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.
242 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
243 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
245 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
246 read mail from the menu etc.
249 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
250 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
252 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
254 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
258 -------------------------
265 ** Changes in Outline mode.
267 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
268 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
269 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
271 ** Changes to Emacs Server
273 *** There new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
274 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
275 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
276 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
277 buffers to kill, as before.
279 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
280 i.e. buffers visited which `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
283 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
285 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
286 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
287 use. Default is 1000.
289 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
290 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
293 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
294 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
295 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
299 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
300 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
303 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
304 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
306 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
307 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
308 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
310 ** Faces and frame parameters.
312 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
313 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
314 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
315 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
316 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
317 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
318 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
320 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
321 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
322 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
323 `default' face and vice versa.
327 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
328 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
329 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
332 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
334 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
335 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
336 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
337 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
339 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
340 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
341 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
343 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
346 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
348 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
349 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
350 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
351 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
354 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
356 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
357 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
358 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
359 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
362 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
363 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
364 under Lisp changes, below.
366 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
369 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
370 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
371 otherwise, it is hollow.
373 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
374 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
375 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
376 customizing face `fringe'.
378 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
379 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
383 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
384 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
386 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
388 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
389 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
390 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
391 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
392 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
395 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
396 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
397 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
398 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
399 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
400 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
402 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
403 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
404 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
405 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
406 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
407 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
409 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
410 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
411 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
412 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
413 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
415 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
417 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
418 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
419 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
422 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
424 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
425 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
426 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
427 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
428 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
433 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
434 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
439 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
440 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
441 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
444 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
446 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
447 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
448 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
451 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
452 have to do anything to activate it.
454 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
456 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
457 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
458 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
459 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
461 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
464 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
466 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
468 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
471 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
474 ** Hscrolling in C code.
476 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
477 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
482 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
483 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
486 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
488 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
489 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
490 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
491 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
492 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
494 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
496 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
499 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
500 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
502 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
504 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
505 `*') toggles the status.
507 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
509 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
511 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
512 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
515 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
517 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
518 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
519 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
520 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
521 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
522 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
527 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
528 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
529 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
532 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
533 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
534 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
535 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
536 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
537 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
539 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
541 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
543 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
544 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
545 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
547 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
548 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
550 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
551 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
552 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
554 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
556 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
557 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
558 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
559 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
561 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
562 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
563 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
564 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
566 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
567 notably at the end of lines.
569 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
570 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
573 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
575 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
576 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
577 after each match to get the replacement text.
579 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
580 you edit the replacement string.
582 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
583 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
584 lisp-complete-symbol.
586 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
588 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
589 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
590 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
591 window size by setting the following variable:
593 - User option: max-mini-window-height
595 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
596 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
597 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
601 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
603 ** Changes to hideshow.el
605 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
606 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
608 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
610 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
611 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
612 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
613 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
614 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
615 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
617 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
618 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
619 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
620 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
622 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
624 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
625 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
626 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
627 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
628 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
630 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
631 something like this in your .emacs.
633 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
635 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
637 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
640 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
641 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
642 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
645 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
649 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
652 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
653 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
655 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
656 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
657 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
658 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
660 ** Changes in Font Lock
662 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
663 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
666 ** Comint (subshell) changes
668 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
669 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
670 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
671 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
672 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
673 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
674 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
675 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
677 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
678 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
680 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
681 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
682 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
684 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
685 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
686 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
688 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
689 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
690 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
691 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
693 ** Changes to Rmail mode
695 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
696 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
697 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
698 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
699 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
702 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
703 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
704 regexp matching your mail addresses.
706 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
707 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
708 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
709 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
710 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
712 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
715 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
716 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
719 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
720 in which folder to put messages automatically.
722 ** Changes to TeX mode
724 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
727 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
729 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
730 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
731 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
732 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
733 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
734 can be edited from that buffer.
736 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
737 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
738 `A' to use all marked entries).
740 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
741 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
743 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
744 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
745 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
748 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
749 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
750 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
751 in column 1 are always made leaves.
753 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
754 has the following new features:
756 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
757 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
758 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
759 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
761 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
762 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
763 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
764 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
765 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
768 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
774 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
775 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
776 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
778 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
779 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
780 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
781 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
786 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
787 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
788 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
790 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
791 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
794 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
795 between custom options. Example:
797 (defcustom default-input-method nil
798 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
799 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
800 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
802 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
803 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
805 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
806 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
807 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
809 ** New features in evaluation commands
811 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
812 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
813 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
814 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
815 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
817 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
818 code when called with a prefix argument.
822 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
823 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
824 spell-checks the current buffer.
826 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
829 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
830 correction is made and re-checked.
832 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
834 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
837 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
840 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
845 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
846 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
847 is, delete only empty directories.
849 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
850 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
851 copy directories recursively.
853 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
854 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
855 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
857 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
858 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
861 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
862 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
863 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
864 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
865 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
867 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
870 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
871 use the -f option when sending mail.
875 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
876 current user setups (although it's believed that these
877 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
878 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
879 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
880 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
883 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
884 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
885 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
886 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
887 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
890 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
891 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
892 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
893 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
894 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
895 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
897 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
898 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
899 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
900 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
901 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
902 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
903 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
904 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
906 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
907 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
908 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
909 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
912 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
913 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
914 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
915 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
916 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
917 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
918 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
919 function documentation for more info.
921 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
922 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
923 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
924 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
925 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
926 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
927 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
928 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
930 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
932 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
933 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
935 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
936 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
937 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
938 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
939 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
942 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
943 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
944 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
947 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
948 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
949 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
950 chapter about this in the manual.
952 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
953 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
954 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
955 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
956 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
958 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
959 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
960 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
962 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
963 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
965 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
966 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
967 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
970 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
971 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
972 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
973 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
976 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
977 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
978 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
981 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
982 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
983 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
984 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
987 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
988 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
989 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
990 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
993 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
994 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
995 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
997 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
999 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1000 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1001 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1002 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1004 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1005 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1006 the column specified by comment-column.
1008 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1009 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1010 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1011 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1012 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1013 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1015 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1016 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1019 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1021 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1022 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1023 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1024 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1027 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1029 ** Makefile mode changes
1031 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1033 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1034 Fontlock mode is active.
1038 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1039 so that searches can be resumed.
1041 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1042 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1043 that started the search.
1045 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1046 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1048 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1050 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1051 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1052 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1053 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1054 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1055 `secondary-selection'.
1057 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1058 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1059 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1060 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1061 usual snappy response.
1063 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1064 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1065 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1066 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1068 ** Changes in sort.el
1070 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1071 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1072 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1075 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1078 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1079 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1080 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1082 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1083 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1085 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1086 output ^M at the end of lines.
1088 ** Shell script mode changes.
1090 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1091 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1092 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1096 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1098 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1099 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1100 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1101 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1102 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1104 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1105 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1107 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1108 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1110 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1113 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1115 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1117 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1120 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1121 variables are tagged.
1123 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1125 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1128 ** Changes in etags.el
1130 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1131 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1132 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1134 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1135 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1137 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1138 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1139 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1140 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1142 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1144 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1145 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1147 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1149 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1150 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1151 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1153 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1154 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1156 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1157 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1160 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1161 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1162 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1164 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1165 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1166 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1167 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1170 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1171 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1172 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1174 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1177 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1179 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1180 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1181 expression from that list, are not checked.
1183 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1184 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1185 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1186 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1188 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1190 ** New modes and packages
1193 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1194 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1195 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1196 on certain projects.
1198 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1199 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1201 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1203 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1204 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1205 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1206 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1207 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1208 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1209 corresponding file is read.
1212 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1215 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1216 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1218 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1219 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1220 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1223 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1224 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1225 separate Texinfo file.
1228 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1229 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1230 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1231 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1232 enter checkin log messages.
1235 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1236 without invoking external programs.
1238 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1239 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1240 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1241 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1242 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1244 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1245 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1247 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1248 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1250 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1251 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1252 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1253 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1254 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1257 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1258 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1259 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1260 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1263 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1264 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1265 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1267 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1270 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1272 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1274 ; comment (until end of line)
1278 $A default non-terminal
1279 $"C" default terminal
1280 $?C? default special
1281 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1282 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1283 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1284 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1285 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1286 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1287 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1288 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1289 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1290 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1291 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1292 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1293 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1294 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1295 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1297 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1299 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1300 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1301 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1302 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1303 equal signs of assignments.
