1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
13 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
14 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
16 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
17 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
21 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
23 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
24 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
26 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
27 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
32 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
33 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
35 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
36 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
37 Postscript files are included.
39 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
42 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
43 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
45 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
46 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
47 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
48 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
49 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
50 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
52 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
53 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
54 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
55 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
57 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
58 a version-dependent component.
60 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
61 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
62 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
63 character is still bound as before.
65 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
68 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
69 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to executable-chmod.
71 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
72 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
73 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
74 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
75 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
76 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
77 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
79 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
80 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
81 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
82 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
83 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
84 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
85 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
86 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
87 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
89 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
90 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
92 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
93 point in a pop-up window.
95 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
96 displays all characters in that character set.
98 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
99 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
101 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
104 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
106 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
107 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
109 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
110 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
111 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
112 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
114 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
115 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
116 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
117 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
119 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
120 on the display using several methods
122 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
123 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
124 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
126 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
127 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
129 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
131 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
132 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
134 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
135 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
136 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
137 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
139 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
140 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
141 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
143 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
144 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
146 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
147 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
150 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
151 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
154 ** New X resources recognized
156 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
157 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
158 is useful for debugging X problems.
162 emacs.synchronous: true
164 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
165 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
166 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
167 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
168 visual class names are
177 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
178 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
181 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
182 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
183 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
188 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
190 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
191 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
192 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
193 resource values are `true' or `on'.
197 emacs.privateColormap: true
199 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
200 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
201 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
203 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
204 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
205 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
208 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
210 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
211 all frames except the selected one.
213 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
214 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
216 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
217 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
218 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
219 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
221 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
222 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
224 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
225 read mail from the menu etc.
227 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
228 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
230 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
232 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
236 -------------------------
243 ** Changes in Outline mode.
245 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
246 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
247 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
249 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
251 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
252 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
253 use. Default is 1000.
255 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
256 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
258 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
259 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
260 several other special buffers.
262 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
263 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
266 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
267 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
269 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
270 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
271 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
273 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
274 is running in batch mode. For example,
276 (message "%s" (read t))
278 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
281 ** Faces and frame parameters.
283 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
284 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
285 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
286 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
287 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
288 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
289 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
291 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
292 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
293 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
294 `default' face and vice versa.
298 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
299 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
300 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
302 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
304 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
305 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
306 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
307 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
309 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
310 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
311 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
313 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
316 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
318 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
319 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
320 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
321 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
324 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
326 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
327 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
328 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
329 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
332 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
333 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
334 under Lisp changes, below.
336 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
338 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
339 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
342 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
343 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
344 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
345 customizing face `fringe'.
347 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
348 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
352 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
353 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
355 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
357 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
358 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
359 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
360 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
361 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
364 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
365 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
366 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
367 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
368 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
369 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
371 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
372 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
373 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
374 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
375 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
376 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
378 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
379 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
380 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
381 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
382 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
384 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
386 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
387 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
388 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
390 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
392 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
393 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
394 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
395 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
396 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
401 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
402 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
406 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
407 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
408 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
411 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
413 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
414 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
415 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
418 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
419 have to do anything to activate it.
421 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
423 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
424 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
425 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
426 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
428 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
430 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
432 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
434 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
437 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
440 ** Hscrolling in C code.
442 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
443 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
448 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
449 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
451 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
453 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
454 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
455 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
456 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
457 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
459 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
461 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
464 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
465 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
467 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
469 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
470 toggles the read-only status.
472 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
474 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
476 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
477 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
480 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
482 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
483 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
484 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
485 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
486 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
487 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
492 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
493 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
494 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
496 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
497 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
498 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
499 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
500 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
501 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
503 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
505 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
507 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
508 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
509 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
511 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
512 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
514 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
515 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
516 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
518 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
520 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
521 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
522 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
523 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
525 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
526 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
527 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
528 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
530 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
531 notably at the end of lines.
533 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
534 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
536 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
538 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
539 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
540 after each match to get the replacement text.
542 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
543 you edit the replacement string.
545 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
546 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
547 lisp-complete-symbol.
549 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
551 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
552 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
553 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
554 window size by setting the following variable:
556 - User option: max-mini-window-height
558 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
559 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
560 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
564 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
566 ** Changes to hideshow.el
568 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
569 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
571 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
573 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
574 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
575 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
576 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
577 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
578 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
580 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
581 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
582 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
583 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
585 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
587 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
588 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
589 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
590 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
591 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
593 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
594 something like this in your .emacs.
596 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
598 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
600 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
602 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
603 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
604 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
606 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
607 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
609 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
610 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
612 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
613 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
614 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
617 ** Changes in Font Lock
619 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
620 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
623 ** Comint (subshell) changes
625 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
626 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
627 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
628 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
629 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
630 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
631 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
632 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
634 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
635 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
637 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
638 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
639 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
641 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
642 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
643 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
645 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
646 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
647 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
648 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
650 ** Changes to Rmail mode
652 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
653 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
654 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
655 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
656 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
659 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
660 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
661 regexp matching your mail addresses.
663 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
664 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
665 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
666 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
667 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
669 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
672 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
673 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
676 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
677 in which folder to put messages automatically.
