1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
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 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
37 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
38 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
39 Postscript files are included.
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
47 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
48 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
49 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
50 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
51 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
52 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
55 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
56 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
57 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
58 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
63 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
64 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
65 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
66 character is still bound as before.
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
71 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
72 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
75 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
76 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
77 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
78 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
79 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
80 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
81 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
84 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
85 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
86 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
87 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
88 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
89 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
90 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
91 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
92 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
94 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
95 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
98 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
99 point in a pop-up window.
102 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
103 displays all characters in that character set.
105 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
106 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
109 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
110 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
111 defined on newcomment.el.
114 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
116 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
117 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
120 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
121 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
122 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
123 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
126 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
127 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
128 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
129 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
132 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
133 on the display using several methods
136 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
137 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
138 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
141 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
142 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
144 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
146 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
147 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
150 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
151 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
152 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
153 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
156 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
157 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
158 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
160 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
161 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
164 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
165 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
168 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
169 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
173 ** New X resources recognized
175 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
176 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
177 is useful for debugging X problems.
181 emacs.synchronous: true
183 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
184 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
185 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
186 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
187 visual class names are
196 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
197 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
200 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
201 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
202 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
207 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
209 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
210 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
211 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
212 resource values are `true' or `on'.
216 emacs.privateColormap: true
218 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
219 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
220 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
222 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
223 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
224 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
228 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
231 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
232 all frames except the selected one.
234 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
235 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
237 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
238 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
239 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
240 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
243 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
244 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
246 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
247 read mail from the menu etc.
250 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
251 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
253 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
255 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
259 -------------------------
266 ** Changes in Outline mode.
268 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
269 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
270 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
272 ** Changes to Emacs Server
275 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
276 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
277 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
278 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
279 buffers to kill, as before.
281 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
282 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
285 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
287 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
288 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
289 use. Default is 1000.
292 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
293 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
296 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
297 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
298 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
302 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
303 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
306 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
307 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
309 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
310 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
311 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
313 ** Faces and frame parameters.
315 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
316 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
317 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
318 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
319 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
320 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
321 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
323 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
324 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
325 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
326 `default' face and vice versa.
331 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
332 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
333 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
336 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
338 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
339 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
340 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
341 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
343 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
344 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
345 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
347 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
350 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
352 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
353 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
354 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
355 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
358 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
360 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
361 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
362 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
363 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
366 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
367 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
368 under Lisp changes, below.
370 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
373 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
374 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
375 otherwise, it is hollow.
377 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
378 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
379 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
380 customizing face `fringe'.
382 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
383 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
387 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
388 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
390 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
392 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
393 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
394 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
395 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
396 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
399 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
400 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
401 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
402 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
403 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
404 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
406 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
407 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
408 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
409 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
410 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
411 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
413 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
414 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
415 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
416 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
417 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
419 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
421 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
422 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
423 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
426 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
428 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
429 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
430 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
431 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
432 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
438 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
439 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
444 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
445 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
446 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
449 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
451 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
452 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
453 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
456 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
457 have to do anything to activate it.
459 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
461 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
462 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
463 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
464 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
466 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
469 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
471 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
473 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
476 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
480 ** Hscrolling in C code.
482 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
483 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
488 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
489 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
492 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
494 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
495 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
496 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
497 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
498 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
500 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
502 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
505 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
506 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
508 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
510 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
511 `*') toggles the status.
513 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
515 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
517 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
518 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
521 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
523 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
524 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
525 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
526 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
527 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
528 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
533 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
534 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
535 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
538 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
539 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
540 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
541 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
542 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
543 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
545 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
548 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
550 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
551 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
552 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
555 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
556 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
558 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
559 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
560 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
562 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
564 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
565 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
566 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
567 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
569 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
570 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
571 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
572 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
574 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
575 notably at the end of lines.
577 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
578 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
581 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
583 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
584 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
585 after each match to get the replacement text.
588 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
589 you edit the replacement string.
591 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
592 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
593 lisp-complete-symbol.
596 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
598 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
599 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
600 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
601 window size by setting the following variable:
603 - User option: max-mini-window-height
605 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
606 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
607 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
611 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
613 ** Changes to hideshow.el
615 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
616 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
618 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
620 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
621 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
622 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
623 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
624 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
625 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
627 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
628 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
629 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
630 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
632 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
634 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
635 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
636 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
637 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
638 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
640 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
641 something like this in your .emacs.
643 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
645 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
647 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
650 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
651 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
652 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
655 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
659 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
663 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
664 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
667 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
668 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
669 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
670 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
672 ** Changes in Font Lock
674 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
675 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
678 ** Comint (subshell) changes
680 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
681 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
682 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
683 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
684 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
685 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
686 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
687 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
689 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
690 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
692 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
693 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
694 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
696 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
697 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
698 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
700 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
701 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
702 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
703 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
705 ** Changes to Rmail mode
707 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
708 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
709 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
710 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
711 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
714 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
715 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
716 regexp matching your mail addresses.
718 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
719 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
720 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
721 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
722 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
724 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
727 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
728 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
731 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
732 in which folder to put messages automatically.
734 ** Changes to TeX mode
736 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
739 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
741 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
742 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
743 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
744 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
745 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
746 can be edited from that buffer.
748 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
749 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
750 `A' to use all marked entries).
752 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
753 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
755 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
756 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
757 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
760 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
761 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
762 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
763 in column 1 are always made leaves.
765 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
766 has the following new features:
768 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
769 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
770 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
771 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
773 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
774 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
775 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
776 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
777 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
780 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
786 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
787 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
788 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
790 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
791 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
792 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
793 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
798 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
799 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
800 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
802 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
803 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
806 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
807 between custom options. Example:
809 (defcustom default-input-method nil
810 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
811 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
812 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
814 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
815 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
817 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
818 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
819 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
821 ** New features in evaluation commands
823 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
824 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
825 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
826 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
827 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
829 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
830 code when called with a prefix argument.
835 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
836 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
837 spell-checks the current buffer.
840 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
843 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
844 correction is made and re-checked.
846 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
848 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
851 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
854 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
859 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
860 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
861 is, delete only empty directories.
863 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
864 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
865 copy directories recursively.
867 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
868 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
869 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
871 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
872 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
875 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
876 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
877 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
878 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
879 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
881 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
884 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
885 use the -f option when sending mail.
889 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
890 current user setups (although it's believed that these
891 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
892 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
893 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
894 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
897 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
898 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
899 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
900 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
901 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
904 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
905 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
906 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
907 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
908 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
909 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
911 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
912 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
913 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
914 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
915 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
916 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
917 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
918 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
920 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
921 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
922 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
923 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
926 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
927 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
928 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
929 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
930 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
931 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
932 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
933 function documentation for more info.
935 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
936 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
937 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
938 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
939 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
940 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
941 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
942 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
944 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
946 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
947 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
949 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
950 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
951 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
952 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
953 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
956 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
957 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
958 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
961 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
962 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
963 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
964 chapter about this in the manual.
966 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
967 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
968 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
969 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
970 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
972 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
973 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
974 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
976 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
977 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
979 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
980 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
981 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
984 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
985 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
986 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
987 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
990 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
991 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
992 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
995 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
996 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
997 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
998 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1001 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1002 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1003 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1004 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1005 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1007 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1008 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1009 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1011 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1013 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1014 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1015 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1016 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1018 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1019 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1020 the column specified by comment-column.
1022 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1023 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1024 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1025 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1026 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1027 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1029 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1030 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1033 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1035 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1036 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1037 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1038 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1041 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1043 ** Makefile mode changes
1045 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1047 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1048 Fontlock mode is active.
1052 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1053 so that searches can be resumed.
1055 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1056 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1057 that started the search.
1059 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1060 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1062 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1064 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1065 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1066 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1067 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1068 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1069 `secondary-selection'.
1071 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1072 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1073 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1074 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1075 usual snappy response.
1077 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1078 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1079 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1080 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1082 ** Changes in sort.el
1084 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1085 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1086 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1089 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1092 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1093 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1094 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1096 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1097 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1099 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1100 output ^M at the end of lines.
1102 ** Shell script mode changes.
1104 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1105 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1106 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1110 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1112 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1113 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1114 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1115 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1116 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1118 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1119 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1121 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1122 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1124 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1127 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1129 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1131 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1134 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1135 variables are tagged.