1306 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1307 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1310 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1311 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1312 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1313 customize the package.
1315 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1317 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1318 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1319 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1320 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1321 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1322 which answers different needs.
1325 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1326 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1327 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1328 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1329 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1333 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1334 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1337 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1340 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1342 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1344 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1347 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1350 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1353 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1355 *** whitespace.el ???
1357 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1358 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1359 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1360 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1361 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1362 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1363 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1365 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1367 Here is an example of columns:
1370 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1371 porcupine strawberry airplane
1373 Doing the following settings:
1375 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1376 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1377 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1378 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1381 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1383 M-x delimit-columns-region
1387 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1388 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1389 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1391 delim-col has the following options:
1393 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1396 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1397 between each column.
1399 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1402 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1405 delim-col has the following commands:
1407 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1408 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1411 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1412 were operated on recently.
1414 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1416 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1417 recentf at Emacs startup.
1419 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1420 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1421 file list can be displayed:
1423 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1424 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1425 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1427 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1428 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1430 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1434 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1435 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1436 specific to Message mode.
1439 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1440 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1441 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1444 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1445 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1446 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1448 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1449 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1452 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1454 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1455 minibuffer with completion.
1457 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1458 with the diary features.
1460 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1461 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1463 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1466 ** Withdrawn packages
1468 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1469 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1471 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1473 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1476 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1477 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1480 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1481 is running in batch mode. For example,
1483 (message "%s" (read t))
1485 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1489 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1490 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1492 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1493 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1496 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1499 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1501 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1502 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1504 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1506 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1507 comparison is done with `eq'.
1509 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1511 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1515 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1516 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1517 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1519 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1520 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1522 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1523 function was declared obsolete.
1525 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1526 retained as an alias).
1528 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1529 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1530 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1532 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1534 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1536 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1537 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1539 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1541 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1543 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1545 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1546 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1547 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1548 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1551 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1552 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1553 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1554 minibuffer even if it is active.
1556 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1557 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1558 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1559 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1560 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1561 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1563 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1564 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1565 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1566 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1567 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1568 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1569 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1571 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1572 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1573 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1575 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1576 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1577 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1578 Default value is nil.
1580 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1583 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1584 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1585 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1587 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1590 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1591 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1592 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1593 than replacing the local map.
1595 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1596 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1598 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1600 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1603 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1605 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1607 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1608 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1609 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1610 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1612 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1613 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1614 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1615 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1617 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1618 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1619 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1620 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1622 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1623 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1624 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1626 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1627 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1628 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1629 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1630 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1631 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1632 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1635 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1637 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1638 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1639 character set as previously.
1641 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1642 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1643 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1645 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1646 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1647 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1648 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1650 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1651 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1653 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1654 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1657 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1658 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1660 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1661 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1662 buffers and strings.
1664 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1665 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1666 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1667 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1668 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1669 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1670 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1673 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1674 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1675 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1677 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1678 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1679 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1680 may differ between buffer and string text.
1682 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1683 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1685 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1686 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1687 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1688 `composition' from STRING.
1690 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1691 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1693 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1696 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1697 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1698 character set is not used.
1700 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1701 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1702 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1705 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1706 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1707 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1710 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1711 that offset in the file before writing.
1713 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1714 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1716 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1717 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1718 from which the command was issued.
1720 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1721 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1722 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1723 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1726 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1727 to `window-buffer-height'.
1729 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1731 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1732 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1733 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1735 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1738 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1739 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1741 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1742 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1743 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1745 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1746 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1747 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1748 is currently displayed in some window.
1750 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1751 argument function's results.
1753 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1754 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1756 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1757 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1759 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1760 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1762 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1763 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1766 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1767 nil don't display a cursor
1768 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1769 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1770 others display a box cursor.
1772 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1773 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1774 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1775 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1777 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1778 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1779 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1780 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1784 (string-to-syntax "()")
1787 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1790 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1791 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1798 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1803 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1808 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1815 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1816 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1819 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1820 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1821 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1822 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1825 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1827 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1828 for a regexp in a string.
1830 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1831 `mouse-position-function'.
1833 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1834 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1836 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1837 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1840 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1843 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1844 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1847 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1848 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1849 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1850 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1854 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1855 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1858 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1859 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1860 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1861 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1864 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1865 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1866 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1867 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1870 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1871 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1872 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1875 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1876 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1879 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1881 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1882 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1883 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1887 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1888 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1891 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1892 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1895 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1896 instead of being optional.
1899 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1900 modify read-only text.
1903 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1905 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1906 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1907 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1908 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1909 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1911 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1912 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1913 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1914 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1915 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1916 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1917 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1920 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1921 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1922 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1926 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1927 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1930 ** New function `propertize'
1932 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1933 strings with text properties.
1935 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1937 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1938 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1939 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1940 specified value of that property. Example:
1942 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1945 ** push and pop macros.
1947 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1948 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1949 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1951 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1952 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1953 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1955 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1957 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1958 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1960 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1961 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1962 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1963 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1965 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1966 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1967 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1968 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1971 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1972 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1974 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1975 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1976 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1977 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1978 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1980 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1982 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1983 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1984 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1985 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1986 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1987 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1988 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1989 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1990 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1991 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1992 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1993 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1994 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1995 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1996 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1999 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2001 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2003 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2005 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2006 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2010 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2011 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2012 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2016 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2017 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2019 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2021 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2022 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2023 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2024 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2025 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2027 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2029 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2030 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2031 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2035 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2036 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2037 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2038 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2039 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2041 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2043 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2045 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2047 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2049 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2051 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2054 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2056 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2058 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2060 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2062 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2064 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2066 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2068 Returns the size of TABLE.
2070 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2072 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2074 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2076 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2078 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2082 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2084 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2087 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2089 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2090 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2092 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2094 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2096 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2098 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2099 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2101 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2103 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2105 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2107 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2108 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2109 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2110 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2111 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2113 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2115 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2116 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2117 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2119 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2120 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2122 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2123 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2125 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2126 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2128 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2129 'case-fold-string-hash))
2131 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2134 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2136 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2137 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2138 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2141 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2143 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2144 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2147 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2148 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2149 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2150 is too short to reach that column.
2153 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2154 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2155 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2156 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2158 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2159 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2160 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2163 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2164 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2167 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2168 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2171 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2172 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2173 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2174 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2175 temporary-file-directory instead.
2178 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2179 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2180 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2181 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2184 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2185 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2188 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2190 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2191 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2192 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2195 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2197 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2198 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2199 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2200 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2201 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2202 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2204 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2205 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2206 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2207 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2210 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2212 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2213 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2214 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2217 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2218 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2222 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2224 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2225 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2228 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2231 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2233 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2234 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2237 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2239 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2240 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2246 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2247 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2249 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2250 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2251 to enable sound support.
2253 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2254 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2255 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2256 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2257 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2259 The following sound properties are supported:
2263 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2264 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2268 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2269 may be present, but not both.
2273 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2274 0..1. This property is optional.
2276 Other properties are ignored.
2278 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2280 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2283 ** Changes to garbage collection
2285 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2286 of live and free strings.
2288 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2289 strings that have been consed so far.
2292 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2296 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2298 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2301 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2303 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2305 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2306 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2307 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2308 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2309 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2311 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2312 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2315 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2318 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2320 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2321 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2322 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2323 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2326 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2328 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2329 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2330 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2331 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2333 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2334 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2336 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2337 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2338 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2339 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2340 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2341 just display it black instead.
2343 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2346 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2350 ** New face implementation.
2352 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2353 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2358 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2360 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2362 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2363 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2365 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2367 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2369 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2371 6. Foreground color.
2373 7. Background color.
2375 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2377 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2379 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2381 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2383 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2386 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2387 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2389 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2390 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2391 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2392 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2393 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2394 attributes mentioned above.
2396 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2397 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2400 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2401 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2407 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2408 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2409 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2410 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2411 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2412 results in a fully-specified face.
2415 *** Face realization.