679 ** Changes to TeX mode
681 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
684 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
686 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
687 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
688 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
689 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
690 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
691 can be edited from that buffer.
693 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
694 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
695 `A' to use all marked entries).
697 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
698 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
700 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
701 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
702 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
705 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
706 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
707 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
708 in column 1 are always made leaves.
710 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
711 has the following new features:
713 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
714 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
715 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
716 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
718 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
719 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
720 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
721 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
722 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
725 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
730 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
731 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
732 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
734 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
735 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
736 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
737 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
741 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
742 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
743 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
745 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
746 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
749 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
750 between custom options. Example:
752 (defcustom default-input-method nil
753 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
754 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
755 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
757 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
758 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
760 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
761 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
762 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
764 ** New features in evaluation commands
766 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
767 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
768 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
769 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
770 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
772 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
773 code when called with a prefix argument.
777 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
778 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
779 spell-checks the current buffer.
781 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
784 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
785 correction is made and re-checked.
787 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
789 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
792 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
795 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
800 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
801 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
802 is, delete only empty directories.
804 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
805 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
806 copy directories recursively.
808 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
809 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
810 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
812 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
813 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
816 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
817 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
818 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
819 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
820 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
822 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
825 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
826 use the -f option when sending mail.
830 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
831 current user setups (although it's believed that these
832 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
833 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
834 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
835 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
838 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
839 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
840 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
841 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
842 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
845 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
846 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
847 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
848 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
849 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
850 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
852 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
853 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
854 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
855 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
856 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
857 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
858 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
859 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
861 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
862 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
863 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
864 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
867 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
868 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
869 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
870 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
871 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
872 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
873 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
874 function documentation for more info.
876 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
877 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
878 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
879 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
880 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
881 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
882 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
883 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
885 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
887 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
888 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
890 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
891 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
892 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
893 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
894 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
897 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
898 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
899 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
902 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
903 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
904 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
905 chapter about this in the manual.
907 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
908 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
909 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
910 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
911 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
913 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
914 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
915 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
917 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
918 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
920 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
921 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
922 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
925 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
926 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
927 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
928 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
931 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
932 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
933 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
936 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
937 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
938 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
939 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
942 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
943 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
944 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
945 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
948 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
949 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
950 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
952 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
954 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
955 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
956 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
957 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
959 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
960 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
961 the column specified by comment-column.
963 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
964 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
965 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
966 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
967 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
968 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
970 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
971 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
974 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
976 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
977 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
978 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
979 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
982 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
984 ** Makefile mode changes
986 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
988 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
989 Fontlock mode is active.
993 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
994 so that searches can be resumed.
996 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
997 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
998 that started the search.
1000 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1001 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1003 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1005 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1006 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1007 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1008 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1009 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1010 `secondary-selection'.
1012 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1013 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1014 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1015 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1016 usual snappy response.
1018 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1019 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1020 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1021 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1023 ** Changes in sort.el
1025 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1026 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1027 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1030 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1032 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1033 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1034 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1036 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1037 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1039 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1040 output ^M at the end of lines.
1042 ** Shell script mode changes.
1044 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1045 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1046 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1050 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1052 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1053 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1054 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1055 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1056 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1058 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1059 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1061 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1062 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1064 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1067 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1069 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1071 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1074 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1075 variables are tagged.
1077 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1079 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1082 ** Changes in etags.el
1084 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1085 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1086 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1088 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1089 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1091 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1092 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1093 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1094 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1096 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1098 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1099 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1101 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1103 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1104 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1105 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1107 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1108 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1110 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1111 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1113 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1114 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1115 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1117 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1118 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1119 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1120 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1122 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1123 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1124 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1126 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1128 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1130 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1131 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1132 expression from that list, are not checked.
1134 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1135 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1136 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1137 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1139 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1141 ** New modes and packages
1143 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1144 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1145 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1146 on certain projects.
1148 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1149 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1151 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1153 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1154 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1155 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1156 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1157 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1158 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1159 corresponding file is read.
1161 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1164 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1165 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1167 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1168 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1169 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1171 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1172 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1173 separate Texinfo file.
1175 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
1176 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1177 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
1178 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
1179 used to enter checkin log messages.
1181 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1182 without invoking external programs.
1184 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1185 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1186 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1187 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1188 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1190 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1191 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1193 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1194 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1196 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1197 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1198 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1199 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1200 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1203 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1204 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1205 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1206 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1208 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1209 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1210 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1212 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1215 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1217 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1219 ; comment (until end of line)
1223 $A default non-terminal
1224 $"C" default terminal
1225 $?C? default special
1226 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1227 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1228 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1229 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1230 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1231 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1232 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1233 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1234 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1235 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1236 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1237 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1238 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1239 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1240 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1242 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1244 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1245 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1246 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1247 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1248 equal signs of assignments.
1250 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1251 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1253 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1254 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1255 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1256 customize the package.
1258 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1260 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1261 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1262 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1263 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1264 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1265 which answers different needs.
1267 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1268 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1269 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1270 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1271 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1274 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1275 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1277 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1279 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1281 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1283 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1286 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1289 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1291 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1293 *** whitespace.el ???
