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
1989 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
1990 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
1993 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
1994 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
1995 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
1996 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
1997 temporary-file-directory instead.
2000 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2001 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2002 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2003 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2006 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2007 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2010 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2012 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2013 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2014 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2017 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2019 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2020 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2021 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2022 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2023 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2024 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2026 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2027 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2028 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2029 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2032 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2034 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2035 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2036 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2039 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2040 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2044 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2046 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2047 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2050 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2053 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2055 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2056 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2059 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2061 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2062 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2068 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2069 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2071 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2072 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2073 to enable sound support.
2075 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2076 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2077 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2078 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2079 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2081 The following sound properties are supported:
2085 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2086 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2090 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2091 may be present, but not both.
2095 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2096 0..1. This property is optional.
2098 Other properties are ignored.
2100 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2102 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2105 ** Changes to garbage collection
2107 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2108 of live and free strings.
2110 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2111 strings that have been consed so far.
2114 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2118 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2120 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2123 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2125 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2127 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2128 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2129 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2130 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2131 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2133 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2134 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2137 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2140 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2142 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2143 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2144 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2145 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2148 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2150 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2151 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2152 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2153 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2155 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2156 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2158 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2159 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2160 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2161 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2162 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2163 just display it black instead.
2165 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2168 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2172 ** New face implementation.
2174 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2175 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2180 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2182 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2184 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2185 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2187 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2189 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2191 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2193 6. Foreground color.
2195 7. Background color.
2197 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2199 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2201 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2203 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2205 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2208 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2209 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2211 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2212 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2213 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2214 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2215 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2216 attributes mentioned above.
2218 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2219 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2222 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2223 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2229 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2230 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2231 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2232 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2233 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2234 results in a fully-specified face.
2237 *** Face realization.
2239 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2240 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2241 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2242 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2243 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2244 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2246 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2247 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2248 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2249 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2251 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2252 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2253 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2254 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2255 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2257 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2258 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2259 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2260 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2261 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2264 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2265 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2266 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2267 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2270 **** Clearing face caches.
2272 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2273 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2279 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2280 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2281 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2283 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2284 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2285 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2286 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2287 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2289 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2290 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2291 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2293 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2295 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2296 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2297 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2298 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2299 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2300 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2301 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2303 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2304 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2310 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2311 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2314 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2315 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2316 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2317 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2318 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2321 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2323 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2326 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2328 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2330 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2331 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2332 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2334 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2335 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2336 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2337 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2338 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2339 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2340 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2341 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2342 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2343 of the face font sort order.
2345 - Function: x-font-family-list
2347 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2348 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2349 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2350 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2352 - Variable: font-list-limit
2354 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2355 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2356 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2359 *** Setting face attributes.
2361 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2362 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2363 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2366 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2367 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2369 The following attributes are recognized:
2373 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2374 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2375 and `?' are allowed.
2379 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2380 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2381 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2382 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2386 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2391 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2392 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2393 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2397 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2398 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2401 `:foreground', `:background'
2403 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2407 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2408 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2409 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2414 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2415 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2416 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2421 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2422 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2423 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2424 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2428 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2429 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2430 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2431 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2432 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2433 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2434 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2435 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2436 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2437 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2438 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2439 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2440 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2441 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2442 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2443 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2448 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2449 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2453 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2454 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2455 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2456 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2457 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2458 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2460 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2461 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2465 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2466 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2467 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2470 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2471 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2472 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2474 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2477 *** Face attributes and X resources
2479 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2482 Face attribute X resource class
2483 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2484 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2485 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2486 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2487 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2488 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2489 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2490 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2491 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2492 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2493 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2494 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2495 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2496 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2497 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2498 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2499 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2500 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2501 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2502 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2505 *** Text property `face'.
2507 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2508 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2509 specification can be
2511 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2513 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2514 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2515 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2516 for face attribute names.
2518 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2519 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2520 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2523 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2525 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2526 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2527 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2528 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2529 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2530 used to clear the mapping table.
2532 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2534 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2535 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2536 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2537 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2538 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2539 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2540 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2541 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2542 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2543 modify their color-related behavior.
2545 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2548 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2550 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2551 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2552 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2553 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2554 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2555 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2556 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2557 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2558 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2561 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2563 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2565 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2566 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2567 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2569 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2571 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2572 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2575 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2576 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2577 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2578 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2579 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2580 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2581 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2584 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2585 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2586 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2588 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2590 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
2592 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2593 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2594 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2595 constrained position if that is is different.
2597 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2598 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2599 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2600 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
2601 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2602 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2605 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2606 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2607 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2608 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2609 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2611 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
2613 Erases the field surrounding POS.
2614 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2615 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2617 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2619 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2620 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2621 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2622 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
2623 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2625 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2627 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2628 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2629 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2630 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
2631 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2633 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2635 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2636 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2637 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2639 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2641 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2642 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2643 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2648 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2649 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2650 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2651 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2653 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2654 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2655 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2656 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2659 IMAGE is an image specification.
2661 *** Image specifications
2663 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2664 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2665 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2666 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2667 described below are ignored.
2669 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2673 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2674 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2675 to use for its ascent.
2677 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2678 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2680 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2681 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2682 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2683 overlays that apply to the image.
2687 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2688 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2692 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2697 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2698 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2699 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2700 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2702 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2704 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2705 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2706 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2707 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2708 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2709 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2710 background of the image.
2714 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2715 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2716 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2717 may be present in the image specification.
2721 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2722 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2723 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2724 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2726 *** Supported image types
2728 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2730 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2731 properties supported are
2735 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2736 is the frame's foreground.
2740 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2741 the frame's background color.
2743 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2744 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2745 instead of a `:file' property.
2749 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2753 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2759 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2760 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2762 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2764 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2767 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2768 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2771 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2773 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2774 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2775 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2776 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2778 Additional image properties supported are:
2780 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2782 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2783 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2786 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2787 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2789 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2790 to display compressed images.
2792 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2794 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2795 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2798 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2800 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2801 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2804 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2806 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2807 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2810 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2812 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2813 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2815 Additional image properties supported are:
2819 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2820 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2822 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2823 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2824 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2827 (defun show-anim (file max)
2828 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2829 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2831 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2834 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2837 (goto-char (point-min))
2838 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2839 (insert-image img "x"))
2840 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2842 **** PNG, image type `png'
2844 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2845 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2848 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2850 Additional image properties supported are:
2854 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2855 integer. This is a required property.
2859 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2860 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2864 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2865 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2866 files. This is an required property.