2417 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2418 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2419 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2420 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2421 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2422 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2424 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2425 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2426 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2427 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2429 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2430 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2431 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2432 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2433 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2435 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2436 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2437 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2438 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2439 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2442 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2443 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2444 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2445 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2448 **** Clearing face caches.
2450 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2451 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2457 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2458 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2459 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2461 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2462 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2463 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2464 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2465 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2467 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2468 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2469 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2471 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2473 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2474 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2475 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2476 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2477 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2478 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2479 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2481 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2482 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2488 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2489 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2492 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2493 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2494 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2495 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2496 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2499 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2501 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2504 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2506 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2508 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2509 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2510 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2512 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2513 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2514 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2515 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2516 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2517 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2518 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2519 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2520 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2521 of the face font sort order.
2523 - Function: x-font-family-list
2525 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2526 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2527 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2528 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2530 - Variable: font-list-limit
2532 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2533 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2534 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2537 *** Setting face attributes.
2539 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2540 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2541 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2544 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2545 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2547 The following attributes are recognized:
2551 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2552 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2553 and `?' are allowed.
2557 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2558 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2559 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2560 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2564 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2569 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2570 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2571 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2575 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2576 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2579 `:foreground', `:background'
2581 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2585 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2586 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2587 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2592 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2593 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2594 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2599 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2600 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2601 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2602 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2606 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2607 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2608 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2609 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2610 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2611 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2612 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2613 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2614 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2615 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2616 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2617 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2618 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2619 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2620 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2621 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2626 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2627 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2631 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2632 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2633 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2634 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2635 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2636 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2638 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2639 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2643 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2644 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2645 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2648 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2649 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2650 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2652 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2655 *** Face attributes and X resources
2657 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2660 Face attribute X resource class
2661 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2662 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2663 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2664 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2665 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2666 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2667 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2668 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2669 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2670 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2671 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2672 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2673 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2674 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2675 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2676 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2677 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2678 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2679 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2680 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2683 *** Text property `face'.
2685 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2686 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2687 specification can be
2689 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2691 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2692 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2693 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2694 for face attribute names.
2696 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2697 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2698 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2701 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2703 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2704 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2705 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2706 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2707 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2708 used to clear the mapping table.
2710 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2712 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2713 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2714 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2715 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2716 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2717 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2718 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2719 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2720 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2721 modify their color-related behavior.
2723 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2726 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2728 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2729 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2730 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2731 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2732 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2733 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2734 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2735 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2736 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2739 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2741 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2743 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2744 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2745 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2747 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2749 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2750 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2751 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2753 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2754 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2755 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2756 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2757 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2758 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2759 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2762 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2763 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2764 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2766 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2768 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2770 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2772 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2773 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2774 constrained position if that is is different.
2776 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2777 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2778 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2779 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2780 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2781 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2782 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2783 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2784 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2786 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2787 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2788 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2789 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2790 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2792 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2793 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2795 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2797 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2799 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2800 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2801 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2803 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2805 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2806 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2807 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2808 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2809 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2811 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2813 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2814 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2815 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2816 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2817 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2819 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2821 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2822 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2823 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2825 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2827 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
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.
2834 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2835 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2836 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2837 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2839 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2840 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2841 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2842 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2845 IMAGE is an image specification.
2847 *** Image specifications
2849 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2850 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2851 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2852 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2853 described below are ignored.
2855 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2859 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2860 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2861 to use for its ascent.
2863 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2864 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2866 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2867 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2868 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2869 overlays that apply to the image.
2873 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2874 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2878 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2883 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2884 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2885 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2886 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2888 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2890 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2891 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2892 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2893 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2894 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2895 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2896 background of the image.
2900 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2901 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2902 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2903 may be present in the image specification.
2907 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2908 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2909 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2910 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2912 *** Supported image types
2914 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2916 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2917 properties supported are
2921 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2922 is the frame's foreground.
2926 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2927 the frame's background color.
2929 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2930 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2931 instead of a `:file' property.
2935 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2939 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2945 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2946 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2948 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2950 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2953 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2954 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2957 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2959 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2960 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2961 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2962 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2964 Additional image properties supported are:
2966 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2968 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2969 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2972 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2973 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2975 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2976 to display compressed images.
2978 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2980 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2981 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2984 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2986 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2987 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2990 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2992 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2993 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2996 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2998 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2999 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3001 Additional image properties supported are:
3005 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3006 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3008 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3009 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3010 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3013 (defun show-anim (file max)
3014 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3015 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3017 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3020 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3023 (goto-char (point-min))
3024 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3025 (insert-image img "x"))
3026 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3028 **** PNG, image type `png'
3030 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3031 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3034 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3036 Additional image properties supported are:
3040 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3041 integer. This is a required property.
3045 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3046 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3050 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3051 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3052 files. This is an required property.
3054 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3059 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3060 which are supported in the current configuration.
3062 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3063 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3064 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3065 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3066 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3068 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3070 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3071 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3072 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3073 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3074 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3080 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3083 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3084 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3085 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3086 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3087 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3088 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3089 of the display margins.
3091 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3092 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3093 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3094 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3100 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3101 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3102 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3103 that have a `help-echo' property.
3105 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3106 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3107 the window in which the help was found.
3109 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3110 `help-echo' text property was found.
3112 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3113 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3115 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3116 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3119 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3120 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3122 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3123 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3124 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3125 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3126 used as help string.
3128 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3129 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3130 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3133 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3135 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3136 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3138 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3139 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3140 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3141 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3144 (global-set-key [A-down]
3147 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3148 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3149 (global-set-key [A-up]
3152 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3153 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3156 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3158 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3159 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3160 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3161 is called with one argument, POS.
3163 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3164 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3165 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3166 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3167 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3170 ** Tool bar support.
3172 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3173 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3174 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3175 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3176 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3177 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3179 *** Tool bar item definitions
3181 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3182 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3183 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3185 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3186 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3187 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3188 property (see below).
3190 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3191 binding are currently ignored.
3193 The following properties are recognized:
3197 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3202 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3206 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3207 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3208 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3210 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3212 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3213 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3217 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3218 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3219 meaning of each of the four elements:
3221 Index Use when item is
3222 ----------------------------------------
3223 0 enabled and selected
3224 1 enabled and deselected
3225 2 disabled and selected
3226 3 disabled and deselected
3228 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3229 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3231 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3233 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3234 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3236 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3238 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3239 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3240 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3242 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3243 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3245 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3246 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3247 pixels. Default is 1.
3249 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3250 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3252 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3254 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3257 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3258 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3259 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3261 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3263 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3265 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3268 ** Mode line changes.
3271 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3273 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3274 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3275 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3277 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3278 a `local-map' text property.
3280 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3281 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3283 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3284 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3285 `local-map' property.
3287 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3288 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3291 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3292 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3295 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3296 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3299 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3301 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3302 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3303 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3304 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3307 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3310 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3311 position in the header-line.
3314 ** Text property `display'
3316 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3317 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3318 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3319 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3321 *** Variable width and height spaces
3323 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3324 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3325 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3326 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3327 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3328 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3329 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3331 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3332 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3333 properties described below.
3335 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3336 characters having the `display' property.
3340 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3341 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3343 - :relative-width FACTOR
3345 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3346 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3347 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3348 width of that character by FACTOR.
3352 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3353 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3355 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3359 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3362 - :relative-height FACTOR
3364 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3365 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3369 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3370 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3371 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3374 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3378 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3379 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3380 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3381 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3382 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3383 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3384 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3385 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3386 as display specification.
3388 *** Other display properties
3390 - :space-width FACTOR
3392 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3393 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3398 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3400 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3401 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3402 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3403 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3404 a font is available counts as a step.
3406 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3407 as tall as the frame's default font.
3409 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3410 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3412 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3413 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3417 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3418 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3419 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3420 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3421 `:height' subproperty.
3423 *** Conditional display properties
3425 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3426 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3427 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3428 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3429 the text having the `display' property.
3431 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3435 ** New menu separator types.
3437 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3438 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3439 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3440 to specify other menu separator types.
3442 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3444 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3447 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3449 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3451 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3453 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3455 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3457 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3459 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3461 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3463 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3465 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3466 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3468 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3470 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3472 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3474 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3476 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3478 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3480 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3482 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3484 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3486 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3488 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3490 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3492 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3494 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3496 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3497 the corresponding single-line separators.