1137 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1139 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1142 ** Changes in etags.el
1144 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1145 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1146 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1148 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1149 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1151 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1152 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1153 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1154 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1156 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1158 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1159 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1161 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1163 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1164 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1165 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1167 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1168 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1170 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1171 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1174 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1175 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1176 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1178 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1179 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1180 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1181 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1184 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1185 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1186 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1188 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1191 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1193 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1194 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1195 expression from that list, are not checked.
1197 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1198 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1199 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1200 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1202 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1204 ** New modes and packages
1207 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1208 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1209 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1210 on certain projects.
1212 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1213 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1215 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1217 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1218 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1219 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1220 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1221 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1222 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1223 corresponding file is read.
1226 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1229 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1230 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1232 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1233 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1234 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1237 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1238 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1239 separate Texinfo file.
1242 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1243 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1244 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1245 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1246 enter checkin log messages.
1249 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1250 without invoking external programs.
1252 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1253 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1254 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1255 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1256 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1258 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1259 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1261 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1262 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1264 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1265 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1266 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1267 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1268 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1271 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1272 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1273 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1274 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1277 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1278 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1279 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1281 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1284 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1286 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1288 ; comment (until end of line)
1292 $A default non-terminal
1293 $"C" default terminal
1294 $?C? default special
1295 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1296 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1297 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1298 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1299 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1300 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1301 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1302 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1303 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1304 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1305 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1306 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1307 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1308 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1309 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1311 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1313 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1314 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1315 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1316 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1317 equal signs of assignments.
1320 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1321 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1324 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1325 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1326 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1327 customize the package.
1329 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1331 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1332 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1333 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1334 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1335 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1336 which answers different needs.
1339 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1340 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1341 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1342 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1343 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1347 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1348 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1351 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1354 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1356 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1358 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1361 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1364 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1367 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1369 *** whitespace.el ???
1371 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1372 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1373 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1374 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1375 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1376 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1377 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1379 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1381 Here is an example of columns:
1384 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1385 porcupine strawberry airplane
1387 Doing the following settings:
1389 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1390 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1391 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1392 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1395 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1397 M-x delimit-columns-region
1401 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1402 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1403 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1405 delim-col has the following options:
1407 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1410 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1411 between each column.
1413 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1416 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1419 delim-col has the following commands:
1421 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1422 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1425 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1426 were operated on recently.
1428 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1430 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1431 recentf at Emacs startup.
1433 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1434 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1435 file list can be displayed:
1437 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1438 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1439 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1441 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1442 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1444 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1448 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1449 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1450 specific to Message mode.
1453 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1454 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1455 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1458 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1459 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1460 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1462 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1463 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1466 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1468 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1469 minibuffer with completion.
1471 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1472 with the diary features.
1474 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1475 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1477 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1480 ** Withdrawn packages
1482 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1483 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1485 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1487 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1490 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1491 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1494 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1495 is running in batch mode. For example,
1497 (message "%s" (read t))
1499 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1503 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1504 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1506 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1507 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1510 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1513 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1515 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1516 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1518 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1520 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1521 comparison is done with `eq'.
1523 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1525 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1529 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1530 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1531 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1533 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1534 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1536 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1537 function was declared obsolete.
1539 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1540 retained as an alias).
1542 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1543 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1544 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1546 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1548 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1550 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1551 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1553 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1555 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1557 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1559 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1560 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1561 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1562 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1565 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1566 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1567 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1568 minibuffer even if it is active.
1570 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1571 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1572 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1573 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1574 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1575 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1577 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1578 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1579 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1580 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1581 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1582 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1583 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1585 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1586 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1587 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1589 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1590 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1591 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1592 Default value is nil.
1594 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1597 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1598 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1599 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1601 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1604 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1605 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1606 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1607 than replacing the local map.
1609 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1610 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1612 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1614 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1617 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1619 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1621 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1622 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1623 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1624 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1626 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1627 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1628 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1629 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1631 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1632 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1633 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1634 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1636 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1637 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1638 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1640 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1641 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1642 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1643 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1644 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1645 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1646 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1649 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1651 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1652 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1653 character set as previously.
1655 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1656 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1657 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1659 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1660 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1661 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1662 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1664 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1665 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1667 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1668 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1671 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1672 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1674 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1675 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1676 buffers and strings.
1678 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1679 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1680 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1681 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1682 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1683 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1684 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1687 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1688 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1689 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1691 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1692 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1693 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1694 may differ between buffer and string text.
1696 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1697 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1699 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1700 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1701 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1702 `composition' from STRING.
1704 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1705 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1707 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1710 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1711 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1712 character set is not used.
1714 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1715 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1716 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1719 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1720 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1721 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1724 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1725 that offset in the file before writing.
1727 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1728 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1730 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1731 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1732 from which the command was issued.
1734 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1735 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1736 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1737 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1740 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1741 to `window-buffer-height'.
1743 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1745 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1746 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1747 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1749 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1752 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1753 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1755 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1756 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1757 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1759 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1760 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1761 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1762 is currently displayed in some window.
1764 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1765 argument function's results.
1767 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1768 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1770 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1771 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1773 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1774 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1776 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1777 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1780 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1781 nil don't display a cursor
1782 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1783 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1784 others display a box cursor.
1786 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1787 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1788 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1789 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1791 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1792 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1793 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1794 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1798 (string-to-syntax "()")
1801 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1804 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1805 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1812 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1817 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1822 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1829 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1830 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1833 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1834 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1835 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1836 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1839 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1841 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1842 for a regexp in a string.
1844 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1845 `mouse-position-function'.
1847 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1848 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1850 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1851 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1854 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1857 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1858 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1861 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1862 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1863 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1864 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1868 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1869 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1872 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1873 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1874 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1875 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1878 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1879 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1880 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1881 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1884 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1885 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1886 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1889 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1890 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1893 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1895 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1896 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1897 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1901 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1902 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1905 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1906 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1909 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1910 instead of being optional.
1913 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1914 modify read-only text.
1917 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1919 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1920 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1921 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1922 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1923 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1925 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1926 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1927 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1928 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1929 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1930 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1931 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1934 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1935 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1936 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1940 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1941 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1944 ** New function `propertize'
1946 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1947 strings with text properties.
1949 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1951 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1952 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1953 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1954 specified value of that property. Example:
1956 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1959 ** push and pop macros.
1961 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1962 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1963 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1965 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1966 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1967 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1969 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1971 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1972 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1974 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1975 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1976 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1977 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1979 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1980 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1981 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1982 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1985 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1986 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1988 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1989 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1990 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1991 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1992 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1994 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1996 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1997 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1998 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1999 [:alpha:] matches letters.
2000 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2001 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2002 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
2003 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
2004 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
2005 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
2006 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2007 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2008 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2009 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
2010 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2013 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2015 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2017 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2019 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2020 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2024 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2025 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2026 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2030 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2031 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2033 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2035 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2036 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2037 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2038 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2039 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2041 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2043 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2044 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2045 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2049 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2050 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2051 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2052 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2053 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2055 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2057 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2059 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2061 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2063 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2065 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2068 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2070 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2072 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2074 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2076 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2078 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2080 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2082 Returns the size of TABLE.
2084 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2086 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2088 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2090 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2092 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2096 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2098 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2101 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2103 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2104 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2106 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2108 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2110 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2112 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2113 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2115 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2117 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2119 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2121 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2122 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2123 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2124 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2125 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2127 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2129 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2130 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2131 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2133 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2134 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2136 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2137 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2139 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2140 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2142 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2143 'case-fold-string-hash))
2145 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2148 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2150 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2151 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2152 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2155 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2157 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2158 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2161 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2162 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2163 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2164 is too short to reach that column.
2167 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2168 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2169 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2170 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2172 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2173 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2174 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2177 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2178 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2181 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2182 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2185 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2186 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2187 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2188 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2189 temporary-file-directory instead.
2192 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2193 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2194 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2195 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2198 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2199 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2202 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2204 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2205 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2206 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2209 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2211 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2212 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2213 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2214 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2215 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2216 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2218 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2219 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2220 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2221 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2224 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2226 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2227 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2228 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2231 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2232 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2236 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2238 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2239 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2242 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2245 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2247 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2248 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2251 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2253 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2254 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2260 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2261 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2263 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2264 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2265 to enable sound support.
2267 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2268 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2269 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2270 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2271 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2273 The following sound properties are supported:
2277 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2278 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2282 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2283 may be present, but not both.
2287 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2288 0..1. This property is optional.
