1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
13 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
14 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
16 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
17 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
21 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
23 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
24 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
26 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
27 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
32 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
33 added. They are named `refcard-pl.tex' and `refcard-de.tex'.
34 Postscript files are included.
36 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
39 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
40 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
42 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
43 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
44 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
45 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
46 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
47 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
49 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
50 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
51 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
52 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
54 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
55 a version-dependent component.
57 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
58 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
59 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
60 character is still bound as before.
62 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
65 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
66 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to executable-chmod.
68 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
69 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
70 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
71 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
72 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
73 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
74 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
76 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
77 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
78 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
79 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
80 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
81 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
82 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
83 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
84 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
86 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
87 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
89 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
90 point in a pop-up window.
92 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
93 displays all characters in that character set.
95 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
96 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
98 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
101 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
103 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
104 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
106 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
107 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
108 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
109 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
111 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
112 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
113 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
114 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
116 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
117 on the display using several methods
119 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
120 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
121 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
123 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
124 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
126 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
128 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
129 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
131 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
132 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
133 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
134 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
136 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
137 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
138 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
140 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
141 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
143 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
144 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
147 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
148 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
151 ** New X resources recognized
153 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
154 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
155 is useful for debugging X problems.
159 emacs.synchronous: true
161 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
162 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
163 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
164 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
165 visual class names are
174 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
175 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
178 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
179 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
180 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
185 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
187 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
188 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
189 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
190 resource values are `true' or `on'.
194 emacs.privateColormap: true
196 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
197 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
198 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
200 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
201 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
202 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
205 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
207 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
208 all frames except the selected one.
210 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
211 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
213 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
214 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
215 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
216 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
218 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
219 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
221 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
222 read mail from the menu etc.
224 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
225 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
227 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
229 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
233 -------------------------
240 ** Changes in Outline mode.
242 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
243 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
244 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
246 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
248 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
249 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
250 use. Default is 1000.
252 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
253 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
255 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
256 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
257 several other special buffers.
259 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
260 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
263 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
264 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
266 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
267 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
268 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
270 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
271 is running in batch mode. For example,
273 (message "%s" (read t))
275 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
278 ** Faces and frame parameters.
280 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
281 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
282 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
283 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
284 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
285 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
286 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
288 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
289 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
290 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
291 `default' face and vice versa.
295 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
296 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
297 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
299 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
301 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
302 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
303 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
304 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
306 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
307 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
308 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
310 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
313 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
315 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
316 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
317 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
318 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
321 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
323 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
324 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
325 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
326 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
329 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
330 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
331 under Lisp changes, below.
333 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
335 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
336 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
339 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
340 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
341 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
342 customizing face `fringe'.
344 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
345 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
349 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
350 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
352 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
354 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
355 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
356 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
357 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
358 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
361 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
362 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
363 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
364 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
365 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
366 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
368 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
369 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
370 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
371 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
372 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
373 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
375 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
376 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
377 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
378 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
379 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
381 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
383 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
384 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
385 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
387 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
389 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
390 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
391 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
392 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
393 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
398 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
399 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
403 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
404 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
405 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
408 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
410 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
411 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
412 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
415 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
416 have to do anything to activate it.
418 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
420 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
421 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
422 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
423 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
425 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
427 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
429 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
431 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
434 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
437 ** Hscrolling in C code.
439 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
440 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
445 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
446 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
448 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
450 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
451 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
452 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
453 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
454 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
456 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
458 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
461 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
462 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
464 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
466 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
467 toggles the read-only status.
469 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
471 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
473 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
474 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
477 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
479 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
480 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
481 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
482 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
483 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
484 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
489 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
490 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
491 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
493 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
494 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
495 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
496 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
497 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
498 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
500 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
502 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
504 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
505 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
506 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
508 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
509 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
511 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
512 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
513 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
515 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
517 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
518 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
519 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
520 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
522 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
523 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
524 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
525 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
527 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
528 notably at the end of lines.
530 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
531 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
533 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
535 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
536 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
537 after each match to get the replacement text.
539 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
540 you edit the replacement string.
542 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
543 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
544 lisp-complete-symbol.
546 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
548 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
549 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
550 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
551 window size by setting the following variable:
553 - User option: max-mini-window-height
555 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
556 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
557 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
561 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
563 ** Changes to hideshow.el
565 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
566 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
568 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
570 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
571 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
572 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
573 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
574 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
575 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
577 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
578 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
579 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
580 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
582 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
584 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
585 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
586 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
587 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
588 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
590 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
591 something like this in your .emacs.
593 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
595 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
597 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
599 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
600 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
601 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
603 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
604 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
606 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
607 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
609 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
610 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
611 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
614 ** Changes in Font Lock
616 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
617 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
620 ** Comint (subshell) changes
622 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
623 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
624 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
625 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
626 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
627 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
628 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
629 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
631 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
632 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
634 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
635 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
636 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
638 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
639 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
640 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
642 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
643 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
644 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
645 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
647 ** Changes to Rmail mode
649 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
650 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
651 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
652 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
653 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
656 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
657 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
658 regexp matching your mail addresses.
660 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
661 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
662 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
663 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
664 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
666 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
669 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
670 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
673 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
674 in which folder to put messages automatically.
676 ** Changes to TeX mode
678 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
681 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
683 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
684 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
685 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
686 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
687 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
688 can be edited from that buffer.
690 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
691 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
692 `A' to use all marked entries).
694 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
695 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
697 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
698 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
699 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
702 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
703 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
704 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
705 in column 1 are always made leaves.
707 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
708 has the following new features:
710 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
711 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
712 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
713 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
715 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
716 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
717 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
718 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
719 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
722 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
727 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
728 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
729 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
731 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
732 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
733 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
734 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
738 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
739 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
740 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
742 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
743 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
746 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
747 between custom options. Example:
749 (defcustom default-input-method nil
750 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
751 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
752 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
754 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
755 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
757 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
758 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
759 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
761 ** New features in evaluation commands
763 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
764 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
765 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
766 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
767 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
769 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
770 code when called with a prefix argument.
774 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
775 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
776 spell-checks the current buffer.
780 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
781 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
782 is, delete only empty directories.
784 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
785 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
786 copy directories recursively.
788 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
789 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
790 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
792 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
793 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
796 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
797 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
798 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
799 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
800 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
802 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
805 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
806 use the -f option when sending mail.
810 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
811 current user setups (although it's believed that these
812 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
813 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
814 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
815 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
818 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
819 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
820 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
821 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
822 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
825 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
826 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
827 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
828 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
829 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
830 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
832 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
833 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
834 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
835 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
836 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
837 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
838 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
839 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
841 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
842 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
843 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
844 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
847 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
848 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
849 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
850 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
851 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
852 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
853 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
854 function documentation for more info.
856 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
857 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
858 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
859 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
860 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
861 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
862 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
863 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
865 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
867 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
868 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
870 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
871 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
872 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
873 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
874 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
877 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
878 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
879 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
882 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
883 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
884 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
885 chapter about this in the manual.
887 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
888 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
889 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
890 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
891 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
893 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
894 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
895 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
897 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
898 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
900 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
901 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
902 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
905 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
906 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
907 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
908 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
911 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
912 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
913 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
916 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
917 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
918 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
919 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
922 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
923 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
924 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
925 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
928 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
929 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
930 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
932 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
934 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
935 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
936 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
937 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
939 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
940 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
941 the column specified by comment-column.
943 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
944 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
945 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
946 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
947 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
948 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
950 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
951 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
954 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
956 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
957 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
958 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
959 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
962 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
964 ** Makefile mode changes
966 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
968 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
969 Fontlock mode is active.
973 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
974 so that searches can be resumed.
976 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
977 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
978 that started the search.
980 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
981 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
983 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
985 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
986 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
987 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
988 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
989 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
990 `secondary-selection'.
992 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
993 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
994 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
995 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
996 usual snappy response.
998 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
999 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1000 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1001 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1003 ** Changes in sort.el
1005 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1006 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1007 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1010 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1012 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1013 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1014 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1016 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1017 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1019 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1020 output ^M at the end of lines.
1022 ** Shell script mode changes.
1024 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1025 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1026 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1030 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1032 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1033 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1034 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1035 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1036 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1038 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1039 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1041 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1042 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1044 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1047 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1049 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1051 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1054 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1055 variables are tagged.