3500 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3502 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3503 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3504 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3505 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3506 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3507 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3508 default foreground is black.
3510 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3511 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3512 `ScrollBarBackground').
3514 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3515 settings for scroll bar colors.
3518 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3519 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3522 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3523 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3524 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3525 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3526 the original window start.
3529 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3530 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3531 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3534 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3536 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3537 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3538 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3539 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3541 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3542 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3544 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3546 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3547 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3548 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3549 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3550 temporarily to nil, for example
3552 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3553 (enlarge-window 10))
3555 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3556 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3558 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3559 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3560 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3561 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3562 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3563 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3567 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3569 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3572 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3574 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3576 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3577 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3578 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3579 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3580 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3582 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3586 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3588 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3591 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3593 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3594 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3596 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3598 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3600 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3601 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3602 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3604 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3605 is the one that is used.
3607 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3608 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3609 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3610 separate from the command's regular output.
3611 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3612 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3613 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3616 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3617 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3618 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3619 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3621 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3622 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3623 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3624 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3626 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3627 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3628 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3629 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3631 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3632 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3633 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3634 they never ignore case.
3636 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3637 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3638 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3639 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3640 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3641 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3642 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3644 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3645 the same format that was used in the file before.
3647 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3648 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3650 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3651 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3652 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3654 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3655 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3656 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3657 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3658 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3659 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3660 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3662 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3663 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3664 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3665 format. You can now customize these variables.
3667 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3668 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3669 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3670 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3672 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3673 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3674 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3676 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3677 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3678 doesn't have any effect.
3680 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3683 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3684 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3685 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3687 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3688 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3689 `auto-show-mode' command.
3691 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3692 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3693 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3694 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3695 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3697 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3698 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3700 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3701 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3702 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3704 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3705 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3706 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3707 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3709 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3711 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3712 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3713 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3714 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3715 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3717 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3718 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3720 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3721 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3722 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3723 `?' on other systems.
3725 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3726 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3729 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3730 current codepage when it starts.
3734 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3735 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3736 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3737 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3738 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3739 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3743 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3744 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3746 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3747 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3748 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3749 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3750 buffer-file-coding-system.
3752 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3753 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3756 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3757 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3758 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3759 list of possible coding systems.
3763 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3764 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3765 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3766 docstring for details.
3768 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3769 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3770 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3771 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3772 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3774 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3775 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3777 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3778 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3780 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3781 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3782 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3783 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3786 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3787 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3789 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3790 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3791 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3792 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3794 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3795 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3796 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3797 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3798 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3800 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3802 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3804 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3805 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3807 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3809 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3810 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3811 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3812 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3813 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3817 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3818 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3819 Gnus manual for the full story.
3821 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3822 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3823 group, which is created automatically.
3825 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3828 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3830 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3831 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3833 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3836 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3838 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3839 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3841 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3843 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3844 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3846 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3847 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3849 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3850 control over simplification.
3852 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3854 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3857 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3859 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3861 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3862 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3863 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3865 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3866 `a' forces normal posting method.
3868 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3871 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3874 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3875 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3877 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3880 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3882 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3884 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3885 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3887 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3888 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3890 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3892 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3895 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3896 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3898 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3899 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3901 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3903 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3905 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3907 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3909 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3910 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3911 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3913 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3914 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3915 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3916 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3917 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3919 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3920 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3921 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3922 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3924 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3925 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3926 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3929 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3931 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3932 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3934 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3935 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3936 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3937 removed from the label.
3939 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3940 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3942 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3943 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3945 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3946 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3949 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3951 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3953 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3954 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3956 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3957 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3958 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3960 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3961 changes with a special face.
3963 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3964 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3965 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3967 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3969 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3970 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3971 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3972 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3973 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3975 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3976 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3977 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3979 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3980 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3981 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3982 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3983 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3984 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3985 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3986 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3987 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3989 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3990 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3991 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3992 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3993 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3996 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3997 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3998 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3999 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4000 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4001 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4003 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4004 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4005 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4006 was not documented clearly before.
4008 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4009 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4011 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4013 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4014 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4015 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4016 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4018 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4019 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4020 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4022 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4024 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4025 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4027 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4028 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4031 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4032 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4033 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4034 file names and attributes are returned.
4036 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4037 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4038 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4039 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4042 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4043 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4045 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4047 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4048 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4049 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4052 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4053 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4056 The new function process-running-child-p
4057 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4058 terminal to its own child process.
4060 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4061 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4062 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4063 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4065 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4066 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4068 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4069 :included is an alias for :visible.
4071 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4072 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4073 to move or copy menu entries.
4075 ** Multibyte editing changes
4077 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4078 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4079 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4080 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4081 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4082 (setq char (sref str idx)
4083 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4084 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4086 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4087 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4088 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4090 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4091 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4092 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4094 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4096 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4097 across the boundary.
4099 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4100 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4101 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4102 contains 8-bit characters.
4103 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4104 contains invalid characters.
4106 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4107 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4108 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4109 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4112 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4113 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4114 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4115 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4117 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4118 compose Thai characters in a string.
4120 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4121 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4122 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4123 menus should always use the third argument.
4125 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4126 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4127 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4128 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4130 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4131 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4132 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4133 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4135 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4136 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4137 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4140 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4142 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4143 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4144 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4146 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4147 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4148 means to clear out that attribute.
4150 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4151 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4153 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4154 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4155 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4156 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4158 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4159 the gap of the current buffer.
4161 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4162 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4165 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4166 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4167 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4168 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4170 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4172 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4173 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4174 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4175 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4176 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4178 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4179 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4180 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4181 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4182 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4184 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4185 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4186 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4188 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4189 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4190 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4191 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4192 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4195 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4196 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4197 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4198 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4200 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4202 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4203 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4204 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4205 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4207 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4208 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4209 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4210 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4211 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4212 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4213 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4216 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4219 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4220 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4221 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4222 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4223 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4225 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4226 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4227 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4228 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4230 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4231 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4232 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4233 something that most users not do.
4235 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4236 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4237 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4240 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4243 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4244 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4245 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4246 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4249 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4250 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4251 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4252 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4253 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4256 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4257 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4258 to be confused by TeX commands.
4260 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4261 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4262 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4263 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4265 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4266 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4267 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4268 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4269 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4271 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4272 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4274 ** Changes in input method usage.
4276 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4277 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4280 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4282 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4283 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4285 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4286 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4288 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4290 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4292 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4293 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4295 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4296 given in the following case:
4297 o When you are using a complex input method.
4298 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4300 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4301 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4302 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4303 setting it to t is helpful.
4305 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4307 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4309 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4310 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4311 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4312 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4315 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4316 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4317 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4320 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4322 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4324 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4325 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4327 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4328 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4329 its owner and group.
4331 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4332 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4334 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4335 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4337 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4338 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4339 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4340 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4342 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4343 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4344 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4345 for writing keyboard macros.
4347 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4348 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4349 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4350 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4351 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4354 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4356 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4357 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4360 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4361 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4362 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4363 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4365 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4366 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4367 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4369 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4370 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4371 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4372 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4374 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4375 failure if the command produces no output.
4377 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4378 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4381 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4382 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4383 function and variable names.
4385 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4386 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4387 file-coding-system-alist.
4389 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4390 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4391 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4392 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4393 according to the current fontset.
4395 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4397 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4398 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4399 nonascii-insert-offset.
4401 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4402 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4403 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4404 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4406 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4407 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4409 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4410 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4412 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4413 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4416 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4417 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4419 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4420 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4421 all variables that have documentation.
4423 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4424 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4425 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4426 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4427 it should show; the default is 20.
4429 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4430 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4433 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4434 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4435 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4436 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4437 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4438 Newly added options are included as well.
4440 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4441 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4442 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4444 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4447 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4448 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4450 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4451 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4454 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4455 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4458 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4459 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4460 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4461 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4464 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4466 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4467 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4468 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4470 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4471 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4472 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4477 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4478 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4480 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4481 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4483 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4484 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4486 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4487 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4488 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4489 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4490 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4491 made invisible again.
4493 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4495 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4496 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4497 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4500 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4501 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4502 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4503 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4504 rmail-default-body-file.