2290 Other properties are ignored.
2292 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2294 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2297 ** Changes to garbage collection
2299 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2300 of live and free strings.
2302 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2303 strings that have been consed so far.
2306 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2310 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2312 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2315 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2317 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2319 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2320 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2321 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2322 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2323 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2325 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2326 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2329 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2332 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2334 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2335 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2336 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2337 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2340 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2342 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2343 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2344 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2345 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2347 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2348 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2350 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2351 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2352 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2353 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2354 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2355 just display it black instead.
2357 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2360 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2364 ** New face implementation.
2366 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2367 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2372 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2374 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2376 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2377 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2379 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2381 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2383 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2385 6. Foreground color.
2387 7. Background color.
2389 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2391 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2393 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2395 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2397 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2400 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2401 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2403 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2404 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2405 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2406 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2407 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2408 attributes mentioned above.
2410 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2411 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2414 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2415 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2421 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2422 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2423 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2424 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2425 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2426 results in a fully-specified face.
2429 *** Face realization.
2431 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2432 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2433 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2434 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2435 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2436 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2438 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2439 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2440 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2441 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2443 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2444 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2445 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2446 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2447 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2449 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2450 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2451 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2452 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2453 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2456 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2457 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2458 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2459 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2462 **** Clearing face caches.
2464 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2465 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2471 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2472 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2473 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2475 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2476 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2477 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2478 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2479 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2481 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2482 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2483 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2485 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2487 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2488 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2489 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2490 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2491 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2492 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2493 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2495 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2496 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2502 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2503 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2506 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2507 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2508 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2509 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2510 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2513 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2515 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2518 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2520 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2522 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2523 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2524 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2526 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2527 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2528 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2529 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2530 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2531 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2532 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2533 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2534 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2535 of the face font sort order.
2537 - Function: x-font-family-list
2539 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2540 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2541 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2542 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2544 - Variable: font-list-limit
2546 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2547 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2548 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2551 *** Setting face attributes.
2553 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2554 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2555 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2558 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2559 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2561 The following attributes are recognized:
2565 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2566 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2567 and `?' are allowed.
2571 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2572 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2573 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2574 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2578 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2583 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2584 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2585 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2589 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2590 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2593 `:foreground', `:background'
2595 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2599 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2600 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2601 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2606 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2607 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2608 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2613 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2614 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2615 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2616 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2620 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2621 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2622 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2623 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2624 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2625 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2626 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2627 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2628 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2629 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2630 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2631 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2632 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2633 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2634 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2635 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2640 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2641 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2645 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2646 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2647 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2648 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2649 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2650 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2652 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2653 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2657 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2658 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2659 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2662 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2663 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2664 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2666 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2669 *** Face attributes and X resources
2671 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2674 Face attribute X resource class
2675 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2676 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2677 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2678 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2679 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2680 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2681 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2682 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2683 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2684 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2685 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2686 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2687 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2688 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2689 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2690 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2691 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2692 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2693 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2694 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2697 *** Text property `face'.
2699 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2700 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2701 specification can be
2703 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2705 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2706 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2707 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2708 for face attribute names.
2710 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2711 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2712 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2715 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2717 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2718 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2719 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2720 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2721 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2722 used to clear the mapping table.
2724 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2726 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2727 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2728 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2729 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2730 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2731 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2732 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2733 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2734 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2735 modify their color-related behavior.
2737 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2740 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2742 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2743 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2744 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2745 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2746 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2747 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2748 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2749 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2750 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2753 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2755 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2757 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2758 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2759 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2761 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2763 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2764 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2765 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2767 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2768 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2769 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2770 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2771 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2772 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2773 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2776 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2777 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2778 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2780 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2782 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2784 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2786 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2787 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2788 constrained position if that is is different.
2790 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2791 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2792 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2793 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2794 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2795 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2796 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2797 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2798 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2800 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2801 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2802 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2803 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2804 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2806 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2807 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2809 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2811 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2813 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2814 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2815 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2817 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2819 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2820 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2821 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2822 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2823 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2825 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2827 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2828 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2829 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2830 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2831 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2833 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2835 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2836 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2837 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2839 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2841 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2842 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2843 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2848 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2849 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2850 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2851 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2853 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2854 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2855 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2856 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2859 IMAGE is an image specification.
2861 *** Image specifications
2863 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2864 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2865 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2866 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2867 described below are ignored.
2869 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2873 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2874 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2875 to use for its ascent.
2877 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2878 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2880 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2881 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2882 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2883 overlays that apply to the image.
2887 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2888 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2892 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2897 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2898 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2899 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2900 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2902 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2904 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2905 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2906 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2907 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2908 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2909 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2910 background of the image.
2914 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2915 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2916 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2917 may be present in the image specification.
2921 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2922 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2923 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2924 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2926 *** Supported image types
2928 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2930 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2931 properties supported are
2935 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2936 is the frame's foreground.
2940 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2941 the frame's background color.
2943 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2944 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2945 instead of a `:file' property.
2949 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2953 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2959 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2960 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2962 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2964 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2967 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2968 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2971 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2973 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2974 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2975 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2976 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2978 Additional image properties supported are:
2980 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2982 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2983 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2986 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2987 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2989 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2990 to display compressed images.
2992 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2994 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2995 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2998 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
3000 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3001 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
3004 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
3006 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
3007 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3010 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3012 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3013 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3015 Additional image properties supported are:
3019 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3020 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3022 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3023 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3024 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3027 (defun show-anim (file max)
3028 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3029 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3031 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3034 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3037 (goto-char (point-min))
3038 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3039 (insert-image img "x"))
3040 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3042 **** PNG, image type `png'
3044 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3045 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3048 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3050 Additional image properties supported are:
3054 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3055 integer. This is a required property.
3059 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3060 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3064 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3065 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3066 files. This is an required property.
3068 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3073 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3074 which are supported in the current configuration.
3076 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3077 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3078 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3079 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3080 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3082 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3084 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3085 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3086 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3087 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3088 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3094 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3097 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3098 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3099 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3100 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3101 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3102 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3103 of the display margins.
3105 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3106 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3107 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3108 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3114 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3115 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3116 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3117 that have a `help-echo' property.
3119 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3120 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3121 the window in which the help was found.
3123 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3124 `help-echo' text property was found.
3126 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3127 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3129 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3130 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3133 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3134 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3136 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3137 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3138 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3139 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3140 used as help string.
3142 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3143 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3144 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3147 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3149 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3150 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3152 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3153 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3154 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3155 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3158 (global-set-key [A-down]
3161 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3162 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3163 (global-set-key [A-up]
3166 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3167 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3170 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3172 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3173 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3174 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3175 is called with one argument, POS.
3177 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3178 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3179 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3180 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3181 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3184 ** Tool bar support.
3186 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3187 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3188 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3189 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3190 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3191 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3193 *** Tool bar item definitions
3195 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3196 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3197 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3199 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3200 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3201 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3202 property (see below).
3204 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3205 binding are currently ignored.
3207 The following properties are recognized:
3211 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3216 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3220 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3221 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3222 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3224 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3226 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3227 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3231 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3232 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3233 meaning of each of the four elements:
3235 Index Use when item is
3236 ----------------------------------------
3237 0 enabled and selected
3238 1 enabled and deselected
3239 2 disabled and selected
3240 3 disabled and deselected
3242 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3243 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3245 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3247 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3248 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3250 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3252 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3253 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3254 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3256 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3257 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3259 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3260 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3261 pixels. Default is 1.
3263 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3264 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3266 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3268 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3271 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3272 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3273 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3275 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3277 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3279 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3282 ** Mode line changes.
3285 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3287 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3288 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3289 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3291 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3292 a `local-map' text property.
3294 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3295 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3297 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3298 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3299 `local-map' property.
3301 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3302 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3305 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3306 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3309 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3310 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3313 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3315 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3316 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3317 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3318 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3321 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3324 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3325 position in the header-line.
3328 ** Text property `display'
3330 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3331 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3332 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3333 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3335 *** Variable width and height spaces
3337 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3338 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3339 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3340 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3341 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3342 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3343 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3345 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3346 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3347 properties described below.
3349 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3350 characters having the `display' property.
3354 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3355 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3357 - :relative-width FACTOR
3359 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3360 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3361 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3362 width of that character by FACTOR.
3366 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3367 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3369 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3373 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3376 - :relative-height FACTOR
3378 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3379 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3383 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3384 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3385 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3388 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3392 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3393 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3394 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3395 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3396 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3397 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3398 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3399 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3400 as display specification.