1295 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1296 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1297 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1298 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1299 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1300 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1301 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1303 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1305 Here is an example of columns:
1308 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1309 porcupine strawberry airplane
1311 Doing the following settings:
1313 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1314 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1315 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1316 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1319 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1321 M-x delimit-columns-region
1325 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1326 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1327 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1329 delim-col has the following options:
1331 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1334 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1335 between each column.
1337 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1340 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1343 delim-col has the following commands:
1345 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1346 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1348 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1349 were operated on recently.
1351 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1353 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1354 recentf at Emacs startup.
1356 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1357 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1358 file list can be displayed:
1360 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1361 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1362 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1364 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1365 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1367 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1370 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1371 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1372 specific to Message mode.
1374 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1375 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1376 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1378 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1379 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1380 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1382 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1383 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1385 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1387 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1388 minibuffer with completion.
1390 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1391 with the diary features.
1393 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1394 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1396 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1399 ** Withdrawn packages
1401 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1402 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1404 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1406 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1409 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1410 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1412 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1413 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1416 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1419 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1421 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1422 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1424 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1426 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1427 comparison is done with `eq'.
1429 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1431 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1434 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1435 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1436 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1438 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1439 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1441 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1442 function was declared obsolete.
1444 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1445 retained as an alias).
1447 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1448 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1449 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1451 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1453 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1455 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1456 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1458 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1460 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1462 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1464 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1465 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1466 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1467 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1470 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1471 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1472 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1473 minibuffer even if it is active.
1475 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1476 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1477 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1478 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1479 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1480 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1482 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1483 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1484 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1485 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1486 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1487 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1488 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1490 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1491 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1492 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1494 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1495 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1496 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1497 Default value is nil.
1499 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1502 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1503 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1504 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1506 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1509 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1510 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1511 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1512 than replacing the local map.
1514 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1515 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1517 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1519 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1522 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1524 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1526 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1527 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1528 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1529 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1531 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1532 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1533 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1534 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1536 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1537 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1538 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1539 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1541 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1542 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1543 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1545 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1546 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1547 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1548 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1549 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1550 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1551 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1554 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1556 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1557 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1558 character set as previously.
1560 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1561 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1562 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1564 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1565 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1566 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1567 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1569 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1570 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1572 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1573 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1576 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1577 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1579 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1580 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1581 buffers and strings.
1583 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1584 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1585 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1586 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1587 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1588 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1589 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1592 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1593 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1594 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1596 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1597 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1598 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1599 may differ between buffer and string text.
1601 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1602 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1604 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1605 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1606 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1607 `composition' from STRING.
1609 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1610 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1612 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1615 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1616 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1617 character set is not used.
1619 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1620 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1621 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1624 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1625 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1626 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1629 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1630 that offset in the file before writing.
1632 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1633 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1635 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1636 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1637 from which the command was issued.
1639 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1640 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1641 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1642 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1645 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1646 to `window-buffer-height'.
1648 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1650 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1651 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1652 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1654 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1657 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1658 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1660 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1661 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1662 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1664 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1665 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1666 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1667 is currently displayed in some window.
1669 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1670 argument function's results.
1672 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1673 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1675 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1676 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1678 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1679 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1681 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1682 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1685 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1686 nil don't display a cursor
1687 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1688 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1689 others display a box cursor.
1691 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1692 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1693 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1694 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1696 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1697 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1698 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1699 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1703 (string-to-syntax "()")
1706 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1709 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1710 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1717 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1722 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1727 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1734 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1735 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1738 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1739 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1740 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1741 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1744 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1746 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1747 for a regexp in a string.
1749 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1750 `mouse-position-function'.
1752 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1753 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1755 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1756 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1759 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1762 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1763 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1766 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1767 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1768 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1769 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1773 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1774 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1777 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1778 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1779 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1780 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1783 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1784 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1785 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1786 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1789 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1790 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1791 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1794 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1795 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1798 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1800 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1801 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1802 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1806 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1807 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1810 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1811 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1814 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1815 instead of being optional.
1818 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1819 modify read-only text.
1822 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1824 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1825 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1826 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1827 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1828 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1830 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1831 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1832 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1833 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1834 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1835 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1836 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1839 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1840 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1841 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1845 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1846 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1849 ** New function `propertize'
1851 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1852 strings with text properties.
1854 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1856 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1857 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1858 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1859 specified value of that property. Example:
1861 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1864 ** push and pop macros.
1866 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1867 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1868 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1870 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1871 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1872 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1874 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1876 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1877 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1879 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1880 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1881 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1882 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1884 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1885 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1886 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1887 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1890 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1891 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1893 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1894 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1895 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1896 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1897 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1899 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1901 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1902 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1903 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1904 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1905 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1906 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1907 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1908 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1909 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1910 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1911 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1912 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1913 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1914 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1915 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1918 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1920 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1922 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1924 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1925 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1929 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1930 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1931 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1935 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1936 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1938 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1940 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1941 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1942 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1943 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1944 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1946 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1948 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1949 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1950 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1954 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
1955 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
1956 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
1957 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
1958 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1960 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1962 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1964 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1966 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1968 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1970 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1973 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1975 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1977 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1979 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1981 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1983 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1985 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1987 Returns the size of TABLE.