1057 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1059 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1062 ** Changes in etags.el
1064 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1065 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1066 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1068 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1069 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1071 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1072 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1073 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1074 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1076 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1078 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1079 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1081 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1083 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1084 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1085 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1087 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1088 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1090 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1091 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1093 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1094 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1095 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1097 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1098 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1099 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1100 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1102 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1103 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1104 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1106 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1108 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1110 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1111 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1112 expression from that list, are not checked.
1114 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1115 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1116 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1117 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1119 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1121 ** New modes and packages
1123 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1124 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1125 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1126 on certain projects.
1128 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1129 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1131 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1133 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1134 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1135 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1136 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1137 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1138 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1139 corresponding file is read.
1141 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1144 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1145 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1147 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1148 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1149 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1151 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1152 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1153 separate Texinfo file.
1155 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
1156 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1157 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
1158 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
1159 used to enter checkin log messages.
1161 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1162 without invoking external programs.
1164 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1165 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1166 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1167 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1168 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1170 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1171 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1173 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1174 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1176 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1177 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1178 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1179 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1180 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1183 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1184 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1185 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1186 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1188 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1189 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1190 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1192 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1195 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1197 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1199 ; comment (until end of line)
1203 $A default non-terminal
1204 $"C" default terminal
1205 $?C? default special
1206 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1207 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1208 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1209 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1210 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1211 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1212 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1213 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1214 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1215 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1216 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1217 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1218 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1219 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1220 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1222 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1224 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1225 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1226 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1227 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1228 equal signs of assignments.
1230 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1231 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1233 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1234 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1235 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1236 customize the package.
1238 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1240 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1241 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1242 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1243 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1244 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1245 which answers different needs.
1247 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1248 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1249 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1250 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1251 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1254 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1255 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1257 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1259 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1261 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1263 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1266 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1269 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1271 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1273 *** whitespace.el ???
1275 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1276 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1277 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1278 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1279 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1280 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1281 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1283 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1285 Here is an example of columns:
1288 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1289 porcupine strawberry airplane
1291 Doing the following settings:
1293 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1294 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1295 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1296 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1299 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1301 M-x delimit-columns-region
1305 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1306 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1307 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1309 delim-col has the following options:
1311 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1314 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1315 between each column.
1317 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1320 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1323 delim-col has the following commands:
1325 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1326 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1328 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1329 were operated on recently.
1331 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1333 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1334 recentf at Emacs startup.
1336 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1337 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1338 file list can be displayed:
1340 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1341 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1342 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1344 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1345 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1347 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1350 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1351 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1352 specific to Message mode.
1354 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1355 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1356 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1358 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1359 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1360 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1362 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1363 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1365 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1367 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1368 minibuffer with completion.
1370 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1371 with the diary features.
1373 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1374 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1376 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1379 ** Withdrawn packages
1381 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1382 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1384 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1386 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1389 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1390 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1392 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1393 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1396 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1399 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1401 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1402 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1404 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1406 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1407 comparison is done with `eq'.
1409 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1411 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1414 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1415 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1416 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1418 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1419 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1421 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1422 function was declared obsolete.
1424 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1425 retained as an alias).
1427 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1428 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1429 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1431 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1433 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1435 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1436 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1438 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1440 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1442 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1444 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1445 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1446 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1447 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1450 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1451 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1452 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1453 minibuffer even if it is active.
1455 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1456 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1457 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1458 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1459 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1460 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1462 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1463 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1464 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1465 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1466 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1467 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1468 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1470 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1471 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1472 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1474 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1475 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1476 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1477 Default value is nil.
1479 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1482 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1483 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1484 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1486 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1489 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1490 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1491 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1492 than replacing the local map.
1494 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1495 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1497 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1499 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1502 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1504 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1506 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1507 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1508 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1509 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1511 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1512 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1513 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1514 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1516 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1517 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1518 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1520 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1521 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1522 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1523 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1524 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1525 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1526 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1529 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1531 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1532 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1533 character set as previously.
1535 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1536 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1537 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1539 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1540 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1541 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1542 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1544 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1545 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1547 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1548 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1551 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1552 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1554 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1555 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1556 buffers and strings.
1558 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1559 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1560 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1561 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1562 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1563 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1564 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1567 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1568 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1569 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1571 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1572 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1573 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1574 may differ between buffer and string text.
1576 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1577 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1579 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1580 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1581 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1582 `composition' from STRING.
1584 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1585 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1587 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1590 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1591 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1592 character set is not used.
1594 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1595 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1596 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1599 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1600 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1601 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1604 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1605 that offset in the file before writing.
1607 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1608 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1610 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1611 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1612 from which the command was issued.
1614 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1615 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1616 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1617 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1620 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1621 to `window-buffer-height'.
1623 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1625 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1626 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1627 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1629 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1632 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1633 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1635 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1636 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1637 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1639 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1640 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1641 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1642 is currently displayed in some window.
1644 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1645 argument function's results.
1647 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1648 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1650 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1651 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1653 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1654 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1656 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1657 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1660 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1661 nil don't display a cursor
1662 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1663 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1664 others display a box cursor.
1666 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1667 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1668 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1669 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1671 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1672 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1673 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1674 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1678 (string-to-syntax "()")
1681 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1684 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1685 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1692 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1697 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1702 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1709 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1710 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1713 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1714 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1715 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1716 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1719 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1721 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1722 for a regexp in a string.
1724 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1725 `mouse-position-function'.
1727 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1728 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1730 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1731 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1734 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1737 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1738 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1741 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1742 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1743 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1744 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1748 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1749 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1752 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1753 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1754 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1755 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1758 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1759 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1760 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1761 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1764 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1765 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1766 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1769 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1770 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1773 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1775 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1776 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1777 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1781 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1782 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1785 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1786 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1789 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1790 instead of being optional.
1793 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1794 modify read-only text.
1797 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1799 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1800 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1801 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1802 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1803 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1805 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1806 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1807 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1808 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1809 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1810 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1811 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1814 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1815 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1816 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1820 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1821 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1824 ** New function `propertize'
1826 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1827 strings with text properties.
1829 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1831 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1832 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1833 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1834 specified value of that property. Example:
1836 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1839 ** push and pop macros.
1841 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1842 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1843 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1845 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1846 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1847 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1849 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1851 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1852 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1854 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1855 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1856 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1857 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1859 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1860 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1861 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1862 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1865 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1866 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1868 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1869 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1870 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1871 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1872 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1874 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1876 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1877 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1878 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1879 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1880 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1881 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1882 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1883 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1884 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1885 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1886 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1887 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1888 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1889 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1890 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1893 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1895 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1897 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1899 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1900 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1904 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1905 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1906 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1910 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1911 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1913 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1915 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1916 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1917 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1918 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1919 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1921 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1923 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1924 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1925 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1929 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
1930 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
1931 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
1932 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
1933 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1935 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1937 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1939 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1941 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1943 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1945 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1948 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1950 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1952 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1954 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1956 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1958 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1960 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1962 Returns the size of TABLE.
1964 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
1966 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1968 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1970 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1972 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1976 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1978 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1981 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1983 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1984 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1986 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1988 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1990 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1992 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1993 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1995 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1997 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1999 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2001 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2002 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2003 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2004 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2005 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2007 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2009 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2010 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2011 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2013 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2014 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2016 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2017 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2019 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2020 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2022 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2023 'case-fold-string-hash))
2025 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2028 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2030 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2031 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2032 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2035 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2037 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2038 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2041 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2042 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2043 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2044 is too short to reach that column.
2047 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2048 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2049 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2050 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2052 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2053 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2054 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2057 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2058 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2061 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2062 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2065 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2066 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2067 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2068 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2069 temporary-file-directory instead.
2072 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2073 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2074 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2075 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2078 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2079 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2082 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2084 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2085 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2086 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2089 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2091 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2092 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2093 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2094 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2095 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2096 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2098 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2099 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2100 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2101 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2104 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2106 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2107 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2108 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2111 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2112 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2116 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2118 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2119 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2122 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2125 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2127 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2128 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2131 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2133 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2134 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2140 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2141 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2143 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2144 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2145 to enable sound support.
2147 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2148 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2149 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2150 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2151 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2153 The following sound properties are supported:
2157 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2158 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2162 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2163 may be present, but not both.
2167 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2168 0..1. This property is optional.
2170 Other properties are ignored.
2172 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2174 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2177 ** Changes to garbage collection
2179 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2180 of live and free strings.
2182 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2183 strings that have been consed so far.