3402 *** Other display properties
3404 - :space-width FACTOR
3406 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3407 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3412 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3414 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3415 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3416 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3417 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3418 a font is available counts as a step.
3420 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3421 as tall as the frame's default font.
3423 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3424 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3426 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3427 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3431 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3432 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3433 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3434 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3435 `:height' subproperty.
3437 *** Conditional display properties
3439 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3440 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3441 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3442 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3443 the text having the `display' property.
3445 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3449 ** New menu separator types.
3451 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3452 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3453 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3454 to specify other menu separator types.
3456 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3458 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3461 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3463 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3465 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3467 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3469 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3471 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3473 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3475 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3477 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3479 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3480 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3482 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3484 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3486 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3488 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3490 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3492 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3494 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3496 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3498 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3500 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3502 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3504 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3506 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3508 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3510 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3511 the corresponding single-line separators.
3514 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3516 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3517 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3518 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3519 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3520 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3521 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3522 default foreground is black.
3524 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3525 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3526 `ScrollBarBackground').
3528 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3529 settings for scroll bar colors.
3532 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3533 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3536 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3537 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3538 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3539 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3540 the original window start.
3543 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3544 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3545 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3548 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3550 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3551 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3552 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3553 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3555 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3556 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3558 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3560 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3561 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3562 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3563 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3564 temporarily to nil, for example
3566 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3567 (enlarge-window 10))
3569 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3570 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3572 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3573 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3574 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3575 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3576 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3577 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3581 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3583 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3586 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3588 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3590 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3591 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3592 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3593 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3594 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3596 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3600 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3602 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3605 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3607 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3608 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3610 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3612 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3614 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3615 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3616 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3618 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3619 is the one that is used.
3621 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3622 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3623 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3624 separate from the command's regular output.
3625 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3626 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3627 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3630 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3631 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3632 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3633 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3635 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3636 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3637 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3638 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3640 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3641 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3642 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3643 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3645 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3646 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3647 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3648 they never ignore case.
3650 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3651 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3652 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3653 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3654 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3655 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3656 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3658 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3659 the same format that was used in the file before.
3661 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3662 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3664 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3665 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3666 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3668 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3669 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3670 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3671 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3672 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3673 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3674 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3676 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3677 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3678 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3679 format. You can now customize these variables.
3681 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3682 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3683 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3684 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3686 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3687 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3688 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3690 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3691 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3692 doesn't have any effect.
3694 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3697 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3698 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3699 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3701 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3702 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3703 `auto-show-mode' command.
3705 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3706 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3707 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3708 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3709 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3711 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3712 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3714 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3715 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3716 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3718 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3719 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3720 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3721 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3723 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3725 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3726 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3727 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3728 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3729 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3731 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3732 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3734 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3735 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3736 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3737 `?' on other systems.
3739 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3740 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3743 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3744 current codepage when it starts.
3748 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3749 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3750 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3751 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3752 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3753 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3757 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3758 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3760 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3761 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3762 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3763 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3764 buffer-file-coding-system.
3766 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3767 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3770 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3771 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3772 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3773 list of possible coding systems.
3777 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3778 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3779 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3780 docstring for details.
3782 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3783 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3784 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3785 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3786 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3788 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3789 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3791 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3792 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3794 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3795 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3796 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3797 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3800 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3801 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3803 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3804 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3805 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3806 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3808 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3809 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3810 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3811 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3812 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3814 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3816 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3818 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3819 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3821 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3823 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3824 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3825 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3826 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3827 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3831 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3832 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3833 Gnus manual for the full story.
3835 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3836 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3837 group, which is created automatically.
3839 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3842 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3844 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3845 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3847 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3850 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3852 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3853 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3855 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3857 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3858 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3860 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3861 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3863 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3864 control over simplification.
3866 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3868 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3871 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3873 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3875 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3876 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3877 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3879 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3880 `a' forces normal posting method.
3882 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3885 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3888 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3889 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3891 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3894 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3896 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3898 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3899 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3901 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3902 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3904 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3906 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3909 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3910 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3912 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3913 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3915 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3917 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3919 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3921 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3923 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3924 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3925 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3927 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3928 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3929 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3930 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3931 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3933 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3934 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3935 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3936 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3938 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3939 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3940 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3943 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3945 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3946 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3948 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3949 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3950 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3951 removed from the label.
3953 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3954 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3956 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3957 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3959 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3960 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3963 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3965 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3967 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3968 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3970 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3971 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3972 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3974 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3975 changes with a special face.
3977 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3978 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3979 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3981 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3983 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3984 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3985 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3986 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3987 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3989 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3990 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3991 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3993 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3994 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3995 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3996 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3997 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3998 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3999 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
4000 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
4001 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
4003 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
4004 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
4005 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
4006 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
4007 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
4010 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
4011 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
4012 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
4013 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4014 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4015 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4017 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4018 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4019 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4020 was not documented clearly before.
4022 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4023 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4025 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4027 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4028 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4029 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4030 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4032 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4033 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4034 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4036 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4038 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4039 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4041 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4042 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4045 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4046 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4047 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4048 file names and attributes are returned.
4050 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4051 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4052 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4053 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4056 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4057 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4059 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4061 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4062 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4063 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4066 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4067 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4070 The new function process-running-child-p
4071 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4072 terminal to its own child process.
4074 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4075 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4076 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4077 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4079 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4080 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4082 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4083 :included is an alias for :visible.
4085 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4086 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4087 to move or copy menu entries.
4089 ** Multibyte editing changes
4091 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4092 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4093 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4094 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4095 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4096 (setq char (sref str idx)
4097 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4098 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4100 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4101 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4102 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4104 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4105 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4106 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4108 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4110 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4111 across the boundary.
4113 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4114 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4115 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4116 contains 8-bit characters.
4117 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4118 contains invalid characters.
4120 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4121 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4122 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4123 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4126 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4127 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4128 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4129 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4131 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4132 compose Thai characters in a string.
4134 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4135 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4136 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4137 menus should always use the third argument.
4139 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4140 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4141 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4142 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4144 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4145 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4146 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4147 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4149 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4150 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4151 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4154 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4156 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4157 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4158 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4160 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4161 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4162 means to clear out that attribute.
4164 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4165 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4167 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4168 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4169 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4170 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4172 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4173 the gap of the current buffer.
4175 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4176 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4179 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4180 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4181 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4182 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4184 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4186 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4187 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4188 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4189 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4190 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4192 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4193 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4194 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4195 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4196 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4198 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4199 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4200 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4202 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4203 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4204 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4205 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4206 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4209 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4210 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4211 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4212 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4214 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4216 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4217 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4218 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4219 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4221 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4222 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4223 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4224 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4225 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4226 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4227 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4230 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4233 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4234 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4235 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4236 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4237 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4239 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4240 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4241 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4242 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4244 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4245 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4246 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4247 something that most users not do.
4249 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4250 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4251 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4254 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4257 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4258 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4259 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4260 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4263 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4264 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4265 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4266 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4267 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4270 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4271 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4272 to be confused by TeX commands.
4274 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4275 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4276 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4277 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4279 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4280 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4281 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4282 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4283 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4285 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4286 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4288 ** Changes in input method usage.
4290 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4291 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4294 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4296 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4297 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4299 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4300 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4302 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4304 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4306 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4307 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4309 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4310 given in the following case:
4311 o When you are using a complex input method.
4312 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4314 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4315 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4316 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4317 setting it to t is helpful.
4319 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4321 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4323 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4324 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4325 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4326 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4329 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4330 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4331 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4334 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4336 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4338 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4339 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4341 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4342 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4343 its owner and group.
4345 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4346 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4348 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4349 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4351 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4352 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4353 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4354 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4356 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4357 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4358 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4359 for writing keyboard macros.
4361 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4362 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4363 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4364 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4365 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4368 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4370 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4371 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4374 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4375 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4376 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4377 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4379 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4380 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4381 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4383 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4384 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4385 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4386 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4388 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4389 failure if the command produces no output.
4391 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4392 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4395 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4396 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4397 function and variable names.
4399 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4400 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4401 file-coding-system-alist.
4403 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4404 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4405 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4406 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4407 according to the current fontset.
4409 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4411 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4412 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4413 nonascii-insert-offset.
4415 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4416 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4417 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4418 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4420 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4421 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4423 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4424 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4426 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4427 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4430 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4431 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4433 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4434 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4435 all variables that have documentation.