1989 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
1991 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1993 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1995 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1997 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2001 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2003 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2006 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2008 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2009 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2011 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2013 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2015 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2017 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2018 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2020 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2022 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2024 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2026 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2027 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2028 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2029 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2030 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2032 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2034 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2035 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2036 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2038 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2039 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2041 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2042 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2044 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2045 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2047 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2048 'case-fold-string-hash))
2050 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2053 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2055 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2056 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2057 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2060 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2062 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2063 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2066 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2067 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2068 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2069 is too short to reach that column.
2072 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2073 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2074 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2075 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2077 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2078 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2079 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2082 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2083 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2086 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2087 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2090 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2091 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2092 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2093 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2094 temporary-file-directory instead.
2097 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2098 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2099 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2100 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2103 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2104 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2107 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2109 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2110 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2111 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2114 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2116 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2117 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2118 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2119 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2120 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2121 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2123 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2124 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2125 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2126 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2129 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2131 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2132 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2133 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2136 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2137 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2141 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2143 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2144 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2147 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2150 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2152 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2153 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2156 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2158 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2159 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2165 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2166 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2168 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2169 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2170 to enable sound support.
2172 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2173 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2174 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2175 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2176 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2178 The following sound properties are supported:
2182 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2183 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2187 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2188 may be present, but not both.
2192 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2193 0..1. This property is optional.
2195 Other properties are ignored.
2197 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2199 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2202 ** Changes to garbage collection
2204 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2205 of live and free strings.
2207 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2208 strings that have been consed so far.
2211 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2215 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2217 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2220 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2222 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2224 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2225 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2226 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2227 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2228 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2230 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2231 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2234 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2237 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2239 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2240 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2241 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2242 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2245 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2247 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2248 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2249 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2250 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2252 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2253 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2255 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2256 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2257 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2258 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2259 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2260 just display it black instead.
2262 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2265 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2269 ** New face implementation.
2271 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2272 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2277 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2279 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2281 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2282 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2284 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2286 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2288 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2290 6. Foreground color.
2292 7. Background color.
2294 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2296 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2298 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2300 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2302 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2305 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2306 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2308 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2309 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2310 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2311 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2312 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2313 attributes mentioned above.
2315 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2316 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2319 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2320 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2326 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2327 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2328 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2329 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2330 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2331 results in a fully-specified face.
2334 *** Face realization.
2336 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2337 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2338 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2339 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2340 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2341 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2343 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2344 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2345 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2346 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2348 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2349 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2350 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2351 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2352 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2354 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2355 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2356 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2357 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2358 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2361 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2362 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2363 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2364 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2367 **** Clearing face caches.
2369 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2370 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2376 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2377 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2378 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2380 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2381 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2382 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2383 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2384 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2386 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2387 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2388 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2390 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2392 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2393 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2394 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2395 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2396 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2397 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2398 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2400 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2401 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2407 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2408 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2411 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2412 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2413 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2414 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2415 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2418 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2420 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2423 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2425 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2427 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2428 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2429 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2431 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2432 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2433 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2434 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2435 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2436 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2437 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2438 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2439 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2440 of the face font sort order.
2442 - Function: x-font-family-list
2444 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2445 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2446 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2447 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2449 - Variable: font-list-limit
2451 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2452 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2453 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2456 *** Setting face attributes.
2458 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2459 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2460 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2463 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2464 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2466 The following attributes are recognized:
2470 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2471 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2472 and `?' are allowed.
2476 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2477 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2478 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2479 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2483 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2488 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2489 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2490 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2494 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2495 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2498 `:foreground', `:background'
2500 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2504 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2505 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2506 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2511 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2512 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2513 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2518 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2519 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2520 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2521 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2525 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2526 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2527 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2528 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2529 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2530 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2531 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2532 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2533 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2534 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2535 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2536 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2537 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2538 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2539 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2540 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2545 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2546 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2550 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2551 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2552 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2553 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2554 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2555 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2557 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2558 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2562 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2563 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2564 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2567 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2568 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2569 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2571 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2574 *** Face attributes and X resources
2576 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2579 Face attribute X resource class
2580 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2581 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2582 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2583 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2584 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2585 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2586 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2587 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2588 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2589 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2590 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2591 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2592 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2593 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2594 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2595 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2596 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2597 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2598 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2599 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2602 *** Text property `face'.
2604 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2605 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2606 specification can be
2608 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2610 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2611 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2612 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2613 for face attribute names.
2615 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2616 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2617 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2620 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2622 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2623 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2624 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2625 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2626 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2627 used to clear the mapping table.
2629 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2631 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2632 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2633 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2634 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2635 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2636 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2637 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2638 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2639 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2640 modify their color-related behavior.
2642 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2645 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2647 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2648 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2649 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2650 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2651 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2652 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2653 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2654 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2655 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2658 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2660 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2662 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2663 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2664 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2666 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2668 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2669 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2670 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2672 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2673 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2674 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2675 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2676 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2677 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2678 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2681 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2682 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2683 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2685 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2687 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2689 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2691 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2692 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2693 constrained position if that is is different.