2186 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2190 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2192 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2195 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2197 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2199 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2200 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2201 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2202 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2203 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2205 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2206 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2209 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2212 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2214 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2215 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2216 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2217 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2220 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2222 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2223 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2224 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2225 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2227 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2228 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2230 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2231 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2232 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2233 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2234 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2235 just display it black instead.
2237 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2240 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2244 ** New face implementation.
2246 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2247 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2252 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2254 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2256 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2257 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2259 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2261 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2263 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2265 6. Foreground color.
2267 7. Background color.
2269 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2271 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2273 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2275 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2277 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2280 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2281 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2283 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2284 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2285 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2286 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2287 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2288 attributes mentioned above.
2290 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2291 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2294 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2295 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2301 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2302 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2303 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2304 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2305 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2306 results in a fully-specified face.
2309 *** Face realization.
2311 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2312 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2313 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2314 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2315 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2316 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2318 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2319 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2320 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2321 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2323 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2324 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2325 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2326 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2327 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2329 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2330 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2331 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2332 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2333 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2336 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2337 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2338 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2339 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2342 **** Clearing face caches.
2344 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2345 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2351 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2352 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2353 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2355 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2356 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2357 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2358 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2359 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2361 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2362 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2363 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2365 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2367 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2368 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2369 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2370 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2371 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2372 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2373 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2375 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2376 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2382 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2383 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2386 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2387 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2388 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2389 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2390 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2393 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2395 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2398 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2400 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2402 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2403 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2404 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2406 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2407 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2408 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2409 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2410 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2411 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2412 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2413 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2414 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2415 of the face font sort order.
2417 - Function: x-font-family-list
2419 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2420 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2421 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2422 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2424 - Variable: font-list-limit
2426 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2427 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2428 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2431 *** Setting face attributes.
2433 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2434 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2435 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2438 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2439 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2441 The following attributes are recognized:
2445 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2446 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2447 and `?' are allowed.
2451 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2452 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2453 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2454 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2458 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2463 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2464 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2465 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2469 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2470 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2473 `:foreground', `:background'
2475 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2479 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2480 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2481 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2486 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2487 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2488 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2493 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2494 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2495 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2496 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2500 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2501 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2502 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2503 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2504 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2505 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2506 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2507 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2508 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2509 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2510 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2511 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2512 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2513 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2514 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2515 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2520 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2521 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2525 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2526 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2527 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2528 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2529 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2530 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2532 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2533 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2537 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2538 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2539 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2542 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2543 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2544 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2546 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2549 *** Face attributes and X resources
2551 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2554 Face attribute X resource class
2555 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2556 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2557 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2558 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2559 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2560 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2561 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2562 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2563 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2564 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2565 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2566 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2567 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2568 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2569 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2570 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2571 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2572 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2573 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2574 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2577 *** Text property `face'.
2579 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2580 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2581 specification can be
2583 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2585 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2586 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2587 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2588 for face attribute names.
2590 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2591 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2592 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2595 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2597 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2598 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2599 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2600 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2601 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2602 used to clear the mapping table.
2604 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2606 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2607 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2608 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2609 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2610 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2611 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2612 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2613 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2614 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2615 modify their color-related behavior.
2617 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2620 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2622 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2623 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2624 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2625 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2626 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2627 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2628 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2629 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2630 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2633 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2635 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2637 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2638 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2639 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2641 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2643 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2644 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2645 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2647 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2648 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2649 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2650 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2651 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2652 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2653 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2656 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2657 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2658 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2660 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2662 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2664 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2666 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2667 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2668 constrained position if that is is different.
2670 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2671 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2672 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2673 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2674 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2675 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2676 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2677 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2678 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2680 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2681 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2682 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2683 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2684 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2686 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2687 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2689 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2691 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2693 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2694 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2695 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2697 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2699 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2700 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2701 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2702 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2703 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2705 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2707 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2708 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2709 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2710 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2711 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2713 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2715 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2716 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2717 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2719 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2721 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2722 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2723 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2728 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2729 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2730 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2731 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2733 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2734 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2735 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2736 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2739 IMAGE is an image specification.
2741 *** Image specifications
2743 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2744 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2745 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2746 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2747 described below are ignored.
2749 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2753 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2754 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2755 to use for its ascent.
2757 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2758 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2760 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2761 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2762 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2763 overlays that apply to the image.
2767 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2768 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2772 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2777 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2778 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2779 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2780 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2782 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2784 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2785 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2786 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2787 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2788 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2789 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2790 background of the image.
2794 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2795 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2796 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2797 may be present in the image specification.
2801 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2802 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2803 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2804 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2806 *** Supported image types
2808 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2810 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2811 properties supported are
2815 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2816 is the frame's foreground.
2820 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2821 the frame's background color.
2823 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2824 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2825 instead of a `:file' property.
2829 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2833 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2839 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2840 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2842 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2844 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2847 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2848 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2851 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2853 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2854 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2855 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2856 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2858 Additional image properties supported are:
2860 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2862 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2863 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2866 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2867 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2869 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2870 to display compressed images.
2872 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2874 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2875 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2878 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2880 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2881 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2884 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2886 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2887 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2890 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2892 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2893 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2895 Additional image properties supported are:
2899 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2900 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2902 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2903 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2904 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2907 (defun show-anim (file max)
2908 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2909 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2911 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2914 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2917 (goto-char (point-min))
2918 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2919 (insert-image img "x"))
2920 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2922 **** PNG, image type `png'
2924 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2925 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2928 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2930 Additional image properties supported are:
2934 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2935 integer. This is a required property.
2939 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2940 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2944 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2945 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2946 files. This is an required property.
2948 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2953 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2954 which are supported in the current configuration.
2956 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2957 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2958 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2959 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2960 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2962 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2964 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2965 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2966 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2967 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2968 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2974 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2977 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2978 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2979 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2980 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2981 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2982 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2983 of the display margins.
2985 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2986 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2987 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2988 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2994 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2995 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2996 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2997 that have a `help-echo' property.
2999 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3000 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3001 the window in which the help was found.
3003 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3004 `help-echo' text property was found.
3006 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3007 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3009 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3010 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3013 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3014 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3016 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3017 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3018 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3019 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3020 used as help string.
3022 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3023 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3024 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3027 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3029 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3030 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3032 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3033 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3034 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3035 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3038 (global-set-key [A-down]
3041 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3042 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3043 (global-set-key [A-up]
3046 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3047 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3050 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3052 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3053 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3054 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3055 is called with one argument, POS.
3057 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3058 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3059 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3060 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3061 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3064 ** Tool bar support.
3066 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3067 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3068 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3069 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3070 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3071 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3073 *** Tool bar item definitions
3075 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3076 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3077 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3079 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3080 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3081 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3082 property (see below).
3084 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3085 binding are currently ignored.
3087 The following properties are recognized:
3091 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3096 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3100 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3101 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3102 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3104 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3106 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3107 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3111 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3112 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3113 meaning of each of the four elements:
3115 Index Use when item is
3116 ----------------------------------------
3117 0 enabled and selected
3118 1 enabled and deselected
3119 2 disabled and selected
3120 3 disabled and deselected
3122 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3123 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3125 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3127 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3128 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3130 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3132 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3133 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3134 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3136 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3137 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3139 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3140 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3141 pixels. Default is 1.
3143 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3144 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3146 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3148 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3151 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3152 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3153 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3155 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3157 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3159 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3162 ** Mode line changes.
3165 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3167 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3168 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3169 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3171 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3172 a `local-map' text property.
3174 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3175 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3177 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3178 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3179 `local-map' property.
3181 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3182 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3185 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3186 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3189 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3190 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3193 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3195 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3196 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3197 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3198 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3201 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3204 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3205 position in the header-line.
3208 ** Text property `display'
3210 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3211 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3212 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3213 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3215 *** Variable width and height spaces
3217 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3218 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3219 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3220 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3221 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3222 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3223 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3225 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3226 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3227 properties described below.
3229 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3230 characters having the `display' property.
3234 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3235 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3237 - :relative-width FACTOR
3239 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3240 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3241 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3242 width of that character by FACTOR.
3246 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3247 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3249 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3253 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3256 - :relative-height FACTOR
3258 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3259 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3263 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3264 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3265 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3268 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3272 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3273 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3274 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3275 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3276 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3277 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3278 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3279 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3280 as display specification.