4437 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4438 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4439 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4440 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4441 it should show; the default is 20.
4443 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4444 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4447 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4448 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4449 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4450 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4451 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4452 Newly added options are included as well.
4454 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4455 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4456 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4458 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4461 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4462 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4464 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4465 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4468 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4469 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4472 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4473 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4474 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4475 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4478 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4480 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4481 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4482 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4484 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4485 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4486 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4491 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4492 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4494 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4495 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4497 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4498 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4500 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4501 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4502 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4503 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4504 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4505 made invisible again.
4507 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4509 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4510 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4511 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4514 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4515 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4516 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4517 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4518 rmail-default-body-file.
4520 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4521 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4522 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4524 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4525 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4526 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4528 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4529 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4530 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4531 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4532 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4533 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4535 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4536 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4537 provided by feedmail are:
4539 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4540 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4541 there is also a queue for draft messages
4543 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4544 be prompted for confirmation
4546 **** does smart filling of address headers
4548 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4549 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4550 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4552 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4553 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4554 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4555 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4559 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4560 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4562 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4563 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4565 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4566 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4567 for a specified regexp.
4571 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4574 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4575 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4578 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4579 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4580 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4581 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4583 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4584 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4585 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4586 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4587 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4589 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4590 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4591 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4592 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4593 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4595 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4596 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4597 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4598 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4600 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4601 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4602 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4604 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4605 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4606 session to resolve them.
4608 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4609 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4610 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4613 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4614 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4615 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4616 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4617 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4618 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4621 ** Changes in Font Lock
4623 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4624 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4625 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4626 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4627 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4629 ** Frame name display changes
4631 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4632 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4633 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4634 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4636 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4637 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4640 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4642 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4643 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4644 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4646 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4648 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4649 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4650 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4652 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4653 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4656 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4657 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4658 previously sent input.
4660 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4661 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4662 as the search string.
4664 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4665 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4669 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4670 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4671 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4674 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4675 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4676 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4677 style is still the default however.
4679 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4681 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4682 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4683 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4685 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4686 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4688 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4689 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4691 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4692 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4694 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4695 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4697 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4698 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4699 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4700 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4702 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4704 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4705 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4706 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4708 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4709 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4710 expanding dynamically.
4712 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4713 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4715 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4716 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4717 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4718 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4720 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4722 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4724 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4725 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4726 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4727 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4728 against the first word in the title.
4730 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4731 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4732 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4733 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4734 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4735 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4737 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4738 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4739 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4740 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4742 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4744 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4745 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4746 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4747 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4748 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4749 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4751 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4752 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4754 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4755 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4756 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4758 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4759 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4763 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4764 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4765 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4767 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4768 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4769 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4770 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4773 o URLs are automatically skipped
4774 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4776 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4778 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4780 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4781 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4782 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4783 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4785 *** New recursive parser.
4787 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4788 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4789 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4791 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4793 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4794 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4795 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4797 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4799 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4801 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4803 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4805 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4807 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4808 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4810 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4812 *** References to external documents.
4814 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4815 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4816 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4817 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4818 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4819 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4820 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4822 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4824 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4825 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4827 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4828 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4830 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4832 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4833 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4835 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4837 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4838 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4839 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4840 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4841 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4842 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4845 *** Support for the varioref package
4847 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4851 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4852 and citations are created. These hooks are
4853 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4854 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4856 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4858 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4859 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4861 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4863 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4864 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4867 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4869 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4870 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4871 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4872 directories that contain the same file name.
4874 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4875 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4876 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4877 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4878 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4879 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4880 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4883 ** New modes and packages
4885 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4886 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4887 it, but some do not.
4889 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4892 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4893 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4896 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4898 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4899 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4900 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4901 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4903 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4904 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4905 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4907 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4908 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4909 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4910 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4911 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4914 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4915 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4917 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4918 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4919 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4920 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4922 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4924 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4925 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4926 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4927 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4928 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4929 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4930 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4931 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4932 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4933 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4934 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4936 Platform-specific modes:
4938 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4939 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4940 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4941 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4942 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4943 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4944 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4945 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4946 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4948 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4950 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4951 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4952 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4953 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4955 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4956 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4957 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4959 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4960 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4961 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4962 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4964 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4965 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4966 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4969 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4970 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4971 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4972 current input method for reading this one event.
4974 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4975 now control whether to output certain characters as
4976 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4977 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4978 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4979 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4981 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4983 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4984 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4986 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4987 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4988 always increases point by 1.
4990 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4991 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4993 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4995 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4996 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4997 default value changed. For example,
4999 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
5004 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
5007 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
5008 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
5009 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
5010 `:version' in the top level group.
5012 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5014 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5015 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5017 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5018 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5019 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5022 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5023 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5026 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5027 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5028 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5030 ** Frame-local variables.
5032 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5033 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5034 local bindings for that variable.
5036 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5037 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5038 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5041 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5042 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5043 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5044 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5046 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5047 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5048 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5049 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5051 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5052 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5053 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5054 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5055 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5057 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5058 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5059 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5060 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5062 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5063 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5065 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5066 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5067 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5069 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5070 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5071 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5072 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5074 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5075 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5078 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5079 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5080 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5081 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5082 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5084 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5085 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5086 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5087 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5089 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5090 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5091 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5092 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5093 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5095 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5096 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5097 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5098 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5100 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5101 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5102 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5104 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5105 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5106 was directed to display this buffer.
5108 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5109 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5110 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5111 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5112 set-window-configuration.
5114 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5115 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5116 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5117 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5119 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5120 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5121 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5123 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5124 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5125 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5127 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5128 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5130 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5131 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5133 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5134 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5135 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5137 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5138 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5139 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5140 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5144 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5145 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5148 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5149 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5150 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5151 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5152 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5154 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5156 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5157 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5158 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5159 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5162 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5163 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5164 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5165 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5166 The supported properties include
5168 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5170 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5171 item should appear in the menu.
5173 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5174 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5175 It should return a binding to use instead.
5177 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5178 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5179 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5180 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5181 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5184 This means that the command normally has no
5185 keyboard equivalent.
5186 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5187 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5188 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5189 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5190 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5192 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5193 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5195 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5199 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5200 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5201 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5202 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5204 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5206 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5207 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5208 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5209 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5210 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5211 forward, away from the user.
5213 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5215 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5216 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5217 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5218 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5219 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5221 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5223 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5224 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5225 that were dragged and dropped.
5227 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5229 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5231 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5232 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5233 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5235 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5236 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5237 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5239 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5240 in Emacs 19 and before.
5242 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5243 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5245 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5246 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5247 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5248 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5250 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5251 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5252 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5253 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5254 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5256 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5257 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5258 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5259 consistent with the new representation.
5261 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5262 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5263 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5264 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5266 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5267 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5268 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5270 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5271 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5272 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5274 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5275 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5276 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5278 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5279 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5281 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5282 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5284 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5285 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5286 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5287 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5289 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5290 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5292 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5293 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5294 buffer or string being searched.
5296 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5297 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5298 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5299 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5300 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5301 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5302 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5304 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5306 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5307 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5308 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5309 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5310 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5311 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5312 define-coding-system-alias.
5314 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5315 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5316 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5317 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5318 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5319 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5320 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5323 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5324 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5325 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5326 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5328 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5329 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5330 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5331 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5333 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5334 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5335 This function requires a user interaction.
5337 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5338 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5339 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5340 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5341 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5342 select-safe-coding-system.
5344 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5345 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5346 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5349 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5350 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5351 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5353 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5354 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5355 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5356 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5358 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5359 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5360 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5363 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5364 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5366 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5367 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5368 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5369 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5370 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5371 range of characters.
5373 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5374 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5376 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5377 in the current buffer at position POS.
5379 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5380 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5381 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5382 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5383 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5384 binding input-method-function to nil.
5386 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5387 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5388 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5389 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5390 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5392 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5393 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5395 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5396 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5398 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5399 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5400 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5401 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5402 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5404 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5406 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5407 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5408 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5411 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5412 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5414 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5415 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5416 in your .emacs file.)
5418 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5419 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5421 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5422 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5424 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5425 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5428 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5429 delete the character before point, as usual.
5431 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5432 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5433 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5435 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5436 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5437 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5438 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5439 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5442 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5443 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5444 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5445 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5446 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5448 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5449 and is an alias for it.
5451 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5452 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5454 ** Scrolling changes
5456 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5457 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5459 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5460 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5463 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5464 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5465 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5466 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5468 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5469 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5470 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5471 recenters the window.