2868 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2873 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2874 which are supported in the current configuration.
2876 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2877 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2878 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2879 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2880 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2882 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2884 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2885 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2886 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2887 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2888 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2894 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2897 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2898 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2899 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2900 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2901 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2902 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2903 of the display margins.
2905 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2906 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2907 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2908 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2914 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2915 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2916 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2917 that have a `help-echo' property.
2919 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
2920 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
2921 the window in which the help was found.
2923 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
2924 `help-echo' text property was found.
2926 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
2927 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
2929 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
2930 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
2933 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
2934 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
2936 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
2937 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
2938 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
2939 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
2940 used as help string.
2942 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2943 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
2944 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2947 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2949 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2950 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2952 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2953 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2954 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2955 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2958 (global-set-key [A-down]
2961 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2962 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
2963 (global-set-key [A-up]
2966 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2967 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2970 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
2972 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
2973 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
2974 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
2975 is called with one argument, POS.
2977 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
2978 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
2979 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
2980 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
2981 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
2984 ** Tool bar support.
2986 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
2987 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
2988 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
2989 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
2990 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
2991 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
2993 *** Tool bar item definitions
2995 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
2996 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
2997 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
2999 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3000 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3001 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3002 property (see below).
3004 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3005 binding are currently ignored.
3007 The following properties are recognized:
3011 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3016 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3020 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3021 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3022 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3024 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3026 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3027 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3031 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3032 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3033 meaning of each of the four elements:
3035 Index Use when item is
3036 ----------------------------------------
3037 0 enabled and selected
3038 1 enabled and deselected
3039 2 disabled and selected
3040 3 disabled and deselected
3042 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3043 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3045 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3047 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3048 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3050 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3052 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3053 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3054 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3056 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3057 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3059 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3060 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3061 pixels. Default is 1.
3063 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3064 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3066 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3068 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3071 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3072 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3073 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3075 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3077 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3079 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3082 ** Mode line changes.
3085 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3087 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3088 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3089 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3091 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3092 a `local-map' text property.
3094 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3095 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3097 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3098 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3099 `local-map' property.
3101 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3102 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3105 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3106 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3109 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3110 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3113 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3115 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3116 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3117 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3118 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3121 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3124 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3125 position in the header-line.
3128 ** Text property `display'
3130 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3131 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3132 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3133 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3135 *** Variable width and height spaces
3137 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3138 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3139 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3140 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3141 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3142 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3143 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3145 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3146 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3147 properties described below.
3149 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3150 characters having the `display' property.
3154 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3155 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3157 - :relative-width FACTOR
3159 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3160 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3161 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3162 width of that character by FACTOR.
3166 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3167 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3169 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3173 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3176 - :relative-height FACTOR
3178 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3179 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3183 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3184 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3185 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3188 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3192 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3193 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3194 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3195 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3196 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3197 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3198 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3199 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3200 as display specification.
3202 *** Other display properties
3204 - :space-width FACTOR
3206 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3207 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3212 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3214 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3215 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3216 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3217 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3218 a font is available counts as a step.
3220 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3221 as tall as the frame's default font.
3223 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3224 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3226 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3227 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3231 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3232 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3233 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3234 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3235 `:height' subproperty.
3237 *** Conditional display properties
3239 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3240 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3241 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3242 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3243 the text having the `display' property.
3245 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3249 ** New menu separator types.
3251 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3252 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3253 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3254 to specify other menu separator types.
3256 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3258 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3261 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3263 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3265 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3267 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3269 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3271 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3273 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3275 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3277 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3279 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3280 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3282 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3284 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3286 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3288 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3290 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3292 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3294 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3296 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3298 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3300 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3302 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3304 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3306 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3308 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3310 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3311 the corresponding single-line separators.
3314 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3316 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3317 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3318 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3319 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3320 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3321 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3322 default foreground is black.
3324 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3325 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3326 `ScrollBarBackground').
3328 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3329 settings for scroll bar colors.
3332 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3333 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3336 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3337 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3338 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3339 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3340 the original window start.
3343 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3344 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3345 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3348 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3350 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3351 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3352 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3353 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3355 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3356 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3358 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3360 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3361 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3362 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3363 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3364 temporarily to nil, for example
3366 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3367 (enlarge-window 10))
3369 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3370 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3372 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3373 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3374 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3375 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3376 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3377 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3379 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3381 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3384 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3386 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3388 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3389 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3390 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3391 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3392 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3394 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3398 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3400 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3403 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3405 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3406 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3408 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3410 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3412 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3413 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3414 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3416 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3417 is the one that is used.
3419 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3420 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3421 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3422 separate from the command's regular output.
3423 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3424 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3425 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3428 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3429 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3430 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3431 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3433 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3434 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3435 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3436 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3438 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3439 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3440 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3441 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3443 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3444 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3445 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3446 they never ignore case.
3448 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3449 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3450 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3451 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3452 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3453 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3454 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3456 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3457 the same format that was used in the file before.
3459 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3460 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3462 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3463 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3464 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3466 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3467 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3468 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3469 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3470 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3471 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3472 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3474 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3475 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3476 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3477 format. You can now customize these variables.
3479 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3480 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3481 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3482 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3484 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3485 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3486 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3488 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3489 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3490 doesn't have any effect.
3492 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3495 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3496 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3497 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3499 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3500 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3501 `auto-show-mode' command.
3503 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3504 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3505 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3506 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3507 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3509 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3510 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3512 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3513 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3514 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3516 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3517 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3518 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3519 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3521 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3523 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3524 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3525 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3526 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3527 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3529 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3530 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3532 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3533 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3534 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3535 `?' on other systems.
3537 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3538 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3541 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3542 current codepage when it starts.
3546 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3547 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3548 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3549 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3550 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3551 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3555 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3556 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3558 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3559 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3560 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3561 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3562 buffer-file-coding-system.
3564 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3565 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3568 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3569 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3570 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3571 list of possible coding systems.
3575 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3576 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3577 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3578 docstring for details.
3580 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3581 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3582 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3583 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3584 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3586 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3587 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3589 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3590 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3592 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3593 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3594 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3595 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3598 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3599 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3601 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3602 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3603 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3604 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3606 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3607 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3608 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3609 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3610 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3612 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3614 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3616 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3617 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3619 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3621 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3622 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3623 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3624 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3625 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3629 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3630 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3631 Gnus manual for the full story.
3633 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3634 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3635 group, which is created automatically.