4506 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4507 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4508 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4510 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4511 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4512 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4514 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4515 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4516 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4517 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4518 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4519 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4521 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4522 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4523 provided by feedmail are:
4525 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4526 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4527 there is also a queue for draft messages
4529 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4530 be prompted for confirmation
4532 **** does smart filling of address headers
4534 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4535 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4536 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4538 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4539 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4540 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4541 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4545 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4546 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4548 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4549 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4551 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4552 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4553 for a specified regexp.
4557 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4560 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4561 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4564 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4565 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4566 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4567 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4569 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4570 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4571 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4572 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4573 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4575 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4576 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4577 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4578 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4579 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4581 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4582 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4583 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4584 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4586 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4587 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4588 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4590 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4591 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4592 session to resolve them.
4594 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4595 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4596 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4599 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4600 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4601 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4602 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4603 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4604 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4607 ** Changes in Font Lock
4609 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4610 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4611 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4612 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4613 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4615 ** Frame name display changes
4617 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4618 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4619 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4620 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4622 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4623 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4626 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4628 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4629 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4630 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4632 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4634 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4635 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4636 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4638 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4639 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4642 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4643 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4644 previously sent input.
4646 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4647 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4648 as the search string.
4650 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4651 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4655 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4656 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4657 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4660 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4661 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4662 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4663 style is still the default however.
4665 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4667 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4668 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4669 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4671 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4672 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4674 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4675 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4677 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4678 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4680 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4681 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4683 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4684 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4685 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4686 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4688 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4690 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4691 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4692 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4694 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4695 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4696 expanding dynamically.
4698 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4699 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4701 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4702 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4703 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4704 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4706 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4708 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4710 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4711 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4712 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4713 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4714 against the first word in the title.
4716 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4717 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4718 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4719 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4720 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4721 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4723 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4724 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4725 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4726 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4728 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4730 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4731 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4732 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4733 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4734 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4735 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4737 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4738 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4740 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4741 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4742 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4744 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4745 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4749 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4750 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4751 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4753 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4754 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4755 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4756 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4759 o URLs are automatically skipped
4760 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4762 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4764 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4766 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4767 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4768 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4769 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4771 *** New recursive parser.
4773 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4774 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4775 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4777 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4779 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4780 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4781 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4783 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4785 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4787 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4789 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4791 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4793 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4794 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4796 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4798 *** References to external documents.
4800 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4801 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4802 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4803 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4804 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4805 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4806 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4808 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4810 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4811 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4813 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4814 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4816 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4818 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4819 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4821 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4823 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4824 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4825 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4826 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4827 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4828 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4831 *** Support for the varioref package
4833 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4837 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4838 and citations are created. These hooks are
4839 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4840 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4842 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4844 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4845 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4847 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4849 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4850 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4853 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4855 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4856 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4857 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4858 directories that contain the same file name.
4860 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4861 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4862 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4863 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4864 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4865 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4866 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4869 ** New modes and packages
4871 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4872 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4873 it, but some do not.
4875 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4878 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4879 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4882 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4884 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4885 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4886 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4887 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4889 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4890 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4891 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4893 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4894 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4895 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4896 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4897 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4900 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4901 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4903 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4904 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4905 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4906 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4908 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4910 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4911 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4912 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4913 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4914 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4915 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4916 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4917 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4918 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4919 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4920 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4922 Platform-specific modes:
4924 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4925 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4926 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4927 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4928 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4929 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4930 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4931 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4932 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4934 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4936 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4937 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4938 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4939 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4941 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4942 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4943 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4945 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4946 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4947 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4948 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4950 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4951 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4952 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4955 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4956 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4957 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4958 current input method for reading this one event.
4960 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4961 now control whether to output certain characters as
4962 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4963 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4964 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4965 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4967 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4969 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4970 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4972 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4973 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4974 always increases point by 1.
4976 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4977 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4979 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4981 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4982 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4983 default value changed. For example,
4985 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4990 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4993 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4994 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4995 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4996 `:version' in the top level group.
4998 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5000 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5001 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5003 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5004 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5005 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5008 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5009 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5012 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5013 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5014 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5016 ** Frame-local variables.
5018 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5019 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5020 local bindings for that variable.
5022 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5023 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5024 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5027 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5028 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5029 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5030 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5032 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5033 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5034 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5035 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5037 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5038 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5039 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5040 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5041 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5043 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5044 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5045 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5046 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5048 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5049 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5051 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5052 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5053 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5055 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5056 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5057 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5058 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5060 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5061 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5064 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5065 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5066 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5067 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5068 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5070 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5071 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5072 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5073 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5075 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5076 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5077 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5078 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5079 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5081 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5082 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5083 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5084 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5086 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5087 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5088 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5090 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5091 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5092 was directed to display this buffer.
5094 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5095 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5096 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5097 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5098 set-window-configuration.
5100 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5101 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5102 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5103 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5105 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5106 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5107 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5109 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5110 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5111 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5113 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5114 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5116 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5117 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5119 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5120 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5121 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5123 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5124 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5125 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5126 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5130 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5131 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5134 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5135 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5136 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5137 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5138 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5140 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5142 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5143 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5144 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5145 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5148 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5149 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5150 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5151 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5152 The supported properties include
5154 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5156 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5157 item should appear in the menu.
5159 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5160 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5161 It should return a binding to use instead.
5163 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5164 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5165 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5166 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5167 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5170 This means that the command normally has no
5171 keyboard equivalent.
5172 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5173 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5174 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5175 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5176 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5178 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5179 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5181 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5185 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5186 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5187 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5188 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5190 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5192 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5193 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5194 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5195 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5196 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5197 forward, away from the user.
5199 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5201 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5202 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5203 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5204 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5205 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5207 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5209 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5210 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5211 that were dragged and dropped.
5213 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5215 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5217 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5218 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5219 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5221 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5222 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5223 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5225 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5226 in Emacs 19 and before.
5228 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5229 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5231 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5232 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5233 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5234 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5236 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5237 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5238 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5239 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5240 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5242 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5243 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5244 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5245 consistent with the new representation.
5247 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5248 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5249 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5250 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5252 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5253 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5254 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5256 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5257 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5258 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5260 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5261 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5262 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5264 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5265 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5267 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5268 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5270 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5271 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5272 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5273 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5275 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5276 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5278 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5279 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5280 buffer or string being searched.
5282 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5283 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5284 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5285 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5286 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5287 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5288 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5290 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5292 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5293 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5294 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5295 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5296 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5297 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5298 define-coding-system-alias.
5300 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5301 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5302 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5303 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5304 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5305 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5306 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5309 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5310 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5311 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5312 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5314 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5315 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5316 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5317 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5319 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5320 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5321 This function requires a user interaction.
5323 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5324 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5325 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5326 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5327 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5328 select-safe-coding-system.
5330 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5331 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5332 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5335 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5336 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5337 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5339 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5340 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5341 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5342 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5344 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5345 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5346 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5349 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5350 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5352 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5353 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5354 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5355 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5356 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5357 range of characters.
5359 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5360 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5362 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5363 in the current buffer at position POS.
5365 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5366 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5367 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5368 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5369 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5370 binding input-method-function to nil.
5372 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5373 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5374 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5375 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5376 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5378 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5379 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5381 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5382 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5384 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5385 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5386 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5387 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5388 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5390 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5392 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5393 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5394 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5397 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5398 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5400 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5401 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5402 in your .emacs file.)
5404 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5405 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5407 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5408 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5410 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5411 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5414 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5415 delete the character before point, as usual.
5417 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5418 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5419 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5421 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5422 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5423 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5424 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5425 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5428 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5429 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5430 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5431 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5432 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5434 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5435 and is an alias for it.
5437 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5438 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5440 ** Scrolling changes
5442 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5443 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5445 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5446 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5449 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5450 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5451 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5452 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5454 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5455 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5456 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5457 recenters the window.
5459 ** International character set support (MULE)
5461 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5462 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5463 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5464 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5465 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5466 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5468 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5469 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5470 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5471 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5472 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5474 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5475 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5476 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5477 language, to make it possible to type them.
5479 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5480 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5482 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5483 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5485 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5487 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5489 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5490 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5491 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5492 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5493 characters for their work until they want to change.
5497 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5498 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5499 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5500 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5501 support several input methods.