3282 *** Other display properties
3284 - :space-width FACTOR
3286 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3287 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3292 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3294 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3295 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3296 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3297 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3298 a font is available counts as a step.
3300 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3301 as tall as the frame's default font.
3303 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3304 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3306 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3307 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3311 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3312 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3313 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3314 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3315 `:height' subproperty.
3317 *** Conditional display properties
3319 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3320 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3321 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3322 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3323 the text having the `display' property.
3325 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3329 ** New menu separator types.
3331 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3332 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3333 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3334 to specify other menu separator types.
3336 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3338 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3341 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3343 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3345 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3347 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3349 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3351 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3353 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3355 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3357 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3359 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3360 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3362 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3364 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3366 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3368 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3370 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3372 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3374 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3376 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3378 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3380 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3382 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3384 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3386 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3388 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3390 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3391 the corresponding single-line separators.
3394 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3396 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3397 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3398 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3399 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3400 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3401 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3402 default foreground is black.
3404 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3405 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3406 `ScrollBarBackground').
3408 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3409 settings for scroll bar colors.
3412 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3413 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3416 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3417 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3418 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3419 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3420 the original window start.
3423 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3424 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3425 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3428 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3430 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3431 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3432 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3433 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3435 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3436 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3438 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3440 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3441 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3442 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3443 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3444 temporarily to nil, for example
3446 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3447 (enlarge-window 10))
3449 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3450 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3452 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3453 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3454 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3455 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3456 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3457 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3461 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3463 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3466 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3468 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3470 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3471 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3472 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3473 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3474 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3476 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3480 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3482 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3485 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3487 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3488 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3490 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3492 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3494 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3495 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3496 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3498 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3499 is the one that is used.
3501 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3502 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3503 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3504 separate from the command's regular output.
3505 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3506 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3507 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3510 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3511 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3512 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3513 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3515 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3516 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3517 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3518 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3520 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3521 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3522 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3523 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3525 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3526 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3527 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3528 they never ignore case.
3530 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3531 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3532 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3533 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3534 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3535 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3536 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3538 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3539 the same format that was used in the file before.
3541 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3542 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3544 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3545 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3546 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3548 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3549 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3550 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3551 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3552 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3553 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3554 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3556 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3557 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3558 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3559 format. You can now customize these variables.
3561 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3562 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3563 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3564 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3566 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3567 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3568 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3570 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3571 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3572 doesn't have any effect.
3574 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3577 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3578 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3579 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3581 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3582 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3583 `auto-show-mode' command.
3585 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3586 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3587 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3588 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3589 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3591 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3592 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3594 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3595 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3596 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3598 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3599 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3600 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3601 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3603 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3605 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3606 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3607 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3608 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3609 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3611 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3612 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3614 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3615 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3616 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3617 `?' on other systems.
3619 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3620 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3623 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3624 current codepage when it starts.
3628 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3629 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3630 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3631 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3632 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3633 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3637 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3638 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3640 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3641 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3642 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3643 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3644 buffer-file-coding-system.
3646 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3647 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3650 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3651 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3652 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3653 list of possible coding systems.
3657 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3658 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3659 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3660 docstring for details.
3662 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3663 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3664 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3665 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3666 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3668 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3669 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3671 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3672 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3674 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3675 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3676 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3677 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3680 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3681 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3683 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3684 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3685 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3686 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3688 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3689 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3690 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3691 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3692 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3694 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3696 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3698 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3699 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3701 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3703 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3704 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3705 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3706 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3707 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3711 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3712 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3713 Gnus manual for the full story.
3715 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3716 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3717 group, which is created automatically.
3719 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3722 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3724 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3725 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3727 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3730 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3732 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3733 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3735 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3737 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3738 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3740 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3741 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3743 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3744 control over simplification.
3746 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3748 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3751 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3753 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3755 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3756 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3757 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3759 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3760 `a' forces normal posting method.
3762 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3765 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3768 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3769 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3771 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3774 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3776 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3778 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3779 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3781 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3782 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3784 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3786 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3789 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3790 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3792 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3793 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3795 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3797 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3799 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3801 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3803 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3804 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3805 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3807 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3808 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3809 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3810 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3811 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3813 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3814 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3815 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3816 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3818 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3819 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3820 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3823 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3825 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3826 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3828 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3829 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3830 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3831 removed from the label.
3833 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3834 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3836 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3837 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3839 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3840 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3843 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3845 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3847 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3848 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3850 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3851 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3852 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3854 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3855 changes with a special face.
3857 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3858 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3859 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3861 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3863 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3864 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3865 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3866 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3867 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3869 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3870 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3871 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3873 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3874 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3875 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3876 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3877 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3878 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3879 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3880 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3881 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3883 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3884 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3885 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3886 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3887 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3890 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3891 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3892 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3893 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3894 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3895 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3897 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3898 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3899 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3900 was not documented clearly before.
3902 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3903 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3905 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3907 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3908 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3909 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3910 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3912 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3913 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3914 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3916 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3918 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3919 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3921 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3922 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3925 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3926 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3927 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3928 file names and attributes are returned.
3930 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3931 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3932 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3933 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3936 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3937 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3939 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3941 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3942 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3943 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3946 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3947 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3950 The new function process-running-child-p
3951 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3952 terminal to its own child process.
3954 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3955 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3956 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3957 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3959 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3960 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3962 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3963 :included is an alias for :visible.
3965 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3966 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3967 to move or copy menu entries.
3969 ** Multibyte editing changes
3971 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3972 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3973 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3974 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3975 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3976 (setq char (sref str idx)
3977 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3978 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3980 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3981 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3982 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3984 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3985 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3986 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3988 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3990 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3991 across the boundary.
3993 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3994 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3995 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3996 contains 8-bit characters.
3997 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3998 contains invalid characters.
4000 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4001 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4002 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4003 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4006 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4007 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4008 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4009 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4011 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4012 compose Thai characters in a string.
4014 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4015 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4016 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4017 menus should always use the third argument.
4019 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4020 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4021 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4022 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4024 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4025 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4026 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4027 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4029 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4030 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4031 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4034 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4036 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4037 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4038 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4040 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4041 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4042 means to clear out that attribute.
4044 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4045 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4047 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4048 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4049 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4050 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4052 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4053 the gap of the current buffer.
4055 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4056 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4059 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4060 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4061 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4062 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4064 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4066 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4067 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4068 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4069 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4070 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4072 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4073 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4074 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4075 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4076 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4078 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4079 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4080 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4082 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4083 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4084 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4085 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4086 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4089 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4090 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4091 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4092 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4094 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4096 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4097 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4098 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4099 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4101 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4102 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4103 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4104 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4105 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4106 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4107 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4110 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4113 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4114 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4115 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4116 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4117 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4119 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4120 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4121 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4122 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4124 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4125 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4126 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4127 something that most users not do.
4129 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4130 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4131 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4134 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4137 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4138 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4139 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4140 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4143 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4144 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4145 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4146 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4147 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4150 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4151 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4152 to be confused by TeX commands.
4154 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4155 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4156 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4157 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4159 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4160 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4161 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4162 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4163 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4165 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4166 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4168 ** Changes in input method usage.
4170 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4171 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4174 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4176 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4177 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4179 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4180 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4182 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4184 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4186 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4187 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4189 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4190 given in the following case:
4191 o When you are using a complex input method.
4192 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4194 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4195 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4196 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4197 setting it to t is helpful.
4199 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4201 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4203 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4204 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4205 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4206 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4209 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4210 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4211 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4214 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4216 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4218 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4219 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4221 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4222 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4223 its owner and group.
4225 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4226 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4228 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4229 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4231 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4232 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4233 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4234 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4236 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4237 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4238 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4239 for writing keyboard macros.
4241 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4242 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4243 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4244 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4245 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4248 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4250 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4251 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4254 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4255 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4256 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4257 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4259 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4260 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4261 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4263 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4264 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4265 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4266 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4268 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4269 failure if the command produces no output.
4271 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4272 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4275 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4276 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4277 function and variable names.
4279 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4280 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4281 file-coding-system-alist.
4283 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4284 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4285 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4286 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4287 according to the current fontset.
4289 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4291 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4292 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4293 nonascii-insert-offset.
4295 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4296 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4297 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4298 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4300 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4301 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4303 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4304 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4306 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4307 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4310 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4311 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4313 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4314 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4315 all variables that have documentation.
4317 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4318 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4319 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4320 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4321 it should show; the default is 20.