5473 ** International character set support (MULE)
5475 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5476 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5477 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5478 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5479 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5480 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5482 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5483 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5484 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5485 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5486 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5488 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5489 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5490 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5491 language, to make it possible to type them.
5493 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5494 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5496 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5497 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5499 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5501 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5503 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5504 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5505 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5506 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5507 characters for their work until they want to change.
5511 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5512 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5513 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5514 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5515 support several input methods.
5517 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5518 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5521 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5522 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5523 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5524 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5525 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5528 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5529 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5530 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5531 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5532 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5534 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5535 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5536 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5537 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5539 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5540 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5541 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5542 the first guess is wrong.
5544 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5545 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5547 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5548 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5549 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5550 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5552 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5553 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5554 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5555 translate automatically to and from either one.
5557 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5559 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5560 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5561 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5564 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5565 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5566 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5567 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5569 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5570 character conversion as well.
5572 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5574 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5575 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5576 requires using many fonts.
5578 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5579 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5581 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5582 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5583 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5584 you would use a font.
5586 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5587 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5588 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5590 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5591 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5592 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5593 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5594 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5596 *** Defining fontsets.
5598 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5599 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5600 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5602 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5603 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5604 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5605 standard fontset are created automatically.
5607 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5608 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5609 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5610 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5611 name is `fontset-startup'.
5613 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5614 The resource value should have this form:
5615 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5616 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5617 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5618 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5619 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5620 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5621 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5622 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5623 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5625 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5626 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5627 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5629 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5630 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5632 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5633 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5634 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5635 Here is the substitution rule:
5636 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5637 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5638 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5639 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5640 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5642 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5643 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5644 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5646 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5647 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5648 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5649 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5652 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5653 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5655 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5656 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5657 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5658 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5659 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5660 system for new files that you create.
5662 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5663 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5664 whole Emacs session.
5666 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5667 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5668 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5670 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5671 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5672 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5673 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5674 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5676 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5677 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5678 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5679 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5680 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5682 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5683 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5685 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5686 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5688 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5689 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5691 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5692 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5693 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5694 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5697 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5698 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5699 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5700 translated into that character code.
5702 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5703 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5705 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5707 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5708 the coding system for keyboard input.
5710 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5711 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5712 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5714 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5716 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5717 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5718 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5719 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5720 designed to work with terminals.
5722 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5723 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5724 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5725 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5726 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5727 in the corresponding buffer.
5729 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5731 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5732 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5733 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5735 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5736 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5737 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5740 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5741 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5743 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5744 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5745 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5746 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5748 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5749 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5750 related information.
5752 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5753 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5756 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5757 information about the support for a particular language.
5758 You specify the language as an argument.
5760 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5761 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5764 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5765 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5766 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5767 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5769 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5771 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5772 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5773 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5774 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5775 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5776 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5777 K euc-korea (Korean)
5780 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5783 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5784 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5785 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5789 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5790 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5791 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5792 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5794 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5795 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5797 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5798 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5799 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5800 Rmail files themselves.
5802 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5803 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5805 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5808 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5809 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5810 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5811 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5812 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5814 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5815 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5816 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5819 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5820 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5821 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5822 without any conversion.
5824 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5825 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5826 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5827 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5829 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5830 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5832 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5833 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5835 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5836 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5838 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5839 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5840 in the buffer before point.
5842 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5843 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5846 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5847 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5849 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5851 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5852 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5854 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5855 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5856 can become a bottleneck.
5858 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5859 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5860 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5861 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5862 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5863 so useful that the change is worth while.
5865 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5866 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5867 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5868 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5870 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5871 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5874 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5875 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5876 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5878 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5879 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5880 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5882 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5883 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5884 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5886 ** Changes in View mode.
5888 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5889 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5891 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5892 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5894 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5897 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5898 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5900 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5901 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5902 not just the selected window.
5904 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5905 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5906 turns View mode on or off.
5908 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5909 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5910 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5912 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5913 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5915 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5916 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5917 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5918 which version to compare with.
5920 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5921 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5923 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5924 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5925 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5926 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5928 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5929 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5930 blocks, all of them or none.
5932 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5933 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5936 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5937 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5938 However, the mode will not be changed if
5939 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5940 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5941 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5942 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5944 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5946 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5947 these commands do not change the major mode.
5949 ** M-x occur changes.
5951 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5952 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5954 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5955 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5956 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5958 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5959 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5960 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5961 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5962 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5964 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5965 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5966 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5967 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5969 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5970 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5971 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5973 ** Outline mode changes.
5975 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5977 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5979 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5980 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5981 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5984 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5985 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5988 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5989 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5991 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5993 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5994 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5995 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5996 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5998 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5999 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
6000 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
6002 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
6003 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
6006 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
6007 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
6008 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
6009 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
6011 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
6012 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
6013 can be. The default value is 30.
6015 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6017 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6018 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6019 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6020 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6021 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6024 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6025 compose-mail-other-frame.
6027 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6028 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6029 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6030 buffer that shows the original message.
6032 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6033 with separator lines around the contents.
6035 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6036 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6037 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6038 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6040 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6042 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6043 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6044 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6045 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6047 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6048 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6051 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6052 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6055 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6056 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6057 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6058 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6060 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6061 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6062 be taken to be magic.
6064 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6065 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6066 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6068 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6069 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6071 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6072 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6074 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6076 new key dired.el binding old key
6077 ------- ---------------- -------
6078 * c dired-change-marks c
6080 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6081 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6082 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6084 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6085 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6086 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6087 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6088 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6089 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6093 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6094 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6095 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6096 each time you run it.
6098 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6099 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6101 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6102 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6103 means to move in the opposite direction.
6105 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6106 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6108 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6109 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6110 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6111 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6116 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6118 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6121 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6122 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6124 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6127 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6129 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6131 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6133 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6134 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6135 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6137 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6139 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6141 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6142 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6144 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6145 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6146 used to pick articles.
6148 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6149 another have been added.
6151 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6153 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6154 generating lines in buffers.
6156 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6159 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6161 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6163 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6165 *** Scores can be decayed.
6167 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6169 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6170 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6172 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6175 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6177 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6178 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6180 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6182 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6183 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6185 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6186 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6188 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6191 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6192 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6194 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6196 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6198 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6200 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6202 Use the `Y c' command.
6204 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6206 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6208 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6210 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6211 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6213 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6215 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6217 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6218 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6220 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6222 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6223 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6224 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6225 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6228 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6229 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6230 particular news group. This can be done by:
6232 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6234 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6235 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6236 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6237 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6238 for reading and posting).
6240 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6241 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6242 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6243 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6246 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6247 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6249 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6250 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6251 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6252 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6253 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6255 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6256 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6260 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6261 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6262 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6263 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6264 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6267 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6268 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6269 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6270 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6271 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6272 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6274 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6275 of the current buffer.
6277 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6278 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6279 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6281 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6282 style that the Python developers like.
6284 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6285 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6286 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6290 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6291 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6292 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6294 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6295 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6298 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6299 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6301 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6302 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6303 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6304 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6306 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6307 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6309 ** Calendar changes.
6311 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6312 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6313 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6317 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6319 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6321 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6322 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6323 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6324 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6325 It defaults to `letter'.
6326 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6328 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6329 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6330 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6332 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6333 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6336 *** Horizontal layout
6338 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6339 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6340 All are measured in points.
6344 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6345 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6346 All are measured in points.
6350 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6351 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6352 margin above the text.
6354 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6355 framing box is printed around the header.
6357 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6358 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6360 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6361 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6362 `ps-header-font-size'.
6366 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6367 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6368 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6369 elements to this alist.
6371 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6372 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6374 ** hideshow changes.
6376 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6379 *** Support for java-mode added.
6381 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6382 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6384 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6385 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6386 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6388 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6389 robust and a lot faster.
6391 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6393 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6394 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6395 documentation for more details.
6397 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6399 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6400 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6401 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6402 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6403 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6405 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6406 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6407 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6408 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6414 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6415 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6416 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6417 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6418 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6419 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6421 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6423 *** Maximum decoration
6425 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6426 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6427 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6428 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6429 to get the old behavior.