2695 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2696 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2697 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2698 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2699 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2700 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2701 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2702 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2703 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2705 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2706 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2707 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2708 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2709 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2711 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2712 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2714 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2716 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2718 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2719 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2720 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2722 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2724 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2725 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2726 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2727 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2728 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2730 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2732 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2733 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2734 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2735 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2736 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2738 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2740 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2741 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2742 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2744 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2746 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2747 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2748 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2753 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2754 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2755 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2756 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2758 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2759 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2760 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2761 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2764 IMAGE is an image specification.
2766 *** Image specifications
2768 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2769 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2770 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2771 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2772 described below are ignored.
2774 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2778 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2779 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2780 to use for its ascent.
2782 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2783 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2785 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2786 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2787 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2788 overlays that apply to the image.
2792 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2793 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2797 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2802 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2803 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2804 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2805 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2807 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2809 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2810 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2811 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2812 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2813 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2814 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2815 background of the image.
2819 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2820 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2821 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2822 may be present in the image specification.
2826 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2827 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2828 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2829 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2831 *** Supported image types
2833 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2835 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2836 properties supported are
2840 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2841 is the frame's foreground.
2845 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2846 the frame's background color.
2848 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2849 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2850 instead of a `:file' property.
2854 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2858 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2864 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2865 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2867 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2869 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2872 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2873 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2876 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2878 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2879 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2880 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2881 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2883 Additional image properties supported are:
2885 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2887 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2888 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2891 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2892 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2894 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2895 to display compressed images.
2897 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2899 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2900 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2903 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2905 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2906 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2909 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2911 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2912 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2915 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2917 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2918 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2920 Additional image properties supported are:
2924 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2925 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2927 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2928 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2929 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2932 (defun show-anim (file max)
2933 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2934 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2936 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2939 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2942 (goto-char (point-min))
2943 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2944 (insert-image img "x"))
2945 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2947 **** PNG, image type `png'
2949 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2950 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2953 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2955 Additional image properties supported are:
2959 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2960 integer. This is a required property.
2964 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2965 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2969 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2970 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2971 files. This is an required property.
2973 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2978 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2979 which are supported in the current configuration.
2981 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2982 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2983 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2984 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2985 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2987 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2989 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2990 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2991 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2992 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2993 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2999 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3002 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3003 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3004 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3005 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3006 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3007 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3008 of the display margins.
3010 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3011 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3012 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3013 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3019 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3020 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3021 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3022 that have a `help-echo' property.
3024 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3025 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3026 the window in which the help was found.
3028 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3029 `help-echo' text property was found.
3031 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3032 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3034 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3035 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3038 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3039 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3041 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3042 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3043 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3044 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3045 used as help string.
3047 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3048 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3049 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3052 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3054 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3055 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3057 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3058 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3059 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3060 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3063 (global-set-key [A-down]
3066 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3067 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3068 (global-set-key [A-up]
3071 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3072 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3075 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3077 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3078 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3079 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3080 is called with one argument, POS.
3082 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3083 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3084 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3085 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3086 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3089 ** Tool bar support.
3091 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3092 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3093 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3094 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3095 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3096 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3098 *** Tool bar item definitions
3100 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3101 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3102 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3104 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3105 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3106 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3107 property (see below).
3109 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3110 binding are currently ignored.
3112 The following properties are recognized:
3116 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3121 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3125 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3126 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3127 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3129 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3131 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3132 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3136 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3137 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3138 meaning of each of the four elements:
3140 Index Use when item is
3141 ----------------------------------------
3142 0 enabled and selected
3143 1 enabled and deselected
3144 2 disabled and selected
3145 3 disabled and deselected
3147 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3148 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3150 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3152 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3153 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3155 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3157 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3158 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3159 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3161 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3162 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3164 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3165 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3166 pixels. Default is 1.
3168 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3169 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3171 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3173 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3176 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3177 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3178 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3180 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3182 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3184 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3187 ** Mode line changes.
3190 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3192 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3193 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3194 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3196 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3197 a `local-map' text property.
3199 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3200 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3202 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3203 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3204 `local-map' property.
3206 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3207 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3210 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3211 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3214 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3215 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3218 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3220 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3221 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3222 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3223 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3226 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3229 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3230 position in the header-line.
3233 ** Text property `display'
3235 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3236 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3237 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3238 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3240 *** Variable width and height spaces
3242 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3243 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3244 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3245 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3246 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3247 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3248 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3250 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3251 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3252 properties described below.
3254 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3255 characters having the `display' property.
3259 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3260 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3262 - :relative-width FACTOR
3264 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3265 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3266 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3267 width of that character by FACTOR.
3271 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3272 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3274 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3278 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3281 - :relative-height FACTOR
3283 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3284 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3288 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3289 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3290 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3293 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3297 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3298 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3299 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3300 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3301 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3302 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3303 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3304 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3305 as display specification.
3307 *** Other display properties
3309 - :space-width FACTOR
3311 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3312 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3317 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3319 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3320 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3321 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3322 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3323 a font is available counts as a step.
3325 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3326 as tall as the frame's default font.
3328 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3329 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3331 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3332 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3336 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3337 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3338 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3339 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3340 `:height' subproperty.
3342 *** Conditional display properties
3344 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3345 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3346 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3347 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3348 the text having the `display' property.
3350 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3354 ** New menu separator types.
3356 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3357 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3358 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3359 to specify other menu separator types.