4323 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4324 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4327 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4328 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4329 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4330 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4331 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4332 Newly added options are included as well.
4334 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4335 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4336 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4338 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4341 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4342 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4344 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4345 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4348 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4349 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4352 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4353 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4354 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4355 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4358 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4360 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4361 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4362 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4364 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4365 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4366 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4371 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4372 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4374 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4375 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4377 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4378 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4380 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4381 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4382 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4383 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4384 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4385 made invisible again.
4387 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4389 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4390 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4391 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4394 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4395 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4396 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4397 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4398 rmail-default-body-file.
4400 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4401 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4402 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4404 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4405 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4406 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4408 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4409 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4410 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4411 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4412 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4413 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4415 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4416 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4417 provided by feedmail are:
4419 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4420 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4421 there is also a queue for draft messages
4423 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4424 be prompted for confirmation
4426 **** does smart filling of address headers
4428 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4429 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4430 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4432 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4433 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4434 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4435 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4439 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4440 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4442 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4443 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4445 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4446 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4447 for a specified regexp.
4451 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4454 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4455 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4458 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4459 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4460 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4461 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4463 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4464 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4465 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4466 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4467 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4469 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4470 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4471 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4472 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4473 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4475 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4476 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4477 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4478 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4480 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4481 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4482 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4484 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4485 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4486 session to resolve them.
4488 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4489 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4490 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4493 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4494 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4495 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4496 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4497 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4498 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4501 ** Changes in Font Lock
4503 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4504 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4505 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4506 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4507 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4509 ** Frame name display changes
4511 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4512 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4513 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4514 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4516 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4517 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4520 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4522 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4523 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4524 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4526 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4528 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4529 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4530 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4532 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4533 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4536 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4537 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4538 previously sent input.
4540 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4541 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4542 as the search string.
4544 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4545 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4549 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4550 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4551 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4554 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4555 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4556 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4557 style is still the default however.
4559 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4561 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4562 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4563 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4565 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4566 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4568 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4569 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4571 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4572 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4574 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4575 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4577 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4578 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4579 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4580 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4582 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4584 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4585 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4586 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4588 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4589 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4590 expanding dynamically.
4592 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4593 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4595 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4596 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4597 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4598 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4600 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4602 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4604 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4605 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4606 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4607 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4608 against the first word in the title.
4610 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4611 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4612 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4613 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4614 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4615 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4617 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4618 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4619 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4620 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4622 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4624 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4625 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4626 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4627 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4628 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4629 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4631 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4632 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4634 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4635 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4636 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4638 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4639 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4643 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4644 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4645 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4647 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4648 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4649 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4650 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4653 o URLs are automatically skipped
4654 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4656 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4658 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4660 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4661 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4662 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4663 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4665 *** New recursive parser.
4667 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4668 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4669 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4671 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4673 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4674 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4675 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4677 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4679 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4681 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4683 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4685 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4687 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4688 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4690 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4692 *** References to external documents.
4694 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4695 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4696 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4697 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4698 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4699 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4700 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4702 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4704 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4705 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4707 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4708 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4710 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4712 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4713 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4715 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4717 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4718 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4719 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4720 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4721 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4722 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4725 *** Support for the varioref package
4727 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4731 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4732 and citations are created. These hooks are
4733 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4734 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4736 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4738 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4739 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4741 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4743 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4744 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4747 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4749 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4750 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4751 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4752 directories that contain the same file name.
4754 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4755 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4756 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4757 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4758 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4759 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4760 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4763 ** New modes and packages
4765 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4766 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4767 it, but some do not.
4769 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4772 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4773 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4776 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4778 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4779 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4780 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4781 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4783 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4784 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4785 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4787 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4788 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4789 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4790 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4791 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4794 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4795 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4797 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4798 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4799 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4800 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4802 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4804 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4805 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4806 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4807 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4808 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4809 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4810 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4811 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4812 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4813 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4814 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4816 Platform-specific modes:
4818 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4819 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4820 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4821 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4822 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4823 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4824 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4825 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4826 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4828 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4830 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4831 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4832 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4833 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4835 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4836 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4837 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4839 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4840 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4841 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4842 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4844 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4845 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4846 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4849 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4850 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4851 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4852 current input method for reading this one event.
4854 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4855 now control whether to output certain characters as
4856 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4857 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4858 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4859 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4861 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4863 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4864 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4866 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4867 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4868 always increases point by 1.
4870 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4871 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4873 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4875 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4876 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4877 default value changed. For example,
4879 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4884 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4887 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4888 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4889 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4890 `:version' in the top level group.
4892 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4894 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4895 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4897 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4898 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4899 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4902 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4903 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4906 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4907 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4908 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4910 ** Frame-local variables.
4912 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4913 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4914 local bindings for that variable.
4916 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4917 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4918 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4921 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4922 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4923 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4924 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4926 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4927 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4928 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4929 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4931 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4932 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4933 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4934 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4935 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4937 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4938 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4939 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4940 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4942 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4943 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4945 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4946 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4947 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4949 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4950 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4951 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4952 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4954 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4955 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4958 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4959 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4960 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4961 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4962 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4964 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4965 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4966 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4967 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4969 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4970 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4971 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4972 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4973 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4975 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4976 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4977 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4978 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4980 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4981 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4982 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4984 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4985 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4986 was directed to display this buffer.
4988 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4989 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4990 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4991 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4992 set-window-configuration.
4994 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4995 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4996 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4997 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4999 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5000 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5001 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5003 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5004 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5005 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5007 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5008 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5010 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5011 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5013 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5014 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5015 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5017 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5018 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5019 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5020 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5024 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5025 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5028 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5029 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5030 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5031 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5032 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5034 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5036 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5037 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5038 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5039 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5042 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5043 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5044 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5045 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5046 The supported properties include
5048 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5050 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5051 item should appear in the menu.
5053 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5054 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5055 It should return a binding to use instead.
5057 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5058 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5059 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5060 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5061 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5064 This means that the command normally has no
5065 keyboard equivalent.
5066 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5067 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5068 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5069 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5070 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5072 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5073 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5075 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5079 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5080 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5081 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5082 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5084 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5086 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5087 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5088 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5089 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5090 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5091 forward, away from the user.
5093 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5095 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5096 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5097 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5098 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5099 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5101 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5103 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5104 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5105 that were dragged and dropped.
5107 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5109 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5111 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5112 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5113 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5115 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5116 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5117 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5119 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5120 in Emacs 19 and before.
5122 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5123 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5125 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5126 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5127 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5128 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5130 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5131 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5132 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5133 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5134 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5136 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5137 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5138 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5139 consistent with the new representation.
5141 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5142 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5143 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5144 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5146 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5147 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5148 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5150 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5151 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5152 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5154 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5155 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5156 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5158 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5159 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5161 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5162 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5164 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5165 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5166 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5167 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5169 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5170 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5172 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5173 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5174 buffer or string being searched.
5176 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5177 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5178 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5179 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5180 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5181 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5182 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5184 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5186 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5187 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5188 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5189 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5190 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5191 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5192 define-coding-system-alias.
5194 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5195 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5196 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5197 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5198 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5199 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5200 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5203 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5204 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5205 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5206 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5208 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5209 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5210 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5211 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5213 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5214 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5215 This function requires a user interaction.
5217 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5218 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5219 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5220 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5221 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5222 select-safe-coding-system.
5224 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5225 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5226 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5229 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5230 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5231 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5233 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5234 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5235 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5236 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5238 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5239 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5240 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5243 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5244 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5246 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5247 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5248 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5249 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5250 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5251 range of characters.
5253 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5254 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5256 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5257 in the current buffer at position POS.
5259 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5260 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5261 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5262 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5263 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5264 binding input-method-function to nil.
5266 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5267 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5268 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5269 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5270 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5272 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5273 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5275 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5276 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5278 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5279 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5280 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5281 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5282 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5284 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5286 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5287 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5288 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5291 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5292 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5294 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5295 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5296 in your .emacs file.)
5298 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5299 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5301 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5302 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5304 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5305 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5308 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5309 delete the character before point, as usual.
5311 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5312 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5313 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5315 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5316 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5317 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5318 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5319 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5322 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5323 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5324 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5325 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5326 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5328 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5329 and is an alias for it.
5331 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5332 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5334 ** Scrolling changes
5336 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5337 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5339 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5340 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5343 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5344 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5345 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5346 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5348 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5349 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5350 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5351 recenters the window.
