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