5503 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5504 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5507 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5508 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5509 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5510 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5511 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5514 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5515 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5516 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5517 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5518 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5520 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5521 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5522 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5523 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5525 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5526 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5527 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5528 the first guess is wrong.
5530 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5531 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5533 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5534 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5535 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5536 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5538 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5539 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5540 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5541 translate automatically to and from either one.
5543 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5545 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5546 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5547 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5550 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5551 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5552 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5553 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5555 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5556 character conversion as well.
5558 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5560 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5561 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5562 requires using many fonts.
5564 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5565 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5567 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5568 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5569 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5570 you would use a font.
5572 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5573 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5574 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5576 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5577 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5578 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5579 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5580 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5582 *** Defining fontsets.
5584 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5585 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5586 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5588 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5589 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5590 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5591 standard fontset are created automatically.
5593 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5594 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5595 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5596 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5597 name is `fontset-startup'.
5599 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5600 The resource value should have this form:
5601 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5602 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5603 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5604 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5605 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5606 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5607 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5608 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5609 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5611 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5612 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5613 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5615 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5616 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5618 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5619 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5620 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5621 Here is the substitution rule:
5622 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5623 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5624 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5625 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5626 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5628 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5629 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5630 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5632 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5633 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5634 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5635 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5638 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5639 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5641 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5642 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5643 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5644 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5645 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5646 system for new files that you create.
5648 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5649 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5650 whole Emacs session.
5652 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5653 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5654 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5656 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5657 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5658 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5659 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5660 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5662 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5663 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5664 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5665 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5666 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5668 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5669 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5671 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5672 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5674 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5675 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5677 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5678 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5679 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5680 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5683 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5684 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5685 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5686 translated into that character code.
5688 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5689 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5691 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5693 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5694 the coding system for keyboard input.
5696 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5697 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5698 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5700 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5702 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5703 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5704 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5705 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5706 designed to work with terminals.
5708 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5709 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5710 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5711 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5712 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5713 in the corresponding buffer.
5715 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5717 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5718 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5719 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5721 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5722 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5723 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5726 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5727 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5729 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5730 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5731 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5732 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5734 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5735 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5736 related information.
5738 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5739 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5742 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5743 information about the support for a particular language.
5744 You specify the language as an argument.
5746 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5747 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5750 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5751 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5752 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5753 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5755 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5757 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5758 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5759 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5760 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5761 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5762 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5763 K euc-korea (Korean)
5766 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5769 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5770 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5771 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5775 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5776 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5777 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5778 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5780 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5781 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5783 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5784 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5785 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5786 Rmail files themselves.
5788 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5789 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5791 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5794 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5795 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5796 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5797 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5798 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5800 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5801 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5802 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5805 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5806 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5807 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5808 without any conversion.
5810 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5811 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5812 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5813 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5815 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5816 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5818 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5819 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5821 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5822 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5824 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5825 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5826 in the buffer before point.
5828 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5829 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5832 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5833 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5835 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5837 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5838 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5840 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5841 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5842 can become a bottleneck.
5844 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5845 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5846 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5847 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5848 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5849 so useful that the change is worth while.
5851 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5852 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5853 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5854 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5856 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5857 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5860 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5861 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5862 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5864 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5865 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5866 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5868 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5869 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5870 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5872 ** Changes in View mode.
5874 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5875 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5877 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5878 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5880 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5883 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5884 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5886 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5887 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5888 not just the selected window.
5890 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5891 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5892 turns View mode on or off.
5894 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5895 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5896 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5898 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5899 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5901 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5902 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5903 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5904 which version to compare with.
5906 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5907 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5909 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5910 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5911 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5912 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5914 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5915 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5916 blocks, all of them or none.
5918 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5919 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5922 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5923 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5924 However, the mode will not be changed if
5925 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5926 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5927 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5928 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5930 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5932 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5933 these commands do not change the major mode.
5935 ** M-x occur changes.
5937 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5938 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5940 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5941 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5942 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5944 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5945 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5946 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5947 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5948 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5950 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5951 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5952 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5953 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5955 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5956 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5957 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5959 ** Outline mode changes.
5961 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5963 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5965 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5966 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5967 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5970 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5971 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5974 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5975 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5977 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5979 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5980 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5981 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5982 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5984 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5985 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5986 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5988 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5989 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5992 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5993 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5994 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5995 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5997 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5998 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5999 can be. The default value is 30.
6001 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6003 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6004 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6005 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6006 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6007 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6010 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6011 compose-mail-other-frame.
6013 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6014 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6015 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6016 buffer that shows the original message.
6018 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6019 with separator lines around the contents.
6021 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6022 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6023 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6024 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6026 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6028 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6029 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6030 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6031 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6033 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6034 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6037 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6038 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6041 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6042 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6043 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6044 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6046 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6047 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6048 be taken to be magic.
6050 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6051 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6052 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6054 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6055 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6057 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6058 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6060 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6062 new key dired.el binding old key
6063 ------- ---------------- -------
6064 * c dired-change-marks c
6066 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6067 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6068 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6070 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6071 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6072 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6073 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6074 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6075 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6079 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6080 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6081 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6082 each time you run it.
6084 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6085 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6087 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6088 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6089 means to move in the opposite direction.
6091 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6092 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6094 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6095 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6096 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6097 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6102 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6104 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6107 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6108 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6110 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6113 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6115 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6117 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6119 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6120 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6121 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6123 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6125 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6127 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6128 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6130 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6131 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6132 used to pick articles.
6134 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6135 another have been added.
6137 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6139 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6140 generating lines in buffers.
6142 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6145 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6147 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6149 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6151 *** Scores can be decayed.
6153 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6155 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6156 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6158 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6161 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6163 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6164 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6166 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6168 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6169 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6171 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6172 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6174 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6177 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6178 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6180 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6182 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6184 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6186 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6188 Use the `Y c' command.
6190 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6192 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6194 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6196 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6197 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6199 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6201 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6203 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6204 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6206 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6208 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6209 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6210 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6211 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6214 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6215 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6216 particular news group. This can be done by:
6218 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6220 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6221 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6222 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6223 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6224 for reading and posting).
6226 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6227 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6228 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6229 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6232 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6233 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6235 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6236 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6237 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6238 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6239 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6241 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6242 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6246 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6247 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6248 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6249 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6250 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6253 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6254 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6255 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6256 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6257 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6258 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6260 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6261 of the current buffer.
6263 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6264 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6265 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6267 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6268 style that the Python developers like.
6270 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6271 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6272 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6276 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6277 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6278 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6280 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6281 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6284 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6285 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6287 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6288 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6289 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6290 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6292 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6293 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6295 ** Calendar changes.
6297 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6298 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6299 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6303 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6305 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6307 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6308 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6309 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6310 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6311 It defaults to `letter'.
6312 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6314 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6315 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6316 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6318 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6319 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6322 *** Horizontal layout
6324 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6325 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6326 All are measured in points.
6330 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6331 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6332 All are measured in points.
6336 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6337 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6338 margin above the text.
6340 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6341 framing box is printed around the header.
6343 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6344 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6346 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6347 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6348 `ps-header-font-size'.
6352 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6353 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6354 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6355 elements to this alist.
6357 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6358 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6360 ** hideshow changes.
6362 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6365 *** Support for java-mode added.
6367 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6368 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6370 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6371 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6372 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6374 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6375 robust and a lot faster.
6377 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6379 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6380 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6381 documentation for more details.
6383 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6385 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6386 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6387 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6388 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6389 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6391 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6392 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6393 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6394 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6400 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6401 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6402 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6403 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6404 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6405 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6407 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6409 *** Maximum decoration
6411 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6412 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6413 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6414 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6415 to get the old behavior.
6419 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6421 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6422 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6424 *** Configurable support
6426 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6427 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6428 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6429 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6430 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6431 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6432 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6434 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6435 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6436 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6438 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6440 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6441 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6444 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6446 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6452 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6453 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6454 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6455 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6457 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6459 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6460 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6461 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6463 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6465 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6466 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6467 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6468 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6469 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6470 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6471 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6473 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6474 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6475 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6476 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6477 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6478 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6480 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6482 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6483 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6484 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6485 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6487 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6490 ** Ada mode changes.