3637 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3640 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3642 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3643 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3645 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3648 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3650 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3651 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3653 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3655 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3656 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3658 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3659 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3661 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3662 control over simplification.
3664 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3666 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3669 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3671 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3673 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3674 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3675 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3677 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3678 `a' forces normal posting method.
3680 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3683 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3686 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3687 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3689 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3692 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3694 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3696 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3697 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3699 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3700 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3702 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3704 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3707 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3708 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3710 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3711 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3713 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3715 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3717 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3719 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3721 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3722 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3723 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3725 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3726 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3727 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3728 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3729 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3731 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3732 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3733 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3734 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3736 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3737 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3738 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3741 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3743 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3744 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3746 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3747 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3748 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3749 removed from the label.
3751 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3752 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3754 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3755 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3757 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3758 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3761 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3763 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3765 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3766 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3768 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3769 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3770 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3772 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3773 changes with a special face.
3775 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3776 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3777 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3779 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3781 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3782 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3783 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3784 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3785 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3787 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3788 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3789 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3791 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3792 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3793 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3794 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3795 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3796 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3797 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3798 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3799 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3801 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3802 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3803 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3804 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3805 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3808 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3809 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3810 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3811 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3812 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3813 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3815 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3816 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3817 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3818 was not documented clearly before.
3820 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3821 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3823 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3825 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3826 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3827 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3828 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3830 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3831 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3832 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3834 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3836 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3837 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3839 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3840 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3843 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3844 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3845 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3846 file names and attributes are returned.
3848 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3849 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3850 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3851 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3854 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3855 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3857 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3859 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3860 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3861 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3864 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3865 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3868 The new function process-running-child-p
3869 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3870 terminal to its own child process.
3872 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3873 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3874 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3875 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3877 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3878 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3880 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3881 :included is an alias for :visible.
3883 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3884 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3885 to move or copy menu entries.
3887 ** Multibyte editing changes
3889 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3890 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3891 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3892 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3893 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3894 (setq char (sref str idx)
3895 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3896 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3898 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3899 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3900 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3902 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3903 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3904 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3906 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3908 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3909 across the boundary.
3911 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3912 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3913 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3914 contains 8-bit characters.
3915 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3916 contains invalid characters.
3918 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3919 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3920 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3921 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3924 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3925 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3926 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3927 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3929 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3930 compose Thai characters in a string.
3932 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3933 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3934 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3935 menus should always use the third argument.
3937 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3938 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3939 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3940 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3942 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3943 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3944 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3945 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3947 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3948 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3949 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3952 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3954 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3955 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3956 requested feature cannot be loaded.
3958 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3959 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
3960 means to clear out that attribute.
3962 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3963 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3965 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3966 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3967 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3968 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3970 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
3971 the gap of the current buffer.
3973 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
3974 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
3977 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
3978 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
3979 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
3980 it back in after any modifications have been made.
3982 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
3984 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
3985 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
3986 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
3987 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
3988 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
3990 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
3991 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
3992 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
3993 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
3994 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
3996 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
3997 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
3998 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4000 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4001 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4002 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4003 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4004 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4007 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4008 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4009 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4010 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4012 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4014 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4015 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4016 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4017 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4019 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4020 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4021 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4022 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4023 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4024 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4025 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4028 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4031 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4032 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4033 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4034 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4035 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4037 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4038 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4039 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4040 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4042 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4043 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4044 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4045 something that most users not do.
4047 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4048 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4049 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4052 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4055 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4056 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4057 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4058 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4061 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4062 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4063 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4064 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4065 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4068 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4069 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4070 to be confused by TeX commands.
4072 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4073 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4074 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4075 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4077 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4078 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4079 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4080 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4081 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4083 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4084 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4086 ** Changes in input method usage.
4088 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4089 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4092 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4094 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4095 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4097 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4098 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4100 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4102 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4104 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4105 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4107 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4108 given in the following case:
4109 o When you are using a complex input method.
4110 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4112 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4113 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4114 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4115 setting it to t is helpful.
4117 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4119 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4121 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4122 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4123 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4124 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4127 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4128 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4129 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4132 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4134 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4136 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4137 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4139 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4140 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4141 its owner and group.
4143 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4144 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4146 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4147 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4149 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4150 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4151 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4152 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4154 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4155 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4156 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4157 for writing keyboard macros.
4159 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4160 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4161 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4162 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4163 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4166 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4168 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4169 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4172 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4173 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4174 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4175 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4177 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4178 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4179 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4181 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4182 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4183 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4184 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4186 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4187 failure if the command produces no output.
4189 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4190 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4193 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4194 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4195 function and variable names.
4197 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4198 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4199 file-coding-system-alist.
4201 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4202 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4203 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4204 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4205 according to the current fontset.
4207 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4209 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4210 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4211 nonascii-insert-offset.
4213 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4214 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4215 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4216 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4218 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4219 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4221 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4222 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4224 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4225 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4228 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4229 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4231 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4232 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4233 all variables that have documentation.
4235 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4236 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4237 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4238 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4239 it should show; the default is 20.
4241 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4242 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4245 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4246 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4247 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4248 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4249 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4250 Newly added options are included as well.
4252 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4253 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4254 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4256 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4259 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4260 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4262 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4263 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4266 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4267 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4270 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4271 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4272 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4273 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4276 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4278 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4279 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4280 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4282 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4283 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4284 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4289 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4290 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4292 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4293 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4295 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4296 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4298 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4299 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4300 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4301 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4302 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4303 made invisible again.
4305 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4307 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4308 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4309 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4312 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4313 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4314 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4315 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4316 rmail-default-body-file.
4318 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4319 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4320 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4322 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4323 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4324 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4326 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4327 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4328 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4329 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4330 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4331 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4333 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4334 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4335 provided by feedmail are:
4337 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4338 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4339 there is also a queue for draft messages
4341 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4342 be prompted for confirmation
4344 **** does smart filling of address headers
4346 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4347 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4348 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4350 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4351 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4352 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4353 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4357 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4358 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4360 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4361 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4363 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4364 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4365 for a specified regexp.
4369 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4372 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4373 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4376 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4377 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4378 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4379 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4381 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4382 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4383 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4384 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4385 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4387 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4388 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4389 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4390 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4391 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4393 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4394 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4395 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4396 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4398 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4399 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4400 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4402 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4403 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4404 session to resolve them.
4406 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4407 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4408 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4411 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4412 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4413 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4414 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4415 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4416 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4419 ** Changes in Font Lock
4421 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4422 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4423 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4424 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4425 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4427 ** Frame name display changes
4429 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4430 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4431 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4432 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4434 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4435 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4438 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4440 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4441 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4442 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4444 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4446 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4447 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4448 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4450 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4451 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4454 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4455 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4456 previously sent input.