3361 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3363 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3366 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3368 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3370 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3372 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3374 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3376 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3378 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3380 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3382 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3384 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3385 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3387 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3389 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3391 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3393 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3395 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3397 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3399 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3401 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3403 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3405 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3407 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3409 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3411 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3413 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3415 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3416 the corresponding single-line separators.
3419 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3421 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3422 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3423 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3424 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3425 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3426 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3427 default foreground is black.
3429 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3430 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3431 `ScrollBarBackground').
3433 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3434 settings for scroll bar colors.
3437 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3438 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3441 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3442 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3443 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3444 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3445 the original window start.
3448 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3449 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3450 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3453 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3455 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3456 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3457 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3458 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3460 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3461 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3463 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3465 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3466 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3467 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3468 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3469 temporarily to nil, for example
3471 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3472 (enlarge-window 10))
3474 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3475 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3477 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3478 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3479 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3480 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3481 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3482 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3486 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3488 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3491 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3493 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3495 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3496 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3497 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3498 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3499 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3501 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3505 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3507 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3510 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3512 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3513 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3515 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3517 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3519 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3520 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3521 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3523 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3524 is the one that is used.
3526 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3527 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3528 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3529 separate from the command's regular output.
3530 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3531 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3532 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3535 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3536 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3537 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3538 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3540 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3541 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3542 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3543 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3545 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3546 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3547 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3548 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3550 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3551 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3552 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3553 they never ignore case.
3555 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3556 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3557 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3558 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3559 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3560 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3561 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3563 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3564 the same format that was used in the file before.
3566 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3567 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3569 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3570 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3571 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3573 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3574 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3575 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3576 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3577 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3578 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3579 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3581 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3582 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3583 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3584 format. You can now customize these variables.
3586 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3587 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3588 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3589 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3591 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3592 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3593 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3595 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3596 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3597 doesn't have any effect.
3599 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3602 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3603 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3604 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3606 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3607 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3608 `auto-show-mode' command.
3610 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3611 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3612 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3613 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3614 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3616 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3617 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3619 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3620 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3621 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3623 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3624 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3625 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3626 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3628 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3630 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3631 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3632 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3633 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3634 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3636 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3637 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3639 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3640 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3641 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3642 `?' on other systems.
3644 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3645 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3648 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3649 current codepage when it starts.
3653 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3654 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3655 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3656 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3657 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3658 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3662 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3663 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3665 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3666 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3667 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3668 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3669 buffer-file-coding-system.
3671 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3672 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3675 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3676 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3677 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3678 list of possible coding systems.
3682 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3683 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3684 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3685 docstring for details.
3687 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3688 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3689 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3690 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3691 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3693 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3694 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3696 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3697 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3699 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3700 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3701 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3702 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3705 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3706 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3708 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3709 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3710 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3711 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3713 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3714 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3715 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3716 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3717 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3719 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3721 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3723 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3724 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3726 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3728 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3729 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3730 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3731 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3732 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3736 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3737 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3738 Gnus manual for the full story.
3740 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3741 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3742 group, which is created automatically.
3744 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3747 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3749 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3750 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3752 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3755 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3757 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3758 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3760 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3762 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3763 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3765 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3766 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3768 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3769 control over simplification.
3771 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3773 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3776 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3778 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3780 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3781 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3782 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3784 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3785 `a' forces normal posting method.
3787 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3790 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3793 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3794 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3796 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3799 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3801 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3803 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3804 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3806 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3807 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3809 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3811 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3814 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3815 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3817 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3818 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3820 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3822 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3824 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3826 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3828 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3829 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3830 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3832 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3833 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3834 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3835 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3836 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3838 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3839 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3840 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3841 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3843 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3844 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3845 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3848 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3850 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3851 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3853 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3854 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3855 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3856 removed from the label.
3858 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3859 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3861 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3862 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3864 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3865 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3868 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3870 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3872 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3873 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3875 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3876 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3877 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3879 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3880 changes with a special face.
3882 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3883 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3884 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3886 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3888 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3889 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3890 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3891 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3892 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3894 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3895 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3896 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3898 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3899 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3900 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3901 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3902 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3903 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3904 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3905 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3906 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3908 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3909 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3910 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3911 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3912 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3915 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3916 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3917 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3918 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3919 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3920 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3922 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3923 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3924 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3925 was not documented clearly before.
3927 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3928 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3930 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3932 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3933 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3934 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3935 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3937 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3938 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3939 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3941 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3943 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3944 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3946 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3947 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3950 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3951 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3952 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3953 file names and attributes are returned.
3955 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3956 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3957 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3958 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3961 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3962 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3964 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3966 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3967 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3968 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3971 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3972 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3975 The new function process-running-child-p
3976 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3977 terminal to its own child process.
3979 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3980 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3981 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3982 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3984 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3985 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3987 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3988 :included is an alias for :visible.
3990 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3991 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3992 to move or copy menu entries.
3994 ** Multibyte editing changes
3996 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3997 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3998 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3999 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4000 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4001 (setq char (sref str idx)
4002 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4003 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4005 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4006 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4007 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4009 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4010 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4011 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4013 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4015 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4016 across the boundary.