6433 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6435 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6436 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6438 *** Configurable support
6440 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6441 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6442 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6443 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6444 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6445 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6446 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6448 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6449 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6450 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6452 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6454 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6455 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6458 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6460 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6466 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6467 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6468 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6469 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6471 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6473 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6474 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6475 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6477 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6479 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6480 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6481 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6482 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6483 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6484 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6485 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6487 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6488 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6489 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6490 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6491 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6492 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6494 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6496 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6497 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6498 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6499 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6501 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6504 ** Ada mode changes.
6506 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6507 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6508 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6509 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6512 *** There are two new commands:
6513 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6514 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6516 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6517 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6518 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6520 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6521 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6522 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6524 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6525 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6526 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6527 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6529 ** Scheme mode changes.
6531 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6532 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6533 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6534 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6537 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6538 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6539 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6540 variables as buffer-local variables.
6542 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6545 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6547 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6548 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6549 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6550 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6552 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6553 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6556 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6557 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6558 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6559 option takes precedence.
6561 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6562 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6563 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6565 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6566 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6569 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6570 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6572 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6573 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6576 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6577 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6578 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6579 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6580 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6581 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6583 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6584 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6585 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6586 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6588 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6589 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6590 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6591 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6592 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6594 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6595 since it applies only to the current frame.
6597 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6598 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6599 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6601 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6602 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6603 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6604 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6605 instead of just the file you are editing.
6609 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6610 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6611 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6612 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6613 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6616 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6617 knows which kind of label is needed.
6619 C-c ) reftex-reference
6620 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6621 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6623 C-c [ reftex-citation
6624 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6625 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6627 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6628 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6631 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6632 can quickly jump to every section.
6634 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6635 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6636 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6637 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6638 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6640 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6642 *** Info documentation is now available.
6644 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6645 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6647 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6648 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6650 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6651 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6653 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6654 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6655 appropriate functions.
6657 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6658 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6660 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6663 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6664 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6666 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6669 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6670 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6671 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6673 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6674 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6675 prefixed with `ALT'.
6677 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6678 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6679 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6682 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6683 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6684 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6686 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6687 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6689 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6690 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6691 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6693 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6695 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6697 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6700 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6701 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6704 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6707 *** Added support for imenu.
6709 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6710 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6711 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6712 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6714 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6715 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6717 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6719 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6721 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6722 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6723 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6726 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6727 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6729 ** browse-url changes
6731 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6732 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6733 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6734 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6735 customization variables.
6737 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6739 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6740 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6741 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6745 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6746 pops up the Info file for this command.
6748 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6749 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6750 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6753 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6754 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6755 files in the same directory.
6757 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6758 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6759 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6763 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6764 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6766 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6767 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6768 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6769 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6770 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6771 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6772 color when Viper is in insert state.
6773 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6774 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6775 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6779 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6780 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6781 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6782 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6783 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6785 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6787 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6788 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6790 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6791 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6792 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6794 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6795 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6796 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6797 methods and protocols.
6799 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6800 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6801 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6804 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6805 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6806 at least M times and as many as N times.
6808 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6809 in files has changed slightly.
6811 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6812 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6813 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6814 with old time-stamp-format values.
6816 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6817 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6818 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6821 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6822 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6823 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6824 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6825 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6826 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6828 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6829 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6830 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6832 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6833 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6834 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6835 recommended now will continue to work then.
6837 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6840 ** There are some additional major modes:
6842 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6843 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6844 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6846 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6847 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6850 ** New Lisp packages include:
6852 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6854 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6855 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6857 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6859 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6862 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6863 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6866 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6867 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6868 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6869 strings or comments.
6871 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6872 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6873 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6874 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6877 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6878 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6880 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6881 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6883 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6885 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6886 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6888 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6890 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6892 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6894 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6895 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6897 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6898 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6899 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6900 original place after inserting the copy.
6902 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6905 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6906 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6907 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6909 Enable mouse-drag with:
6910 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6912 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6914 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6915 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6917 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6918 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6922 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6923 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6924 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6925 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6926 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6927 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6928 instance) and vice versa.
6930 To use this package load it using
6931 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6932 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6933 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6934 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6935 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6936 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6938 *** Interface to ph.
6940 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6942 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6943 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6946 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6948 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6949 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6950 while the real cursor does not move.
6952 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6953 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6955 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6956 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6960 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6961 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6962 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6963 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6965 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6967 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6969 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6971 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6972 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6973 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6974 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6975 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6977 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6978 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6979 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6980 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6981 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6982 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6984 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6986 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6987 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6988 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6989 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6991 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6992 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6994 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6995 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6998 ** Basic Lisp changes
7000 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
7001 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
7003 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
7004 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
7007 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
7009 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
7011 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7012 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7014 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7015 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7018 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7020 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7022 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7024 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7025 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7026 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7029 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7030 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7031 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7033 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7034 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7035 adding one of these suffixes.
7037 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7038 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7039 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7041 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7042 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7044 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7046 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7047 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7049 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7050 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7052 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7054 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7055 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7057 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7058 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7059 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7060 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7062 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7063 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7066 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7067 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7068 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7071 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7072 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7075 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7077 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7078 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7079 Then it returns that string.
7081 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7083 (with-output-to-string
7084 (princ "The buffer is ")
7085 (princ (buffer-name)))
7087 returns "The buffer is foo".
7089 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7092 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7093 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7094 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7096 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7097 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7099 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7100 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7101 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7102 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7103 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7104 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7106 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7107 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7108 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7111 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7112 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7113 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7114 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7115 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7117 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7118 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7119 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7120 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7122 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7123 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7125 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7127 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7128 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7129 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7130 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7133 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7134 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7137 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7139 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7140 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7141 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7142 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7143 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7145 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7147 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7148 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7149 more than the number of characters.
7151 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7152 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7153 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7154 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7155 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7156 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7158 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7159 and returns a string containing those characters.
7161 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7162 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7163 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7164 character, sref signals an error.
7166 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7167 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7168 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7170 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7171 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7172 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7174 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7175 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7176 to a vector of the characters in it.
7178 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7179 of a string. You call it as follows:
7181 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7183 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7184 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7185 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7186 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7187 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7189 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7190 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7192 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7193 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7195 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7196 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7197 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7198 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7200 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7202 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7204 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7205 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7206 are not included in the resulting value.
7208 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7209 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7210 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7211 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7213 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7214 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7215 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7216 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7217 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7218 column START-COLUMN.
7220 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7221 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7222 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7223 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7224 changed text, before the change.
7226 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7227 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7228 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7230 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7232 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7234 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7235 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7237 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7238 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7239 which identify the character within that character set.
7241 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7242 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7243 opposite of split-char.
7245 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7246 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7248 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7249 of all the characters in a string.
7251 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7252 and specifying coding systems.
7254 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7255 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7256 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7257 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7258 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7259 as what to do about code conversion.)
7261 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7262 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7264 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7265 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7266 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7268 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7269 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7270 to match against a file name.
7272 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7273 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7274 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7275 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7276 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7277 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7279 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7280 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7282 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7283 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7285 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7286 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7287 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7290 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7291 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7292 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7293 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7294 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7295 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7297 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7298 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7300 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7301 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7302 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7303 start the subprocess.
7305 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7306 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7307 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7308 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7309 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7311 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7312 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7315 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7316 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7317 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7318 connection permanently or until overridden.
7320 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7321 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7322 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7323 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7324 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7325 system for one operation at a time.
7327 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7328 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7330 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7331 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7332 The value is a cons cell,
7333 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7334 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7335 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7336 input to the subprocess.
7338 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7339 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7341 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7342 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7343 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7345 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7346 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7347 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7348 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7351 Thus, instead of writing
7353 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7354 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7356 you would now write this:
7358 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7359 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7363 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7364 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7365 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7366 for a description of them.
7368 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7369 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7371 (defgroup ispell nil
7372 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7375 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7376 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7377 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7378 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7379 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7381 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7382 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7383 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7384 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7385 first-level subgroups.
7387 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7389 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7390 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7394 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7395 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7396 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7397 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7398 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7399 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7401 ** Text property changes
7403 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7406 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7407 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7408 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7409 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7410 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7412 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7413 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7414 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7415 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7417 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7418 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7419 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7421 ** Changes in invisibility features
7423 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7424 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7425 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7426 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7427 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7428 make the overlay visible.
7430 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7431 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7432 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7433 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7434 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7435 t when it should hide it.
7437 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7439 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7440 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7441 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7442 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7443 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7444 Here is an example of how to do this:
7446 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7447 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7448 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7449 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7452 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7455 ;; When done with the overlays:
7456 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7458 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7460 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7462 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7463 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7464 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7465 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7467 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7468 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7469 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7471 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7472 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7474 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7475 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7477 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7478 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7479 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7481 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7482 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7483 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7484 determine the syntax type of the character.