4458 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4459 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4460 as the search string.
4462 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4463 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4467 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4468 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4469 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4472 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4473 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4474 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4475 style is still the default however.
4477 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4479 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4480 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4481 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4483 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4484 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4486 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4487 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4489 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4490 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4492 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4493 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4495 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4496 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4497 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4498 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4500 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4502 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4503 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4504 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4506 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4507 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4508 expanding dynamically.
4510 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4511 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4513 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4514 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4515 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4516 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4518 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4520 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4522 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4523 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4524 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4525 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4526 against the first word in the title.
4528 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4529 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4530 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4531 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4532 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4533 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4535 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4536 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4537 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4538 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4540 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4542 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4543 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4544 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4545 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4546 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4547 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4549 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4550 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4552 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4553 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4554 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4556 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4557 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4561 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4562 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4563 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4565 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4566 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4567 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4568 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4571 o URLs are automatically skipped
4572 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4574 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4576 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4578 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4579 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4580 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4581 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4583 *** New recursive parser.
4585 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4586 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4587 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4589 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4591 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4592 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4593 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4595 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4597 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4599 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4601 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4603 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4605 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4606 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4608 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4610 *** References to external documents.
4612 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4613 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4614 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4615 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4616 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4617 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4618 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4620 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4622 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4623 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4625 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4626 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4628 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4630 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4631 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4633 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4635 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4636 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4637 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4638 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4639 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4640 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4643 *** Support for the varioref package
4645 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4649 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4650 and citations are created. These hooks are
4651 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4652 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4654 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4656 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4657 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4659 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4661 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4662 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4665 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4667 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4668 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4669 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4670 directories that contain the same file name.
4672 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4673 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4674 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4675 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4676 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4677 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4678 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4681 ** New modes and packages
4683 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4684 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4685 it, but some do not.
4687 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4690 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4691 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4694 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4696 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4697 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4698 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4699 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4701 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4702 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4703 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4705 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4706 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4707 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4708 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4709 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4712 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4713 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4715 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4716 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4717 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4718 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4720 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4722 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4723 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4724 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4725 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4726 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4727 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4728 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4729 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4730 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4731 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4732 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4734 Platform-specific modes:
4736 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4737 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4738 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4739 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4740 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4741 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4742 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4743 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4744 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4746 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4748 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4749 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4750 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4751 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4753 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4754 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4755 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4757 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4758 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4759 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4760 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4762 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4763 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4764 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4767 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4768 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4769 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4770 current input method for reading this one event.
4772 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4773 now control whether to output certain characters as
4774 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4775 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4776 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4777 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4779 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4781 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4782 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4784 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4785 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4786 always increases point by 1.
4788 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4789 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4791 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4793 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4794 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4795 default value changed. For example,
4797 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4802 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4805 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4806 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4807 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4808 `:version' in the top level group.
4810 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4812 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4813 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4815 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4816 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4817 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4820 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4821 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4824 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4825 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4826 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4828 ** Frame-local variables.
4830 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4831 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4832 local bindings for that variable.
4834 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4835 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4836 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4839 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4840 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4841 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4842 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4844 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4845 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4846 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4847 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4849 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4850 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4851 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4852 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4853 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4855 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4856 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4857 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4858 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4860 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4861 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4863 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4864 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4865 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4867 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4868 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4869 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4870 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4872 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4873 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4876 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4877 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4878 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4879 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4880 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4882 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4883 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4884 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4885 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4887 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4888 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4889 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4890 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4891 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4893 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4894 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4895 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4896 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4898 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4899 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4900 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4902 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4903 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4904 was directed to display this buffer.
4906 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4907 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4908 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4909 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4910 set-window-configuration.
4912 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4913 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4914 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4915 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4917 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4918 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4919 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4921 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4922 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4923 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4925 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4926 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4928 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4929 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4931 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4932 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4933 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4935 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4936 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4937 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4938 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4942 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4943 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4946 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4947 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4948 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4949 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4950 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4952 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
4954 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4955 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4956 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4957 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4960 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4961 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4962 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4963 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4964 The supported properties include
4966 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4968 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4969 item should appear in the menu.
4971 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
4972 which will be REAL-BINDING.
4973 It should return a binding to use instead.
4975 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
4976 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
4977 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
4978 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
4979 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
4982 This means that the command normally has no
4983 keyboard equivalent.
4984 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
4985 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
4986 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
4987 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
4988 value says whether this button is currently selected.
4990 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
4991 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
4993 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
4997 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
4998 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
4999 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5000 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5002 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5004 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5005 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5006 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5007 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5008 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5009 forward, away from the user.
5011 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5013 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5014 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5015 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5016 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5017 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5019 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5021 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5022 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5023 that were dragged and dropped.
5025 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5027 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5029 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5030 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5031 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5033 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5034 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5035 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5037 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5038 in Emacs 19 and before.
5040 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5041 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5043 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5044 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5045 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5046 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5048 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5049 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5050 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5051 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5052 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5054 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5055 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5056 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5057 consistent with the new representation.
5059 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5060 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5061 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5062 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5064 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5065 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5066 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5068 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5069 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5070 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5072 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5073 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5074 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5076 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5077 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5079 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5080 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5082 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5083 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5084 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5085 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5087 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5088 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5090 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5091 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5092 buffer or string being searched.
5094 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5095 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5096 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5097 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5098 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5099 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5100 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5102 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5104 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5105 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5106 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5107 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5108 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5109 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5110 define-coding-system-alias.
5112 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5113 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5114 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5115 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5116 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5117 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5118 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5121 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5122 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5123 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5124 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5126 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5127 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5128 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5129 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5131 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5132 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5133 This function requires a user interaction.
5135 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5136 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5137 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5138 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5139 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5140 select-safe-coding-system.
5142 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5143 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5144 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5147 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5148 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5149 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5151 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5152 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5153 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5154 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5156 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5157 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5158 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5161 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5162 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5164 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5165 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5166 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5167 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5168 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5169 range of characters.
5171 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5172 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5174 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5175 in the current buffer at position POS.
5177 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5178 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5179 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5180 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5181 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5182 binding input-method-function to nil.
5184 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5185 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5186 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5187 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5188 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5190 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5191 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5193 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5194 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5196 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5197 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5198 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5199 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5200 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5202 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5204 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5205 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5206 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5209 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5210 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5212 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5213 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5214 in your .emacs file.)