6492 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6493 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6494 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6495 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6498 *** There are two new commands:
6499 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6500 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6502 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6503 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6504 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6506 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6507 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6508 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6510 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6511 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6512 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6513 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6515 ** Scheme mode changes.
6517 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6518 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6519 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6520 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6523 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6524 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6525 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6526 variables as buffer-local variables.
6528 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6531 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6533 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6534 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6535 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6536 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6538 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6539 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6542 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6543 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6544 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6545 option takes precedence.
6547 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6548 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6549 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6551 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6552 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6555 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6556 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6558 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6559 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6562 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6563 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6564 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6565 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6566 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6567 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6569 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6570 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6571 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6572 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6574 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6575 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6576 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6577 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6578 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6580 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6581 since it applies only to the current frame.
6583 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6584 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6585 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6587 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6588 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6589 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6590 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6591 instead of just the file you are editing.
6595 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6596 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6597 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6598 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6599 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6602 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6603 knows which kind of label is needed.
6605 C-c ) reftex-reference
6606 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6607 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6609 C-c [ reftex-citation
6610 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6611 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6613 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6614 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6617 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6618 can quickly jump to every section.
6620 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6621 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6622 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6623 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6624 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6626 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6628 *** Info documentation is now available.
6630 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6631 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6633 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6634 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6636 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6637 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6639 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6640 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6641 appropriate functions.
6643 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6644 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6646 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6649 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6650 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6652 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6655 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6656 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6657 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6659 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6660 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6661 prefixed with `ALT'.
6663 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6664 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6665 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6668 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6669 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6670 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6672 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6673 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6675 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6676 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6677 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6679 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6681 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6683 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6686 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6687 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6690 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6693 *** Added support for imenu.
6695 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6696 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6697 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6698 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6700 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6701 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6703 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6705 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6707 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6708 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6709 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6712 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6713 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6715 ** browse-url changes
6717 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6718 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6719 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6720 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6721 customization variables.
6723 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6725 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6726 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6727 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6731 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6732 pops up the Info file for this command.
6734 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6735 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6736 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6739 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6740 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6741 files in the same directory.
6743 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6744 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6745 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6749 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6750 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6752 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6753 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6754 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6755 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6756 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6757 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6758 color when Viper is in insert state.
6759 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6760 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6761 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6765 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6766 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6767 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6768 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6769 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6771 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6773 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6774 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6776 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6777 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6778 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6780 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6781 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6782 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6783 methods and protocols.
6785 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6786 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6787 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6790 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6791 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6792 at least M times and as many as N times.
6794 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6795 in files has changed slightly.
6797 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6798 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6799 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6800 with old time-stamp-format values.
6802 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6803 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6804 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6807 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6808 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6809 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6810 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6811 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6812 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6814 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6815 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6816 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6818 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6819 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6820 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6821 recommended now will continue to work then.
6823 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6826 ** There are some additional major modes:
6828 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6829 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6830 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6832 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6833 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6836 ** New Lisp packages include:
6838 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6840 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6841 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6843 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6845 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6848 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6849 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6852 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6853 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6854 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6855 strings or comments.
6857 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6858 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6859 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6860 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6863 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6864 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6866 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6867 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6869 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6871 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6872 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6874 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6876 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6878 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6880 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6881 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6883 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6884 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6885 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6886 original place after inserting the copy.
6888 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6891 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6892 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6893 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6895 Enable mouse-drag with:
6896 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6898 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6900 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6901 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6903 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6904 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6908 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6909 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6910 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6911 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6912 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6913 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6914 instance) and vice versa.
6916 To use this package load it using
6917 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6918 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6919 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6920 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6921 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6922 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6924 *** Interface to ph.
6926 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6928 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6929 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6932 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6934 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6935 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6936 while the real cursor does not move.
6938 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6939 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6941 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6942 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6946 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6947 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6948 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6949 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6951 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6953 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6955 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6957 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6958 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6959 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6960 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6961 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6963 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6964 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6965 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6966 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6967 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6968 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6970 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6972 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6973 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6974 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6975 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6977 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6978 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6980 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6981 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6984 ** Basic Lisp changes
6986 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6987 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6989 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6990 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6993 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6995 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6997 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6998 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7000 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7001 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7004 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7006 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7008 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7010 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7011 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7012 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7015 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7016 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7017 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7019 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7020 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7021 adding one of these suffixes.
7023 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7024 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7025 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7027 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7028 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7030 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7032 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7033 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7035 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7036 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7038 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7040 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7041 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7043 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7044 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7045 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7046 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7048 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7049 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7052 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7053 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7054 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7057 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7058 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7061 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7063 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7064 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7065 Then it returns that string.
7067 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7069 (with-output-to-string
7070 (princ "The buffer is ")
7071 (princ (buffer-name)))
7073 returns "The buffer is foo".
7075 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7078 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7079 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7080 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7082 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7083 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7085 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7086 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7087 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7088 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7089 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7090 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7092 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7093 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7094 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7097 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7098 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7099 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7100 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7101 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7103 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7104 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7105 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7106 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7108 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7109 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7111 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7113 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7114 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7115 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7116 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7119 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7120 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7123 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7125 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7126 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7127 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7128 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7129 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7131 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7133 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7134 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7135 more than the number of characters.
7137 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7138 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7139 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7140 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7141 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7142 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7144 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7145 and returns a string containing those characters.
7147 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7148 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7149 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7150 character, sref signals an error.
7152 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7153 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7154 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7156 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7157 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7158 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7160 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7161 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7162 to a vector of the characters in it.
7164 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7165 of a string. You call it as follows:
7167 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7169 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7170 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7171 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7172 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7173 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7175 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7176 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7178 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7179 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7181 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7182 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7183 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7184 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7186 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7188 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7190 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7191 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7192 are not included in the resulting value.
7194 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7195 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7196 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7197 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7199 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7200 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7201 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7202 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7203 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7204 column START-COLUMN.
7206 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7207 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7208 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7209 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7210 changed text, before the change.
7212 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7213 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7214 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7216 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7218 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7220 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7221 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7223 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7224 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7225 which identify the character within that character set.
7227 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7228 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7229 opposite of split-char.
7231 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7232 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7234 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7235 of all the characters in a string.
7237 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7238 and specifying coding systems.
7240 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7241 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7242 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7243 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7244 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7245 as what to do about code conversion.)
7247 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7248 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7250 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7251 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7252 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7254 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7255 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7256 to match against a file name.
7258 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7259 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7260 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7261 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7262 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7263 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7265 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7266 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7268 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7269 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7271 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7272 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7273 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7276 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7277 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7278 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7279 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7280 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7281 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7283 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7284 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7286 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7287 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7288 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7289 start the subprocess.
7291 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7292 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7293 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7294 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7295 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7297 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7298 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7301 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7302 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7303 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7304 connection permanently or until overridden.
7306 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7307 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7308 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7309 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7310 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7311 system for one operation at a time.
7313 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7314 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7316 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7317 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7318 The value is a cons cell,
7319 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7320 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7321 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7322 input to the subprocess.
7324 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7325 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7327 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7328 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7329 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7331 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7332 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7333 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7334 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7337 Thus, instead of writing
7339 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7340 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7342 you would now write this:
7344 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7345 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7349 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7350 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7351 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7352 for a description of them.
7354 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7355 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7357 (defgroup ispell nil
7358 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7361 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7362 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7363 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7364 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7365 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7367 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7368 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7369 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7370 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7371 first-level subgroups.
7373 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7375 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7376 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7380 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7381 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7382 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7383 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7384 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7385 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7387 ** Text property changes
7389 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7392 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7393 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7394 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7395 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7396 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7398 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7399 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7400 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7401 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7403 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7404 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7405 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7407 ** Changes in invisibility features
7409 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7410 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7411 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7412 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7413 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7414 make the overlay visible.
7416 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7417 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7418 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7419 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7420 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7421 t when it should hide it.
7423 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7425 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7426 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7427 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7428 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7429 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7430 Here is an example of how to do this:
7432 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7433 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7434 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7435 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7438 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7441 ;; When done with the overlays:
7442 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7444 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7446 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7448 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7449 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7450 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7451 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7453 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7454 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7455 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7457 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7458 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7460 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7461 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7463 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7464 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7465 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7467 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7468 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7469 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7470 determine the syntax type of the character.