5353 ** International character set support (MULE)
5355 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5356 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5357 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5358 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5359 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5360 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5362 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5363 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5364 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5365 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5366 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5368 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5369 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5370 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5371 language, to make it possible to type them.
5373 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5374 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5376 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5377 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5379 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5381 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5383 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5384 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5385 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5386 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5387 characters for their work until they want to change.
5391 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5392 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5393 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5394 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5395 support several input methods.
5397 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5398 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5401 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5402 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5403 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5404 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5405 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5408 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5409 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5410 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5411 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5412 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5414 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5415 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5416 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5417 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5419 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5420 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5421 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5422 the first guess is wrong.
5424 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5425 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5427 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5428 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5429 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5430 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5432 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5433 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5434 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5435 translate automatically to and from either one.
5437 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5439 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5440 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5441 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5444 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5445 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5446 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5447 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5449 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5450 character conversion as well.
5452 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5454 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5455 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5456 requires using many fonts.
5458 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5459 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5461 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5462 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5463 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5464 you would use a font.
5466 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5467 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5468 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5470 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5471 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5472 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5473 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5474 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5476 *** Defining fontsets.
5478 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5479 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5480 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5482 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5483 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5484 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5485 standard fontset are created automatically.
5487 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5488 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5489 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5490 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5491 name is `fontset-startup'.
5493 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5494 The resource value should have this form:
5495 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5496 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5497 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5498 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5499 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5500 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5501 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5502 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5503 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5505 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5506 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5507 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5509 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5510 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5512 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5513 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5514 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5515 Here is the substitution rule:
5516 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5517 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5518 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5519 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5520 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5522 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5523 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5524 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5526 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5527 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5528 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5529 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5532 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5533 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5535 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5536 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5537 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5538 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5539 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5540 system for new files that you create.
5542 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5543 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5544 whole Emacs session.
5546 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5547 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5548 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5550 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5551 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5552 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5553 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5554 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5556 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5557 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5558 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5559 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5560 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5562 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5563 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5565 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5566 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5568 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5569 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5571 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5572 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5573 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5574 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5577 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5578 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5579 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5580 translated into that character code.
5582 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5583 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5585 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5587 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5588 the coding system for keyboard input.
5590 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5591 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5592 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5594 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5596 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5597 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5598 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5599 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5600 designed to work with terminals.
5602 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5603 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5604 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5605 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5606 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5607 in the corresponding buffer.
5609 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5611 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5612 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5613 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5615 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5616 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5617 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5620 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5621 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5623 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5624 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5625 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5626 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5628 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5629 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5630 related information.
5632 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5633 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5636 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5637 information about the support for a particular language.
5638 You specify the language as an argument.
5640 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5641 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5644 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5645 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5646 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5647 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5649 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5651 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5652 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5653 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5654 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5655 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5656 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5657 K euc-korea (Korean)
5660 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5663 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5664 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5665 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5669 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5670 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5671 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5672 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5674 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5675 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5677 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5678 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5679 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5680 Rmail files themselves.
5682 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5683 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5685 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5688 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5689 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5690 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5691 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5692 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5694 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5695 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5696 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5699 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5700 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5701 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5702 without any conversion.
5704 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5705 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5706 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5707 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5709 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5710 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5712 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5713 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5715 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5716 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5718 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5719 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5720 in the buffer before point.
5722 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5723 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5726 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5727 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5729 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5731 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5732 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5734 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5735 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5736 can become a bottleneck.
5738 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5739 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5740 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5741 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5742 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5743 so useful that the change is worth while.
5745 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5746 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5747 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5748 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5750 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5751 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5754 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5755 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5756 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5758 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5759 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5760 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5762 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5763 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5764 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5766 ** Changes in View mode.
5768 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5769 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5771 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5772 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5774 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5777 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5778 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5780 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5781 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5782 not just the selected window.
5784 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5785 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5786 turns View mode on or off.
5788 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5789 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5790 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5792 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5793 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5795 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5796 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5797 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5798 which version to compare with.
5800 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5801 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5803 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5804 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5805 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5806 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5808 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5809 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5810 blocks, all of them or none.
5812 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5813 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5816 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5817 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5818 However, the mode will not be changed if
5819 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5820 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5821 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5822 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5824 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5826 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5827 these commands do not change the major mode.
5829 ** M-x occur changes.
5831 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5832 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5834 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5835 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5836 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5838 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5839 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5840 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5841 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5842 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5844 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5845 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5846 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5847 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5849 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5850 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5851 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5853 ** Outline mode changes.
5855 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5857 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5859 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5860 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5861 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5864 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5865 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5868 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5869 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5871 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5873 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5874 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5875 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5876 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5878 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5879 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5880 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5882 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5883 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5886 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5887 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5888 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5889 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5891 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5892 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5893 can be. The default value is 30.
5895 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5897 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5898 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5899 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5900 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5901 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5904 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5905 compose-mail-other-frame.
5907 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5908 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5909 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5910 buffer that shows the original message.
5912 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5913 with separator lines around the contents.
5915 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5916 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5917 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5918 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5920 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5922 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5923 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5924 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5925 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5927 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5928 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5931 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5932 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5935 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5936 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5937 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5938 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5940 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5941 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5942 be taken to be magic.
5944 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5945 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5946 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5948 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5949 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5951 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5952 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5954 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5956 new key dired.el binding old key
5957 ------- ---------------- -------
5958 * c dired-change-marks c
5960 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5961 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5962 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5964 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5965 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5966 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5967 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5968 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5969 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5973 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5974 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5975 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5976 each time you run it.
5978 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5979 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5981 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5982 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5983 means to move in the opposite direction.
5985 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5986 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5988 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5989 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5990 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5991 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5996 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5998 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6001 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6002 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6004 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6007 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6009 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6011 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6013 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6014 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6015 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6017 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6019 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6021 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6022 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6024 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6025 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6026 used to pick articles.
6028 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6029 another have been added.
6031 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6033 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6034 generating lines in buffers.
6036 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6039 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6041 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6043 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6045 *** Scores can be decayed.
6047 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6049 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6050 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6052 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6055 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6057 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6058 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6060 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6062 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6063 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6065 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6066 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6068 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6071 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6072 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6074 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6076 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6078 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6080 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6082 Use the `Y c' command.
6084 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6086 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6088 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6090 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6091 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6093 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6095 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6097 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6098 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6100 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6102 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6103 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6104 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6105 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6108 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6109 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6110 particular news group. This can be done by:
6112 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6114 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6115 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6116 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6117 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6118 for reading and posting).
6120 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6121 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6122 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6123 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6126 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6127 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6129 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6130 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6131 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6132 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6133 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6135 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6136 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6140 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6141 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6142 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6143 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6144 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6147 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6148 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6149 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6150 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6151 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6152 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6154 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6155 of the current buffer.
6157 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6158 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6159 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6161 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6162 style that the Python developers like.
6164 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6165 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6166 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6170 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6171 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6172 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6174 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6175 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6178 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6179 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6181 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6182 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6183 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6184 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6186 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6187 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6189 ** Calendar changes.
6191 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6192 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6193 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6197 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6199 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6201 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6202 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6203 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6204 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6205 It defaults to `letter'.
6206 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6208 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6209 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6210 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6212 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6213 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6216 *** Horizontal layout
6218 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6219 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6220 All are measured in points.
6224 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6225 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6226 All are measured in points.
6230 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6231 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6232 margin above the text.
6234 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6235 framing box is printed around the header.
6237 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6238 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6240 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6241 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6242 `ps-header-font-size'.
6246 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6247 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6248 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6249 elements to this alist.
6251 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6252 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6254 ** hideshow changes.
6256 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6259 *** Support for java-mode added.
6261 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6262 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6264 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6265 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6266 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6268 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6269 robust and a lot faster.
6271 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6273 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6274 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6275 documentation for more details.
6277 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6279 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6280 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6281 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6282 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6283 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6285 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6286 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6287 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6288 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6294 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6295 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6296 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6297 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6298 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6299 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6301 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6303 *** Maximum decoration
6305 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6306 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6307 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6308 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6309 to get the old behavior.