5216 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5217 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5219 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5220 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5222 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5223 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5226 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5227 delete the character before point, as usual.
5229 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5230 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5231 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5233 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5234 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5235 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5236 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5237 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5240 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5241 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5242 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5243 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5244 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5246 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5247 and is an alias for it.
5249 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5250 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5252 ** Scrolling changes
5254 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5255 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5257 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5258 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5261 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5262 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5263 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5264 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5266 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5267 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5268 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5269 recenters the window.
5271 ** International character set support (MULE)
5273 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5274 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5275 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5276 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5277 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5278 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5280 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5281 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5282 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5283 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5284 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5286 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5287 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5288 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5289 language, to make it possible to type them.
5291 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5292 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5294 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5295 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5297 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5299 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5301 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5302 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5303 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5304 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5305 characters for their work until they want to change.
5309 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5310 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5311 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5312 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5313 support several input methods.
5315 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5316 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5319 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5320 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5321 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5322 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5323 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5326 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5327 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5328 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5329 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5330 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5332 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5333 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5334 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5335 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5337 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5338 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5339 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5340 the first guess is wrong.
5342 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5343 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5345 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5346 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5347 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5348 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5350 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5351 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5352 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5353 translate automatically to and from either one.
5355 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5357 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5358 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5359 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5362 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5363 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5364 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5365 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5367 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5368 character conversion as well.
5370 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5372 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5373 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5374 requires using many fonts.
5376 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5377 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5379 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5380 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5381 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5382 you would use a font.
5384 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5385 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5386 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5388 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5389 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5390 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5391 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5392 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5394 *** Defining fontsets.
5396 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5397 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5398 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5400 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5401 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5402 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5403 standard fontset are created automatically.
5405 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5406 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5407 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5408 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5409 name is `fontset-startup'.
5411 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5412 The resource value should have this form:
5413 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5414 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5415 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5416 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5417 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5418 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5419 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5420 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5421 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5423 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5424 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5425 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5427 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5428 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5430 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5431 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5432 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5433 Here is the substitution rule:
5434 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5435 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5436 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5437 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5438 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5440 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5441 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5442 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5444 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5445 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5446 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5447 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5450 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5451 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5453 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5454 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5455 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5456 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5457 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5458 system for new files that you create.
5460 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5461 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5462 whole Emacs session.
5464 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5465 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5466 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5468 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5469 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5470 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5471 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5472 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5474 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5475 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5476 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5477 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5478 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5480 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5481 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5483 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5484 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5486 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5487 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5489 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5490 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5491 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5492 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5495 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5496 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5497 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5498 translated into that character code.
5500 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5501 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5503 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5505 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5506 the coding system for keyboard input.
5508 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5509 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5510 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5512 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5514 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5515 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5516 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5517 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5518 designed to work with terminals.
5520 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5521 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5522 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5523 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5524 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5525 in the corresponding buffer.
5527 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5529 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5530 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5531 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5533 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5534 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5535 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5538 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5539 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5541 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5542 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5543 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5544 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5546 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5547 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5548 related information.
5550 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5551 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5554 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5555 information about the support for a particular language.
5556 You specify the language as an argument.
5558 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5559 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5562 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5563 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5564 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5565 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5567 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5569 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5570 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5571 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5572 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5573 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5574 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5575 K euc-korea (Korean)
5578 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5581 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5582 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5583 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5587 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5588 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5589 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5590 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5592 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5593 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5595 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5596 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5597 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5598 Rmail files themselves.
5600 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5601 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5603 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5606 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5607 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5608 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5609 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5610 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5612 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5613 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5614 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5617 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5618 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5619 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5620 without any conversion.
5622 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5623 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5624 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5625 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5627 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5628 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5630 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5631 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5633 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5634 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5636 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5637 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5638 in the buffer before point.
5640 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5641 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5644 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5645 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5647 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5649 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5650 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5652 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5653 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5654 can become a bottleneck.
5656 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5657 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5658 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5659 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5660 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5661 so useful that the change is worth while.
5663 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5664 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5665 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5666 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5668 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5669 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5672 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5673 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5674 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5676 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5677 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5678 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5680 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5681 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5682 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5684 ** Changes in View mode.
5686 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5687 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5689 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5690 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5692 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5695 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5696 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5698 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5699 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5700 not just the selected window.
5702 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5703 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5704 turns View mode on or off.
5706 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5707 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5708 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5710 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5711 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5713 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5714 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5715 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5716 which version to compare with.
5718 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5719 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5721 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5722 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5723 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5724 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5726 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5727 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5728 blocks, all of them or none.
5730 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5731 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5734 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5735 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5736 However, the mode will not be changed if
5737 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5738 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5739 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5740 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5742 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5744 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5745 these commands do not change the major mode.
5747 ** M-x occur changes.
5749 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5750 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5752 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5753 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5754 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5756 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5757 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5758 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5759 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5760 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5762 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5763 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5764 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5765 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5767 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5768 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5769 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5771 ** Outline mode changes.
5773 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5775 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5777 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5778 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5779 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5782 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5783 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5786 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5787 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5789 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5791 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5792 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5793 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5794 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5796 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5797 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5798 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5800 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5801 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5804 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5805 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5806 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5807 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5809 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5810 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5811 can be. The default value is 30.
5813 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5815 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5816 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5817 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5818 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5819 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5822 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5823 compose-mail-other-frame.
5825 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5826 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5827 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5828 buffer that shows the original message.
5830 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5831 with separator lines around the contents.
5833 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5834 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5835 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5836 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5838 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5840 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5841 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5842 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5843 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5845 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5846 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5849 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5850 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5853 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5854 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5855 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5856 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5858 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5859 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5860 be taken to be magic.
5862 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5863 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5864 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5866 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5867 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5869 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5870 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5872 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5874 new key dired.el binding old key
5875 ------- ---------------- -------
5876 * c dired-change-marks c
5878 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5879 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5880 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5882 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5883 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5884 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5885 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5886 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5887 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5891 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5892 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5893 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5894 each time you run it.
5896 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5897 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5899 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5900 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5901 means to move in the opposite direction.
5903 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5904 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5906 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5907 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5908 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5909 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5914 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5916 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5919 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5920 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5922 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5925 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5927 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5929 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5931 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5932 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5933 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5935 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5937 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5939 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5940 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5942 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5943 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5944 used to pick articles.
5946 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5947 another have been added.
5949 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5951 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5952 generating lines in buffers.