7486 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7487 of the current buffer.
7489 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7490 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7491 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7493 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7494 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7495 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7496 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7497 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7499 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7502 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7503 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7504 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7506 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7507 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7508 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7509 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7510 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7512 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7513 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7514 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7516 ** Changes in face features
7518 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7519 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7521 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7522 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7524 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7525 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7527 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7528 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7530 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7531 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7532 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7533 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7536 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7537 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7539 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7541 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7542 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7543 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7544 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7546 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7549 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7550 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7552 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7553 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7555 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7556 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7558 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7559 character code conversion as well as other things.
7561 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7562 (formerly it did not).
7564 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7565 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7567 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7568 instead of constant strings.
7570 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7571 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7572 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7574 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7575 in the same way as before.
7577 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7578 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7579 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7581 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7582 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7583 else, and returns nil.
7585 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7586 directory cannot be listed.
7588 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7590 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7591 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7592 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7593 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7596 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7597 It is available through the history command M-n.
7599 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7600 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7601 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7602 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7603 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7605 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7606 argument in this way.
7608 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7609 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7610 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7612 ** Echo area features
7614 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7615 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7616 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7617 after the echo area is cleared.
7619 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7620 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7622 ** Keyboard input features
7624 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7625 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7627 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7628 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7631 ** Frame-related changes
7633 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7634 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7635 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7637 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7638 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7639 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7641 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7642 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7643 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7644 in the selected frame.
7646 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7647 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7648 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7650 ** X Windows features
7652 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7653 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7654 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7656 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7657 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7659 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7660 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7661 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7663 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7664 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7666 ** Subprocess features
7668 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7669 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7672 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7673 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7675 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7676 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7678 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7679 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7681 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7682 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7683 goes after the other menu items.
7685 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7686 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7687 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7690 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7691 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7693 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7694 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7697 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7698 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7699 but its hook is still run.
7701 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7702 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7704 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7705 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7706 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7708 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7709 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7710 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7713 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7714 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7716 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7717 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7718 functions like display-time.
7720 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7721 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7723 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7724 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7725 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7727 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7728 if there is an error in compilation.
7730 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7731 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7732 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7733 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7735 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7736 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7737 the *scratch* buffer.
7739 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7740 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7741 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7742 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7744 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7745 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7746 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7748 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7749 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7750 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7751 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7753 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7754 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7755 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7757 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7758 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7759 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7760 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7761 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7764 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7765 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7766 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7767 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7769 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7770 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7771 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7772 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7774 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7776 ** imenu.el changes.
7778 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7779 item from menu created by imenu.
7781 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7782 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7783 select one of those items.
7785 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7787 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7789 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7790 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7792 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7793 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7794 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7796 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7798 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7799 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7801 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7802 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7803 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7804 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7805 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7808 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7809 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7811 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7812 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7813 as in previous Emacs versions.
7815 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7816 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7817 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7820 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7821 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7822 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7823 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7826 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7827 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7828 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7829 line and then executing the macro.
7831 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7833 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7834 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7835 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7840 *** Font Lock support modes
7842 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7843 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7844 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7845 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7846 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7848 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7850 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7856 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7857 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7858 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7859 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7860 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7861 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7862 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7864 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7866 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7868 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7870 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7872 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7875 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7880 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7881 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7882 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7883 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7885 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7886 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7888 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7889 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7892 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7893 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7895 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7897 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7899 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7901 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7904 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7906 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7908 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7910 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7912 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7915 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7917 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7919 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7921 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7923 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7925 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7927 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7929 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7932 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7934 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7937 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7939 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7940 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7942 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7944 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7946 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7948 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7950 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7953 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7955 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7956 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7958 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7959 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7960 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7962 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7963 articles with the `*' command.
7965 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7967 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7969 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7971 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7973 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7974 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7976 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7979 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7981 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7983 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7985 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7987 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7989 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7991 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7993 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7995 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7997 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7998 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
8000 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
8003 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
8005 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
8006 buffer to allow easier treatment.
8008 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
8010 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
8012 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8014 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8017 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8019 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8021 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8022 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8024 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8026 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8028 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8030 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8032 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8034 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8037 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8039 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8040 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8041 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8044 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8047 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8050 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8051 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8054 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8055 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8056 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8057 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8058 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8061 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8063 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8065 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8066 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8067 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8068 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8069 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8071 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8072 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8073 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8075 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8077 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8078 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8079 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8080 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8081 chapter of the manual for details.
8083 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8084 customization variables take effect.
8086 ** Marking with the mouse.
8088 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8089 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8090 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8092 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8094 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8096 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8097 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8099 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8100 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8101 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8102 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8103 applications, these problems are significant.
8105 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8106 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8107 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8108 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8109 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8111 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8112 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8114 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8115 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8116 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8117 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8118 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8119 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8121 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8123 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8124 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8125 minibuffer contains.
8127 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8129 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8130 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8131 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8132 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8134 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8135 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8136 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8137 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8139 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8140 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8142 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8143 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8144 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8146 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8147 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8148 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8149 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8151 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8153 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8154 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8156 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8158 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8159 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8160 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8161 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8162 immediately after the selected one.
8164 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8165 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8167 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8169 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8170 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8171 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8172 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8175 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8176 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8179 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8180 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8181 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8182 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8183 now that the bug is fixed.
8185 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8187 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8188 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8189 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8190 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8192 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8193 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8194 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8195 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8197 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8198 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8199 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8201 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8202 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8203 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8204 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8207 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8208 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8210 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8211 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8212 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8213 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8215 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8216 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8217 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8218 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8219 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8220 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8222 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8223 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8224 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8225 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8227 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8228 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8229 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8231 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8232 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8233 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8234 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8235 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8236 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8237 to a limitation in font-lock).
8239 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8241 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8242 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8243 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8246 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8247 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8249 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8251 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8253 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8255 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8257 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8258 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8259 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8260 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8261 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8262 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8264 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8267 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8268 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8270 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8275 *** Global Font Lock mode
8277 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8278 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8279 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8280 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8281 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8283 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8285 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8289 *** Local Refontification
8291 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8292 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8293 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8294 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8296 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8297 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8298 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8299 above and below point.
8301 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8305 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8306 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8307 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8308 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8309 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8312 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8314 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8315 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8317 ** hide-show changes.
8319 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8320 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8323 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8324 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8326 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8327 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8328 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8332 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8333 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8335 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8336 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8338 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8340 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8341 pressing both mouse buttons.
8343 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8344 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8347 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8350 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8352 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8353 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8355 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8357 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8359 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8361 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8363 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8365 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8367 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8368 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8369 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8370 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8371 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8373 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8375 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8376 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8377 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8380 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8383 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8385 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8386 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8388 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8389 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8391 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8392 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8393 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8395 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8396 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8399 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8401 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8402 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8403 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8405 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8406 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8407 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8409 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8410 up if too much time passes.
8412 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8414 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8415 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8416 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8419 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8420 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8421 call looks like this:
8423 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8425 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8426 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8427 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8430 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8431 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8434 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8435 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8436 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8437 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8439 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8440 idle for SECS seconds.
8442 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8443 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8444 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8447 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8448 there is no answer within a certain time.
8450 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8452 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8453 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8454 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8456 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8457 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8458 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8459 arguments in between are ignored.
8461 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8462 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8464 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8465 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8466 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8467 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8470 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8471 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8472 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8473 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8474 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8475 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8477 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8478 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8479 systems with limited file name syntax.
8481 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8482 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8483 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8486 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8487 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8488 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8490 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8491 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8492 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8493 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8494 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8496 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8497 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8498 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8500 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8501 marker from its buffer position.
8503 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8504 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8505 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8507 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8508 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8509 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8510 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8511 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8512 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8514 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8515 errors that happen often during editing.
8517 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8518 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8519 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8521 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8522 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8524 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8525 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8526 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8527 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8528 and not get-buffer-window.
8530 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8531 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8532 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8534 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8535 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8536 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8537 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8538 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8539 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8540 over and over for the same text.
8542 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8544 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8545 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8547 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8550 in addition to the normal
8554 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8555 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8556 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8560 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8562 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8563 Copyright information:
8565 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8567 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8568 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8569 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8570 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8572 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8573 of this document, or of portions of it,
8574 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8575 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8579 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"