6313 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6315 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6316 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6318 *** Configurable support
6320 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6321 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6322 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6323 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6324 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6325 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6326 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6328 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6329 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6330 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6332 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6334 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6335 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6338 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6340 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6346 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6347 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6348 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6349 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6351 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6353 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6354 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6355 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6357 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6359 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6360 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6361 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6362 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6363 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6364 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6365 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6367 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6368 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6369 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6370 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6371 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6372 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6374 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6376 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6377 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6378 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6379 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6381 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6384 ** Ada mode changes.
6386 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6387 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6388 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6389 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6392 *** There are two new commands:
6393 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6394 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6396 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6397 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6398 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6400 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6401 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6402 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6404 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6405 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6406 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6407 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6409 ** Scheme mode changes.
6411 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6412 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6413 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6414 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6417 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6418 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6419 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6420 variables as buffer-local variables.
6422 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6425 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6427 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6428 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6429 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6430 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6432 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6433 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6436 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6437 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6438 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6439 option takes precedence.
6441 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6442 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6443 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6445 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6446 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6449 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6450 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6452 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6453 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6456 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6457 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6458 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6459 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6460 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6461 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6463 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6464 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6465 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6466 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6468 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6469 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6470 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6471 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6472 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6474 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6475 since it applies only to the current frame.
6477 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6478 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6479 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6481 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6482 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6483 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6484 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6485 instead of just the file you are editing.
6489 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6490 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6491 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6492 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6493 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6496 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6497 knows which kind of label is needed.
6499 C-c ) reftex-reference
6500 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6501 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6503 C-c [ reftex-citation
6504 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6505 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6507 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6508 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6511 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6512 can quickly jump to every section.
6514 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6515 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6516 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6517 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6518 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6520 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6522 *** Info documentation is now available.
6524 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6525 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6527 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6528 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6530 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6531 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6533 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6534 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6535 appropriate functions.
6537 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6538 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6540 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6543 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6544 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6546 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6549 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6550 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6551 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6553 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6554 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6555 prefixed with `ALT'.
6557 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6558 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6559 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6562 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6563 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6564 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6566 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6567 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6569 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6570 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6571 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6573 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6575 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6577 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6580 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6581 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6584 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6587 *** Added support for imenu.
6589 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6590 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6591 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6592 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6594 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6595 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6597 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6599 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6601 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6602 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6603 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6606 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6607 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6609 ** browse-url changes
6611 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6612 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6613 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6614 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6615 customization variables.
6617 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6619 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6620 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6621 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6625 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6626 pops up the Info file for this command.
6628 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6629 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6630 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6633 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6634 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6635 files in the same directory.
6637 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6638 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6639 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6643 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6644 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6646 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6647 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6648 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6649 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6650 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6651 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6652 color when Viper is in insert state.
6653 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6654 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6655 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6659 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6660 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6661 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6662 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6663 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6665 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6667 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6668 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6670 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6671 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6672 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6674 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6675 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6676 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6677 methods and protocols.
6679 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6680 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6681 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6684 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6685 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6686 at least M times and as many as N times.
6688 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6689 in files has changed slightly.
6691 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6692 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6693 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6694 with old time-stamp-format values.
6696 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6697 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6698 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6701 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6702 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6703 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6704 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6705 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6706 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6708 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6709 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6710 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6712 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6713 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6714 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6715 recommended now will continue to work then.
6717 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6720 ** There are some additional major modes:
6722 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6723 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6724 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6726 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6727 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6730 ** New Lisp packages include:
6732 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6734 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6735 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6737 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6739 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6742 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6743 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6746 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6747 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6748 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6749 strings or comments.
6751 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6752 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6753 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6754 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6757 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6758 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6760 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6761 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6763 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6765 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6766 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6768 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6770 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6772 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6774 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6775 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6777 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6778 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6779 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6780 original place after inserting the copy.
6782 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6785 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6786 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6787 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6789 Enable mouse-drag with:
6790 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6792 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6794 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6795 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6797 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6798 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6802 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6803 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6804 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6805 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6806 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6807 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6808 instance) and vice versa.
6810 To use this package load it using
6811 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6812 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6813 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6814 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6815 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6816 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6818 *** Interface to ph.
6820 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6822 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6823 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6826 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6828 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6829 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6830 while the real cursor does not move.
6832 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6833 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6835 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6836 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6840 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6841 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6842 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6843 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6845 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6847 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6849 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6851 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6852 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6853 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6854 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6855 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6857 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6858 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6859 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6860 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6861 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6862 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6864 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6866 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6867 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6868 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6869 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6871 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6872 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6874 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6875 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6878 ** Basic Lisp changes
6880 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6881 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6883 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6884 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6887 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6889 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6891 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6892 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6894 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6895 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6898 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6900 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6902 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6904 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6905 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6906 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6909 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6910 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6911 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6913 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6914 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6915 adding one of these suffixes.
6917 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6918 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6919 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6921 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6922 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6924 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6926 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6927 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6929 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6930 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6932 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6934 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6935 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6937 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6938 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6939 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6940 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6942 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6943 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6946 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6947 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6948 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6951 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6952 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6955 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6957 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6958 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6959 Then it returns that string.
6961 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6963 (with-output-to-string
6964 (princ "The buffer is ")
6965 (princ (buffer-name)))
6967 returns "The buffer is foo".
6969 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6972 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6973 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6974 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6976 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6977 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6979 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6980 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6981 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6982 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6983 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6984 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6986 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6987 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6988 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6991 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6992 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6993 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6994 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6995 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6997 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6998 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6999 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7000 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7002 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7003 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7005 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7007 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7008 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7009 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7010 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7013 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7014 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7017 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7019 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7020 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7021 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7022 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7023 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7025 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7027 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7028 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7029 more than the number of characters.
7031 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7032 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7033 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7034 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7035 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7036 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7038 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7039 and returns a string containing those characters.
7041 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7042 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7043 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7044 character, sref signals an error.
7046 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7047 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7048 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7050 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7051 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7052 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7054 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7055 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7056 to a vector of the characters in it.
7058 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7059 of a string. You call it as follows:
7061 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7063 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7064 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7065 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7066 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7067 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7069 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7070 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7072 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7073 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7075 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7076 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7077 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7078 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7080 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7082 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7084 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7085 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7086 are not included in the resulting value.
7088 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7089 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7090 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7091 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7093 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7094 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7095 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7096 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7097 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7098 column START-COLUMN.
7100 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7101 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7102 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7103 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7104 changed text, before the change.
7106 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7107 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7108 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7110 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7112 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7114 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7115 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7117 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7118 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7119 which identify the character within that character set.
7121 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7122 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7123 opposite of split-char.
7125 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7126 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7128 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7129 of all the characters in a string.
7131 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7132 and specifying coding systems.
7134 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7135 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7136 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7137 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7138 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7139 as what to do about code conversion.)
7141 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7142 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7144 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7145 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7146 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7148 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7149 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7150 to match against a file name.
7152 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7153 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7154 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7155 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7156 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7157 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7159 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7160 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7162 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7163 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7165 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7166 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7167 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7170 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7171 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7172 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7173 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7174 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7175 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7177 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7178 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7180 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7181 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7182 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7183 start the subprocess.
7185 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7186 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7187 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7188 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7189 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7191 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7192 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7195 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7196 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7197 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7198 connection permanently or until overridden.
7200 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7201 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7202 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7203 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7204 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7205 system for one operation at a time.
7207 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7208 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7210 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7211 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7212 The value is a cons cell,
7213 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7214 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7215 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7216 input to the subprocess.
7218 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7219 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7221 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7222 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7223 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7225 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7226 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7227 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7228 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7231 Thus, instead of writing
7233 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7234 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7236 you would now write this:
7238 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7239 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7243 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7244 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7245 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7246 for a description of them.
7248 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7249 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7251 (defgroup ispell nil
7252 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7255 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7256 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7257 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7258 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7259 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7261 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7262 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7263 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7264 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7265 first-level subgroups.
7267 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7269 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7270 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7274 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7275 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7276 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7277 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7278 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7279 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7281 ** Text property changes
7283 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7286 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7287 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7288 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7289 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7290 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7292 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7293 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7294 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7295 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7297 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7298 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7299 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7301 ** Changes in invisibility features
7303 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7304 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7305 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7306 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7307 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7308 make the overlay visible.
7310 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7311 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7312 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7313 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7314 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7315 t when it should hide it.
7317 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7319 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7320 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7321 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7322 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7323 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7324 Here is an example of how to do this:
7326 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7327 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7328 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7329 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7332 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7335 ;; When done with the overlays:
7336 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7338 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7340 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7342 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7343 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7344 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7345 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7347 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7348 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7349 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7351 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7352 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7354 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7355 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7357 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7358 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7359 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7361 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7362 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7363 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7364 determine the syntax type of the character.