5954 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5957 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5959 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5961 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5963 *** Scores can be decayed.
5965 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5967 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5968 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5970 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
5973 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
5975 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
5976 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
5978 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
5980 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
5981 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
5983 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
5984 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
5986 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
5989 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
5990 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
5992 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
5994 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
5996 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
5998 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6000 Use the `Y c' command.
6002 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6004 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6006 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6008 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6009 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6011 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6013 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6015 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6016 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6018 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6020 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6021 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6022 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6023 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6026 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6027 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6028 particular news group. This can be done by:
6030 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6032 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6033 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6034 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6035 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6036 for reading and posting).
6038 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6039 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6040 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6041 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6044 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6045 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6047 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6048 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6049 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6050 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6051 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6053 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6054 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6058 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6059 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6060 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6061 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6062 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6065 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6066 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6067 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6068 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6069 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6070 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6072 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6073 of the current buffer.
6075 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6076 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6077 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6079 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6080 style that the Python developers like.
6082 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6083 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6084 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6088 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6089 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6090 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6092 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6093 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6096 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6097 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6099 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6100 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6101 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6102 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6104 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6105 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6107 ** Calendar changes.
6109 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6110 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6111 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6115 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6117 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6119 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6120 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6121 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6122 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6123 It defaults to `letter'.
6124 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6126 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6127 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6128 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6130 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6131 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6134 *** Horizontal layout
6136 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6137 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6138 All are measured in points.
6142 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6143 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6144 All are measured in points.
6148 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6149 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6150 margin above the text.
6152 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6153 framing box is printed around the header.
6155 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6156 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6158 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6159 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6160 `ps-header-font-size'.
6164 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6165 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6166 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6167 elements to this alist.
6169 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6170 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6172 ** hideshow changes.
6174 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6177 *** Support for java-mode added.
6179 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6180 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6182 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6183 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6184 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6186 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6187 robust and a lot faster.
6189 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6191 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6192 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6193 documentation for more details.
6195 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6197 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6198 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6199 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6200 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6201 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6203 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6204 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6205 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6206 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6212 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6213 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6214 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6215 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6216 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6217 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6219 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6221 *** Maximum decoration
6223 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6224 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6225 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6226 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6227 to get the old behavior.
6231 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6233 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6234 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6236 *** Configurable support
6238 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6239 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6240 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6241 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6242 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6243 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6244 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6246 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6247 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6248 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6250 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6252 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6253 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6256 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6258 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6264 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6265 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6266 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6267 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6269 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6271 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6272 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6273 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6275 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6277 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6278 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6279 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6280 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6281 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6282 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6283 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6285 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6286 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6287 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6288 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6289 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6290 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6292 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6294 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6295 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6296 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6297 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6299 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6302 ** Ada mode changes.
6304 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6305 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6306 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6307 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6310 *** There are two new commands:
6311 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6312 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6314 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6315 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6316 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6318 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6319 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6320 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6322 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6323 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6324 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6325 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6327 ** Scheme mode changes.
6329 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6330 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6331 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6332 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6335 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6336 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6337 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6338 variables as buffer-local variables.
6340 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6343 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6345 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6346 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6347 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6348 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6350 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6351 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6354 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6355 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6356 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6357 option takes precedence.
6359 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6360 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6361 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6363 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6364 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6367 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6368 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6370 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6371 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6374 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6375 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6376 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6377 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6378 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6379 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6381 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6382 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6383 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6384 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6386 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6387 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6388 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6389 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6390 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6392 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6393 since it applies only to the current frame.
6395 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6396 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6397 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6399 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6400 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6401 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6402 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6403 instead of just the file you are editing.
6407 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6408 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6409 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6410 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6411 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6414 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6415 knows which kind of label is needed.
6417 C-c ) reftex-reference
6418 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6419 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6421 C-c [ reftex-citation
6422 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6423 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6425 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6426 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6429 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6430 can quickly jump to every section.
6432 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6433 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6434 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6435 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6436 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6438 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6440 *** Info documentation is now available.
6442 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6443 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6445 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6446 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6448 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6449 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6451 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6452 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6453 appropriate functions.
6455 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6456 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6458 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6461 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6462 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6464 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6467 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6468 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6469 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6471 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6472 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6473 prefixed with `ALT'.
6475 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6476 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6477 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6480 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6481 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6482 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6484 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6485 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6487 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6488 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6489 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6491 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6493 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6495 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6498 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6499 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6502 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6505 *** Added support for imenu.
6507 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6508 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6509 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6510 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6512 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6513 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6515 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6517 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6519 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6520 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6521 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6524 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6525 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6527 ** browse-url changes
6529 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6530 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6531 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6532 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6533 customization variables.
6535 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6537 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6538 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6539 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6543 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6544 pops up the Info file for this command.
6546 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6547 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6548 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6551 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6552 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6553 files in the same directory.
6555 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6556 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6557 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6561 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6562 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6564 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6565 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6566 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6567 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6568 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6569 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6570 color when Viper is in insert state.
6571 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6572 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6573 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6577 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6578 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6579 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6580 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6581 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6583 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6585 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6586 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6588 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6589 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6590 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6592 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6593 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6594 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6595 methods and protocols.
6597 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6598 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6599 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6602 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6603 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6604 at least M times and as many as N times.
6606 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6607 in files has changed slightly.
6609 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6610 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6611 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6612 with old time-stamp-format values.
6614 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6615 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6616 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6619 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6620 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6621 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6622 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6623 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6624 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6626 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6627 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6628 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6630 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6631 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6632 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6633 recommended now will continue to work then.
6635 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6638 ** There are some additional major modes:
6640 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6641 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6642 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6644 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6645 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6648 ** New Lisp packages include:
6650 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6652 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6653 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6655 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6657 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6660 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6661 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6664 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6665 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6666 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6667 strings or comments.
6669 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6670 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6671 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6672 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6675 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6676 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6678 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6679 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6681 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6683 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6684 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6686 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6688 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6690 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6692 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6693 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6695 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6696 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6697 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6698 original place after inserting the copy.
6700 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6703 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6704 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6705 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6707 Enable mouse-drag with:
6708 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6710 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6712 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6713 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6715 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6716 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6720 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6721 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6722 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6723 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6724 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6725 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6726 instance) and vice versa.
6728 To use this package load it using
6729 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6730 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6731 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6732 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6733 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6734 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6736 *** Interface to ph.
6738 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6740 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6741 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6744 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6746 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6747 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6748 while the real cursor does not move.