4018 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4019 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4020 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4021 contains 8-bit characters.
4022 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4023 contains invalid characters.
4025 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4026 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4027 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4028 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4031 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4032 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4033 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4034 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4036 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4037 compose Thai characters in a string.
4039 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4040 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4041 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4042 menus should always use the third argument.
4044 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4045 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4046 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4047 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4049 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4050 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4051 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4052 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4054 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4055 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4056 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4059 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4061 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4062 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4063 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4065 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4066 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4067 means to clear out that attribute.
4069 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4070 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4072 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4073 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4074 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4075 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4077 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4078 the gap of the current buffer.
4080 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4081 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4084 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4085 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4086 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4087 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4089 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4091 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4092 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4093 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4094 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4095 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4097 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4098 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4099 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4100 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4101 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4103 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4104 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4105 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4107 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4108 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4109 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4110 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4111 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4114 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4115 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4116 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4117 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4119 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4121 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4122 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4123 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4124 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4126 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4127 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4128 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4129 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4130 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4131 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4132 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4135 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4138 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4139 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4140 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4141 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4142 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4144 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4145 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4146 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4147 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4149 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4150 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4151 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4152 something that most users not do.
4154 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4155 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4156 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4159 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4162 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4163 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4164 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4165 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4168 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4169 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4170 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4171 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4172 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4175 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4176 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4177 to be confused by TeX commands.
4179 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4180 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4181 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4182 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4184 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4185 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4186 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4187 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4188 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4190 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4191 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4193 ** Changes in input method usage.
4195 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4196 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4199 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4201 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4202 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4204 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4205 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4207 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4209 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4211 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4212 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4214 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4215 given in the following case:
4216 o When you are using a complex input method.
4217 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4219 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4220 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4221 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4222 setting it to t is helpful.
4224 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4226 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4228 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4229 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4230 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4231 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4234 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4235 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4236 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4239 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4241 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4243 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4244 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4246 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4247 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4248 its owner and group.
4250 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4251 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4253 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4254 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4256 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4257 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4258 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4259 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4261 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4262 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4263 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4264 for writing keyboard macros.
4266 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4267 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4268 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4269 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4270 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4273 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4275 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4276 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4279 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4280 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4281 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4282 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4284 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4285 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4286 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4288 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4289 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4290 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4291 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4293 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4294 failure if the command produces no output.
4296 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4297 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4300 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4301 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4302 function and variable names.
4304 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4305 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4306 file-coding-system-alist.
4308 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4309 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4310 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4311 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4312 according to the current fontset.
4314 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4316 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4317 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4318 nonascii-insert-offset.
4320 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4321 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4322 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4323 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4325 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4326 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4328 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4329 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4331 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4332 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4335 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4336 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4338 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4339 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4340 all variables that have documentation.
4342 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4343 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4344 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4345 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4346 it should show; the default is 20.
4348 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4349 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4352 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4353 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4354 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4355 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4356 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4357 Newly added options are included as well.
4359 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4360 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4361 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4363 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4366 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4367 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4369 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4370 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4373 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4374 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4377 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4378 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4379 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4380 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4383 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4385 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4386 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4387 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4389 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4390 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4391 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4396 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4397 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4399 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4400 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4402 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4403 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4405 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4406 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4407 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4408 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4409 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4410 made invisible again.
4412 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4414 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4415 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4416 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4419 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4420 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4421 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4422 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4423 rmail-default-body-file.
4425 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4426 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4427 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4429 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4430 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4431 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4433 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4434 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4435 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4436 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4437 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4438 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4440 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4441 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4442 provided by feedmail are:
4444 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4445 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4446 there is also a queue for draft messages
4448 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4449 be prompted for confirmation
4451 **** does smart filling of address headers
4453 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4454 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4455 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4457 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4458 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4459 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4460 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4464 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4465 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4467 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4468 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4470 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4471 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4472 for a specified regexp.
4476 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4479 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4480 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4483 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4484 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4485 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4486 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4488 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4489 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4490 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4491 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4492 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4494 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4495 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4496 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4497 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4498 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4500 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4501 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4502 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4503 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4505 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4506 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4507 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4509 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4510 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4511 session to resolve them.
4513 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4514 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4515 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4518 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4519 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4520 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4521 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4522 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4523 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4526 ** Changes in Font Lock
4528 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4529 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4530 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4531 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4532 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4534 ** Frame name display changes
4536 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4537 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4538 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4539 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4541 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4542 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4545 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4547 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4548 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4549 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4551 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4553 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4554 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4555 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4557 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4558 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4561 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4562 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4563 previously sent input.
4565 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4566 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4567 as the search string.
4569 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4570 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4574 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4575 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4576 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4579 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4580 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4581 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4582 style is still the default however.
4584 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4586 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4587 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4588 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4590 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4591 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4593 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4594 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4596 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4597 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4599 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4600 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4602 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4603 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4604 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4605 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4607 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4609 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4610 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4611 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4613 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4614 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4615 expanding dynamically.
4617 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4618 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4620 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4621 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4622 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4623 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4625 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4627 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4629 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4630 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4631 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4632 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4633 against the first word in the title.