7366 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7367 of the current buffer.
7369 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7370 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7371 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7373 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7374 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7375 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7376 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7377 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7379 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7382 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7383 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7384 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7386 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7387 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7388 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7389 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7390 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7392 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7393 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7394 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7396 ** Changes in face features
7398 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7399 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7401 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7402 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7404 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7405 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7407 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7408 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7410 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7411 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7412 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7413 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7416 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7417 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7419 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7421 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7422 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7423 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7424 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7426 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7429 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7430 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7432 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7433 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7435 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7436 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7438 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7439 character code conversion as well as other things.
7441 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7442 (formerly it did not).
7444 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7445 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7447 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7448 instead of constant strings.
7450 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7451 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7452 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7454 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7455 in the same way as before.
7457 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7458 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7459 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7461 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7462 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7463 else, and returns nil.
7465 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7466 directory cannot be listed.
7468 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7470 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7471 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7472 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7473 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7476 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7477 It is available through the history command M-n.
7479 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7480 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7481 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7482 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7483 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7485 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7486 argument in this way.
7488 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7489 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7490 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7492 ** Echo area features
7494 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7495 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7496 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7497 after the echo area is cleared.
7499 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7500 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7502 ** Keyboard input features
7504 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7505 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7507 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7508 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7511 ** Frame-related changes
7513 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7514 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7515 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7517 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7518 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7519 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7521 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7522 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7523 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7524 in the selected frame.
7526 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7527 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7528 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7530 ** X Windows features
7532 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7533 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7534 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7536 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7537 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7539 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7540 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7541 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7543 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7544 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7546 ** Subprocess features
7548 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7549 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7552 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7553 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7555 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7556 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7558 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7559 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7561 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7562 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7563 goes after the other menu items.
7565 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7566 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7567 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7570 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7571 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7573 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7574 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7577 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7578 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7579 but its hook is still run.
7581 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7582 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7584 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7585 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7586 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7588 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7589 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7590 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7593 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7594 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7596 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7597 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7598 functions like display-time.
7600 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7601 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7603 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7604 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7605 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7607 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7608 if there is an error in compilation.
7610 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7611 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7612 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7613 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7615 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7616 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7617 the *scratch* buffer.
7619 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7620 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7621 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7622 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7624 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7625 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7626 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7628 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7629 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7630 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7631 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7633 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7634 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7635 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7637 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7638 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7639 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7640 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7641 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7644 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7645 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7646 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7647 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7649 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7650 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7651 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7652 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7654 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7656 ** imenu.el changes.
7658 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7659 item from menu created by imenu.
7661 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7662 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7663 select one of those items.
7665 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7667 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7669 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7670 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7672 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7673 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7674 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7676 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7678 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7679 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7681 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7682 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7683 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7684 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7685 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7688 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7689 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7691 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7692 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7693 as in previous Emacs versions.
7695 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7696 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7697 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7700 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7701 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7702 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7703 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7706 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7707 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7708 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7709 line and then executing the macro.
7711 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7713 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7714 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7715 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7720 *** Font Lock support modes
7722 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7723 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7724 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7725 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7726 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7728 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7730 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7736 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7737 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7738 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7739 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7740 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7741 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7742 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7744 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7746 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7748 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7750 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7752 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7755 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7760 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7761 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7762 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7763 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7765 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7766 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7768 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7769 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7772 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7773 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7775 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7777 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7779 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7781 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7784 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7786 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7788 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7790 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7792 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7795 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7797 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7799 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7801 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7803 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7805 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7807 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7809 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7812 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7814 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7817 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7819 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7820 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7822 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7824 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7826 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7828 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7830 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7833 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7835 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7836 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7838 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7839 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7840 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7842 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7843 articles with the `*' command.
7845 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7847 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7849 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7851 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7853 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7854 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7856 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7859 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7861 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7863 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7865 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7867 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7869 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7871 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7873 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7875 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7877 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7878 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7880 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7883 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7885 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7886 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7888 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7890 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7892 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7894 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7897 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7899 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7901 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7902 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7904 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7906 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7908 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7910 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7912 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7914 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7917 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7919 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7920 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7921 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7924 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7927 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7930 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7931 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7934 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7935 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7936 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7937 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7938 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7941 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7943 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7945 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7946 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7947 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7948 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7949 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7951 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7952 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7953 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7955 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7957 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7958 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7959 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7960 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7961 chapter of the manual for details.
7963 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7964 customization variables take effect.
7966 ** Marking with the mouse.
7968 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7969 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7970 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7972 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7974 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7976 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7977 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7979 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7980 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7981 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7982 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7983 applications, these problems are significant.
7985 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7986 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7987 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7988 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7989 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7991 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7992 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7994 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7995 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7996 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7997 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7998 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7999 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8001 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8003 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8004 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8005 minibuffer contains.
8007 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8009 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8010 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8011 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8012 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8014 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8015 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8016 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8017 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8019 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8020 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8022 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8023 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8024 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8026 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8027 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8028 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8029 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8031 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8033 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8034 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8036 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8038 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8039 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8040 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8041 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8042 immediately after the selected one.
8044 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8045 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8047 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8049 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8050 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8051 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8052 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8055 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8056 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8059 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8060 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8061 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8062 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8063 now that the bug is fixed.
8065 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8067 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8068 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8069 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8070 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8072 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8073 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8074 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8075 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8077 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8078 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8079 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8081 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8082 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8083 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8084 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8087 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8088 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8090 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8091 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8092 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8093 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8095 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8096 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8097 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8098 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8099 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8100 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8102 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8103 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8104 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8105 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8107 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8108 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8109 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8111 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8112 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8113 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8114 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8115 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8116 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8117 to a limitation in font-lock).
8119 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8121 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8122 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8123 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8126 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8127 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8129 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8131 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8133 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8135 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8137 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8138 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8139 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8140 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8141 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8142 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8144 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8147 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8148 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8150 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8155 *** Global Font Lock mode
8157 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8158 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8159 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8160 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8161 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8163 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8165 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8169 *** Local Refontification
8171 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8172 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8173 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8174 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8176 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8177 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8178 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8179 above and below point.
8181 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8185 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8186 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8187 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8188 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8189 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8192 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8194 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8195 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8197 ** hide-show changes.
8199 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8200 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8203 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8204 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8206 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8207 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8208 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8212 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8213 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8215 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8216 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8218 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8220 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8221 pressing both mouse buttons.
8223 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8224 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8227 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8230 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8232 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8233 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8235 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8237 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8239 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8241 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8243 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8245 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8247 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8248 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8249 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8250 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8251 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8253 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8255 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8256 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8257 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8260 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8263 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8265 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8266 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8268 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8269 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8271 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8272 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8273 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8275 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8276 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8279 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8281 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8282 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8283 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8285 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8286 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8287 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8289 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8290 up if too much time passes.
8292 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8294 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8295 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8296 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8299 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8300 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8301 call looks like this:
8303 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8305 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8306 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8307 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8310 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8311 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8314 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8315 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8316 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8317 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8319 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8320 idle for SECS seconds.
8322 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8323 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8324 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8327 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8328 there is no answer within a certain time.
8330 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8332 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8333 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8334 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8336 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8337 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8338 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8339 arguments in between are ignored.
8341 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8342 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8344 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8345 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8346 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8347 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8350 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8351 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8352 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8353 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8354 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8355 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8357 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8358 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8359 systems with limited file name syntax.
8361 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8362 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8363 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8366 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8367 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8368 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8370 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8371 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8372 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8373 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8374 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8376 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8377 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8378 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8380 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8381 marker from its buffer position.
8383 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8384 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8385 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8387 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8388 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8389 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8390 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8391 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8392 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8394 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8395 errors that happen often during editing.
8397 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8398 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8399 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8401 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8402 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8404 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8405 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8406 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8407 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8408 and not get-buffer-window.
8410 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8411 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8412 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8414 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8415 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8416 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8417 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8418 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8419 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8420 over and over for the same text.
8422 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8424 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8425 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8427 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8430 in addition to the normal
8434 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8435 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8436 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8440 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8442 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8443 Copyright information:
8445 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8447 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8448 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8449 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8450 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8452 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8453 of this document, or of portions of it,
8454 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8455 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8459 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"