7472 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7473 of the current buffer.
7475 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7476 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7477 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7479 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7480 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7481 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7482 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7483 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7485 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7488 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7489 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7490 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7492 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7493 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7494 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7495 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7496 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7498 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7499 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7500 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7502 ** Changes in face features
7504 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7505 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7507 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7508 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7510 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7511 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7513 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7514 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7516 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7517 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7518 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7519 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7522 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7523 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7525 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7527 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7528 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7529 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7530 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7532 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7535 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7536 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7538 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7539 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7541 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7542 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7544 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7545 character code conversion as well as other things.
7547 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7548 (formerly it did not).
7550 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7551 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7553 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7554 instead of constant strings.
7556 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7557 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7558 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7560 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7561 in the same way as before.
7563 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7564 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7565 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7567 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7568 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7569 else, and returns nil.
7571 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7572 directory cannot be listed.
7574 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7576 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7577 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7578 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7579 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7582 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7583 It is available through the history command M-n.
7585 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7586 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7587 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7588 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7589 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7591 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7592 argument in this way.
7594 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7595 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7596 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7598 ** Echo area features
7600 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7601 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7602 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7603 after the echo area is cleared.
7605 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7606 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7608 ** Keyboard input features
7610 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7611 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7613 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7614 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7617 ** Frame-related changes
7619 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7620 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7621 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7623 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7624 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7625 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7627 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7628 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7629 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7630 in the selected frame.
7632 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7633 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7634 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7636 ** X Windows features
7638 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7639 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7640 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7642 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7643 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7645 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7646 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7647 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7649 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7650 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7652 ** Subprocess features
7654 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7655 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7658 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7659 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7661 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7662 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7664 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7665 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7667 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7668 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7669 goes after the other menu items.
7671 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7672 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7673 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7676 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7677 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7679 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7680 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7683 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7684 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7685 but its hook is still run.
7687 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7688 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7690 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7691 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7692 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7694 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7695 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7696 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7699 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7700 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7702 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7703 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7704 functions like display-time.
7706 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7707 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7709 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7710 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7711 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7713 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7714 if there is an error in compilation.
7716 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7717 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7718 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7719 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7721 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7722 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7723 the *scratch* buffer.
7725 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7726 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7727 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7728 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7730 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7731 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7732 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7734 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7735 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7736 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7737 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7739 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7740 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7741 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7743 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7744 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7745 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7746 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7747 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7750 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7751 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7752 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7753 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7755 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7756 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7757 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7758 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7760 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7762 ** imenu.el changes.
7764 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7765 item from menu created by imenu.
7767 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7768 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7769 select one of those items.
7771 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7773 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7775 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7776 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7778 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7779 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7780 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7782 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7784 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7785 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7787 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7788 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7789 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7790 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7791 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7794 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7795 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7797 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7798 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7799 as in previous Emacs versions.
7801 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7802 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7803 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7806 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7807 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7808 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7809 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7812 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7813 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7814 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7815 line and then executing the macro.
7817 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7819 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7820 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7821 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7826 *** Font Lock support modes
7828 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7829 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7830 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7831 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7832 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7834 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7836 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7842 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7843 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7844 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7845 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7846 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7847 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7848 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7850 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7852 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7854 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7856 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7858 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7861 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7866 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7867 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7868 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7869 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7871 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7872 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7874 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7875 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7878 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7879 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7881 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7883 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7885 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7887 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7890 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7892 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7894 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7896 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7898 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7901 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7903 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7905 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7907 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7909 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7911 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7913 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7915 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7918 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7920 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7923 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7925 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7926 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7928 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7930 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7932 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7934 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7936 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7939 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7941 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7942 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7944 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7945 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7946 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7948 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7949 articles with the `*' command.
7951 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7953 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7955 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7957 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7959 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7960 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7962 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7965 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7967 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7969 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7971 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7973 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7975 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7977 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7979 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7981 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7983 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7984 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7986 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7989 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7991 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7992 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7994 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7996 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7998 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8000 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8003 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8005 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8007 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8008 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8010 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8012 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8014 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8016 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8018 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8020 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8023 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8025 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8026 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8027 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8030 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8033 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8036 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8037 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8040 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8041 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8042 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8043 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8044 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8047 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8049 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8051 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8052 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8053 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8054 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8055 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8057 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8058 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8059 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8061 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8063 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8064 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8065 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8066 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8067 chapter of the manual for details.
8069 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8070 customization variables take effect.
8072 ** Marking with the mouse.
8074 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8075 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8076 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8078 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8080 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8082 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8083 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8085 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8086 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8087 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8088 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8089 applications, these problems are significant.
8091 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8092 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8093 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8094 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8095 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8097 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8098 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8100 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8101 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8102 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8103 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8104 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8105 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8107 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8109 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8110 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8111 minibuffer contains.
8113 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8115 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8116 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8117 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8118 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8120 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8121 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8122 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8123 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8125 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8126 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8128 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8129 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8130 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8132 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8133 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8134 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8135 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8137 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8139 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8140 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8142 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8144 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8145 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8146 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8147 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8148 immediately after the selected one.
8150 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8151 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8153 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8155 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8156 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8157 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8158 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8161 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8162 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8165 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8166 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8167 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8168 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8169 now that the bug is fixed.
8171 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8173 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8174 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8175 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8176 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8178 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8179 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8180 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8181 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8183 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8184 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8185 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8187 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8188 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8189 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8190 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8193 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8194 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8196 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8197 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8198 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8199 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8201 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8202 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8203 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8204 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8205 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8206 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8208 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8209 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8210 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8211 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8213 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8214 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8215 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8217 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8218 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8219 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8220 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8221 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8222 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8223 to a limitation in font-lock).
8225 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8227 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8228 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8229 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8232 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8233 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8235 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8237 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8239 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8241 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8243 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8244 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8245 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8246 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8247 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8248 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8250 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8253 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8254 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8256 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8261 *** Global Font Lock mode
8263 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8264 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8265 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8266 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8267 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8269 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8271 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8275 *** Local Refontification
8277 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8278 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8279 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8280 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8282 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8283 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8284 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8285 above and below point.
8287 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8291 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8292 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8293 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8294 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8295 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8298 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8300 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8301 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8303 ** hide-show changes.
8305 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8306 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8309 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8310 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8312 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8313 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8314 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8318 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8319 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8321 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8322 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8324 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8326 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8327 pressing both mouse buttons.
8329 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8330 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8333 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8336 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8338 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8339 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8341 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8343 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8345 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8347 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8349 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8351 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8353 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8354 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8355 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8356 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8357 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8359 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8361 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8362 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8363 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8366 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8369 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8371 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8372 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8374 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8375 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8377 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8378 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8379 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8381 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8382 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8385 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8387 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8388 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8389 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8391 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8392 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8393 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8395 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8396 up if too much time passes.
8398 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8400 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8401 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8402 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8405 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8406 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8407 call looks like this:
8409 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8411 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8412 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8413 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8416 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8417 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8420 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8421 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8422 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8423 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8425 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8426 idle for SECS seconds.
8428 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8429 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8430 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8433 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8434 there is no answer within a certain time.
8436 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8438 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8439 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8440 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8442 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8443 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8444 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8445 arguments in between are ignored.
8447 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8448 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8450 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8451 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8452 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8453 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8456 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8457 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8458 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8459 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8460 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8461 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8463 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8464 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8465 systems with limited file name syntax.
8467 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8468 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8469 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8472 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8473 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8474 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8476 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8477 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8478 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8479 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8480 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8482 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8483 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8484 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8486 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8487 marker from its buffer position.
8489 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8490 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8491 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8493 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8494 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8495 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8496 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8497 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8498 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8500 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8501 errors that happen often during editing.
8503 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8504 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8505 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8507 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8508 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8510 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8511 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8512 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8513 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8514 and not get-buffer-window.
8516 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8517 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8518 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8520 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8521 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8522 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8523 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8524 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8525 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8526 over and over for the same text.
8528 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8530 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8531 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8533 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8536 in addition to the normal
8540 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8541 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8542 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8546 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8548 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8549 Copyright information:
8551 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8553 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8554 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8555 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8556 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8558 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8559 of this document, or of portions of it,
8560 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8561 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8565 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"