6750 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6751 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6753 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6754 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6758 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6759 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6760 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6761 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6763 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6765 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6767 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6769 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6770 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6771 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6772 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6773 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6775 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6776 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6777 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6778 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6779 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6780 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6782 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6784 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6785 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6786 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6787 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6789 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6790 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6792 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6793 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6796 ** Basic Lisp changes
6798 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6799 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6801 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6802 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6805 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6807 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6809 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6810 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6812 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6813 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6816 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6818 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6820 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6822 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6823 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6824 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6827 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6828 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6829 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6831 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6832 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6833 adding one of these suffixes.
6835 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6836 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6837 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6839 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6840 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6842 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6844 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6845 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6847 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6848 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6850 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6852 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6853 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6855 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6856 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6857 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6858 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6860 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6861 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6864 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6865 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6866 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6869 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6870 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6873 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6875 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6876 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6877 Then it returns that string.
6879 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6881 (with-output-to-string
6882 (princ "The buffer is ")
6883 (princ (buffer-name)))
6885 returns "The buffer is foo".
6887 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6890 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6891 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6892 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6894 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6895 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6897 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6898 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6899 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6900 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6901 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6902 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6904 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6905 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6906 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6909 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6910 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6911 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6912 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6913 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6915 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6916 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6917 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6918 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6920 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6921 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6923 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6925 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6926 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6927 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6928 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6931 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6932 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6935 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6937 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6938 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6939 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6940 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6941 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6943 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6945 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6946 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6947 more than the number of characters.
6949 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6950 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6951 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6952 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6953 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6954 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6956 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6957 and returns a string containing those characters.
6959 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6960 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6961 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6962 character, sref signals an error.
6964 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6965 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6966 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6968 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6969 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
6970 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6972 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
6973 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
6974 to a vector of the characters in it.
6976 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
6977 of a string. You call it as follows:
6979 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
6981 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
6982 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
6983 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
6984 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
6985 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
6987 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
6988 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6990 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
6991 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
6993 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
6994 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
6995 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
6996 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
6998 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7000 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7002 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7003 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7004 are not included in the resulting value.
7006 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7007 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7008 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7009 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7011 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7012 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7013 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7014 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7015 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7016 column START-COLUMN.
7018 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7019 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7020 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7021 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7022 changed text, before the change.
7024 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7025 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7026 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7028 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7030 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7032 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7033 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7035 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7036 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7037 which identify the character within that character set.
7039 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7040 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7041 opposite of split-char.
7043 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7044 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7046 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7047 of all the characters in a string.
7049 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7050 and specifying coding systems.
7052 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7053 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7054 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7055 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7056 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7057 as what to do about code conversion.)
7059 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7060 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7062 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7063 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7064 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7066 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7067 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7068 to match against a file name.
7070 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7071 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7072 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7073 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7074 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7075 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7077 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7078 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7080 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7081 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7083 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7084 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7085 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7088 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7089 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7090 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7091 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7092 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7093 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7095 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7096 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7098 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7099 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7100 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7101 start the subprocess.
7103 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7104 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7105 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7106 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7107 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7109 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7110 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7113 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7114 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7115 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7116 connection permanently or until overridden.
7118 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7119 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7120 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7121 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7122 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7123 system for one operation at a time.
7125 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7126 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7128 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7129 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7130 The value is a cons cell,
7131 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7132 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7133 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7134 input to the subprocess.
7136 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7137 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7139 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7140 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7141 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7143 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7144 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7145 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7146 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7149 Thus, instead of writing
7151 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7152 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7154 you would now write this:
7156 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7157 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7161 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7162 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7163 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7164 for a description of them.
7166 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7167 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7169 (defgroup ispell nil
7170 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7173 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7174 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7175 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7176 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7177 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7179 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7180 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7181 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7182 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7183 first-level subgroups.
7185 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7187 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7188 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7192 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7193 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7194 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7195 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7196 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7197 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7199 ** Text property changes
7201 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7204 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7205 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7206 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7207 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7208 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7210 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7211 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7212 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7213 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7215 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7216 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7217 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7219 ** Changes in invisibility features
7221 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7222 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7223 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7224 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7225 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7226 make the overlay visible.
7228 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7229 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7230 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7231 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7232 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7233 t when it should hide it.
7235 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7237 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7238 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7239 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7240 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7241 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7242 Here is an example of how to do this:
7244 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7245 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7246 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7247 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7250 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7253 ;; When done with the overlays:
7254 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7256 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7258 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7260 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7261 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7262 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7263 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7265 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7266 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7267 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7269 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7270 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7272 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7273 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7275 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7276 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7277 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7279 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7280 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7281 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7282 determine the syntax type of the character.
7284 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7285 of the current buffer.
7287 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7288 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7289 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7291 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7292 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7293 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7294 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7295 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7297 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7300 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7301 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7302 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7304 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7305 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7306 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7307 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7308 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7310 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7311 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7312 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7314 ** Changes in face features
7316 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7317 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7319 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7320 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7322 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7323 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7325 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7326 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7328 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7329 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7330 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7331 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7334 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7335 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7337 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7339 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7340 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7341 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7342 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7344 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7347 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7348 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7350 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7351 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7353 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7354 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7356 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7357 character code conversion as well as other things.
7359 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7360 (formerly it did not).
7362 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7363 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7365 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7366 instead of constant strings.
7368 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7369 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7370 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7372 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7373 in the same way as before.
7375 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7376 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7377 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7379 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7380 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7381 else, and returns nil.
7383 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7384 directory cannot be listed.
7386 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7388 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7389 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7390 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7391 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7394 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7395 It is available through the history command M-n.
7397 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7398 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7399 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7400 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7401 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7403 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7404 argument in this way.
7406 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7407 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7408 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7410 ** Echo area features
7412 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7413 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7414 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7415 after the echo area is cleared.
7417 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7418 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7420 ** Keyboard input features
7422 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7423 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7425 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7426 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7429 ** Frame-related changes
7431 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7432 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7433 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7435 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7436 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7437 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7439 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7440 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7441 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7442 in the selected frame.
7444 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7445 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7446 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7448 ** X Windows features
7450 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7451 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7452 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7454 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7455 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7457 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7458 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7459 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7461 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7462 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7464 ** Subprocess features
7466 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7467 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7470 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7471 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7473 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7474 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7476 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7477 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7479 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7480 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7481 goes after the other menu items.
7483 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7484 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7485 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7488 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7489 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7491 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7492 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7495 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7496 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7497 but its hook is still run.
7499 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7500 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7502 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7503 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7504 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7506 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7507 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7508 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7511 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7512 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7514 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7515 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7516 functions like display-time.
7518 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7519 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7521 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7522 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7523 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7525 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7526 if there is an error in compilation.
7528 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7529 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7530 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7531 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7533 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7534 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7535 the *scratch* buffer.
7537 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7538 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7539 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7540 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7542 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7543 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7544 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7546 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7547 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7548 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7549 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7551 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7552 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7553 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7555 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7556 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7557 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7558 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7559 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7562 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7563 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7564 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7565 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7567 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7568 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7569 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7570 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7572 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7574 ** imenu.el changes.
7576 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7577 item from menu created by imenu.
7579 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7580 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7581 select one of those items.
7583 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7585 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7587 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7588 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7590 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7591 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7592 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7594 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7596 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7597 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7599 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7600 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7601 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7602 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7603 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7606 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7607 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7609 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7610 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7611 as in previous Emacs versions.
7613 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7614 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7615 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7618 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7619 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7620 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7621 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7624 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7625 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7626 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7627 line and then executing the macro.
7629 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7631 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7632 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7633 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7638 *** Font Lock support modes
7640 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7641 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7642 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7643 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7644 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7646 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7648 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7654 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7655 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7656 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7657 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7658 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7659 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7660 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7662 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7664 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7666 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7668 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7670 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7673 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7678 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7679 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7680 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7681 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7683 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7684 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7686 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7687 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7690 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7691 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7693 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7695 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7697 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7699 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7702 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7704 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7706 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7708 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7710 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7713 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7715 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7717 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7719 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7721 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7723 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7725 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7727 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7730 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7732 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7735 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7737 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7738 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7740 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7742 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7744 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7746 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7748 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7751 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7753 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7754 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7756 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7757 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7758 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7760 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7761 articles with the `*' command.
7763 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7765 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7767 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7769 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7771 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7772 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7774 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7777 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7779 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7781 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7783 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7785 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7787 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7789 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7791 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7793 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7795 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7796 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7798 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7801 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7803 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7804 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7806 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7808 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7810 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7812 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7815 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7817 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7819 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7820 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7822 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7824 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7826 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7828 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7830 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7832 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7835 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7837 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7838 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7839 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7842 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7845 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7848 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7849 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7852 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7853 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7854 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7855 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7856 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7859 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7861 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7863 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7864 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7865 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7866 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7867 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7869 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7870 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7871 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7873 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7875 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7876 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7877 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7878 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7879 chapter of the manual for details.
7881 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7882 customization variables take effect.
7884 ** Marking with the mouse.
7886 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7887 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7888 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7890 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7892 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7894 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7895 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7897 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7898 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7899 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7900 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7901 applications, these problems are significant.
7903 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7904 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7905 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7906 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7907 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7909 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7910 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7912 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7913 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7914 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7915 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7916 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7917 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7919 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7921 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7922 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7923 minibuffer contains.
7925 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7927 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7928 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7929 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7930 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7932 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7933 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7934 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7935 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7937 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7938 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7940 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7941 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7942 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7944 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7945 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7946 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7947 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7949 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7951 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7952 to replace the characters it "deletes".
7954 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7956 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7957 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7958 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7959 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7960 immediately after the selected one.
7962 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7963 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7965 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7967 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7968 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7969 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
7970 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
7973 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
7974 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
7977 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
7978 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
7979 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
7980 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
7981 now that the bug is fixed.
7983 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
7985 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
7986 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
7987 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
7988 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
7990 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
7991 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
7992 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
7993 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
7995 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
7996 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
7997 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
7999 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8000 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8001 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8002 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8005 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8006 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8008 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8009 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8010 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8011 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8013 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8014 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8015 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8016 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8017 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8018 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8020 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8021 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8022 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8023 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8025 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8026 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8027 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8029 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8030 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8031 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8032 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8033 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8034 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8035 to a limitation in font-lock).
8037 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8039 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8040 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8041 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8044 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8045 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8047 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8049 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8051 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8053 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8055 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8056 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8057 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8058 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8059 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8060 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8062 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8065 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8066 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8068 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8073 *** Global Font Lock mode
8075 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8076 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8077 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8078 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8079 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8081 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8083 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8087 *** Local Refontification
8089 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8090 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8091 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8092 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8094 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8095 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8096 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8097 above and below point.
8099 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8103 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8104 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8105 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8106 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8107 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8110 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8112 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8113 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8115 ** hide-show changes.
8117 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8118 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8121 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8122 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8124 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8125 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8126 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8130 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8131 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8133 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8134 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8136 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8138 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8139 pressing both mouse buttons.
8141 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8142 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8145 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8148 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8150 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8151 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8153 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8155 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8157 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8159 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8161 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8163 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8165 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8166 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8167 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8168 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8169 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8171 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8173 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8174 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8175 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8178 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8181 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8183 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8184 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8186 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8187 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8189 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8190 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8191 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8193 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8194 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8197 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8199 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8200 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8201 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8203 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8204 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8205 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8207 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8208 up if too much time passes.
8210 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8212 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8213 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8214 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8217 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8218 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8219 call looks like this:
8221 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8223 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8224 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8225 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8228 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8229 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8232 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8233 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8234 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8235 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8237 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8238 idle for SECS seconds.
8240 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8241 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8242 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8245 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8246 there is no answer within a certain time.
8248 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8250 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8251 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8252 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8254 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8255 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8256 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8257 arguments in between are ignored.
8259 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8260 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8262 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8263 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8264 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8265 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8268 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8269 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8270 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8271 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8272 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8273 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8275 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8276 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8277 systems with limited file name syntax.
8279 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8280 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8281 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8284 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8285 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8286 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8288 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8289 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8290 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8291 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8292 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8294 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8295 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8296 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8298 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8299 marker from its buffer position.
8301 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8302 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8303 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8305 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8306 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8307 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8308 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8309 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8310 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8312 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8313 errors that happen often during editing.
8315 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8316 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8317 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8319 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8320 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8322 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8323 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8324 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8325 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8326 and not get-buffer-window.
8328 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8329 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8330 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8332 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8333 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8334 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8335 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8336 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8337 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8338 over and over for the same text.
8340 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8342 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8343 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8345 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8348 in addition to the normal
8352 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8353 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8354 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8356 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
8358 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8359 Copyright information:
8361 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8363 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8364 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8365 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8366 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8368 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8369 of this document, or of portions of it,
8370 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8371 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8375 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"