4635 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4636 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4637 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4638 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4639 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4640 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4642 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4643 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4644 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4645 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4647 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4649 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4650 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4651 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4652 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4653 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4654 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4656 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4657 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4659 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4660 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4661 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4663 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4664 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4668 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4669 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4670 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4672 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4673 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4674 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4675 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4678 o URLs are automatically skipped
4679 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4681 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4683 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4685 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4686 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4687 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4688 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4690 *** New recursive parser.
4692 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4693 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4694 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4696 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4698 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4699 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4700 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4702 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4704 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4706 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4708 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4710 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4712 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4713 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4715 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4717 *** References to external documents.
4719 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4720 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4721 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4722 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4723 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4724 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4725 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4727 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4729 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4730 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4732 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4733 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4735 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4737 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4738 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4740 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4742 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4743 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4744 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4745 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4746 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4747 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4750 *** Support for the varioref package
4752 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4756 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4757 and citations are created. These hooks are
4758 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4759 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4761 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4763 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4764 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4766 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4768 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4769 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4772 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4774 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4775 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4776 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4777 directories that contain the same file name.
4779 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4780 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4781 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4782 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4783 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4784 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4785 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4788 ** New modes and packages
4790 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4791 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4792 it, but some do not.
4794 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4797 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4798 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4801 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4803 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4804 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4805 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4806 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4808 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4809 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4810 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4812 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4813 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4814 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4815 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4816 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4819 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4820 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4822 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4823 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4824 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4825 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4827 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4829 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4830 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4831 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4832 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4833 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4834 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4835 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4836 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4837 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4838 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4839 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4841 Platform-specific modes:
4843 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4844 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4845 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4846 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4847 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4848 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4849 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4850 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4851 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4853 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4855 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4856 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4857 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4858 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4860 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4861 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4862 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4864 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4865 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4866 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4867 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4869 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4870 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4871 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4874 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4875 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4876 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4877 current input method for reading this one event.
4879 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4880 now control whether to output certain characters as
4881 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4882 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4883 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4884 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4886 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4888 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4889 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4891 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4892 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4893 always increases point by 1.
4895 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4896 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4898 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4900 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4901 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4902 default value changed. For example,
4904 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4909 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4912 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4913 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4914 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4915 `:version' in the top level group.
4917 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4919 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4920 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4922 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4923 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4924 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4927 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4928 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4931 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4932 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4933 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4935 ** Frame-local variables.
4937 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4938 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4939 local bindings for that variable.
4941 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4942 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4943 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4946 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4947 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4948 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4949 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4951 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4952 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4953 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4954 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4956 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4957 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4958 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4959 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4960 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4962 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4963 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4964 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4965 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4967 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4968 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4970 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4971 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4972 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4974 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4975 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4976 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4977 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4979 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4980 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4983 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4984 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4985 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4986 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4987 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4989 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4990 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4991 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4992 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4994 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4995 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4996 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4997 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4998 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5000 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5001 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5002 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5003 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5005 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5006 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5007 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5009 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5010 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5011 was directed to display this buffer.
5013 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5014 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5015 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5016 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5017 set-window-configuration.
5019 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5020 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5021 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5022 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5024 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5025 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5026 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5028 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5029 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5030 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5032 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5033 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5035 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5036 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5038 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5039 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5040 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5042 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5043 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5044 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5045 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5049 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5050 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5053 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5054 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5055 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5056 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5057 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5059 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5061 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5062 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5063 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5064 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5067 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5068 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5069 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5070 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5071 The supported properties include
5073 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5075 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5076 item should appear in the menu.
5078 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5079 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5080 It should return a binding to use instead.
5082 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5083 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5084 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5085 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5086 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5089 This means that the command normally has no
5090 keyboard equivalent.
5091 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5092 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5093 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5094 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5095 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5097 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5098 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5100 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5104 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5105 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5106 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5107 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5109 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5111 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5112 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5113 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5114 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5115 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5116 forward, away from the user.
5118 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5120 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5121 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5122 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5123 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5124 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5126 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5128 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5129 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5130 that were dragged and dropped.
5132 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5134 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5136 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5137 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5138 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5140 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5141 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5142 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5144 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5145 in Emacs 19 and before.
5147 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5148 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5150 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5151 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5152 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5153 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5155 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5156 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5157 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5158 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5159 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5161 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5162 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5163 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5164 consistent with the new representation.
5166 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5167 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5168 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5169 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5171 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5172 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5173 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5175 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5176 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5177 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5179 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5180 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5181 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5183 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5184 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5186 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5187 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5189 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5190 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5191 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5192 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5194 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5195 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5197 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5198 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5199 buffer or string being searched.
5201 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5202 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5203 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5204 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5205 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5206 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5207 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5209 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5211 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5212 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5213 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5214 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5215 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5216 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5217 define-coding-system-alias.
5219 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5220 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5221 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5222 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5223 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5224 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5225 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5228 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5229 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5230 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5231 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5233 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5234 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5235 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5236 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5238 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5239 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5240 This function requires a user interaction.
5242 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5243 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5244 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5245 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5246 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5247 select-safe-coding-system.
5249 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5250 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5251 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5254 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5255 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5256 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5258 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5259 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5260 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5261 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5263 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5264 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5265 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5268 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5269 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5271 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5272 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5273 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5274 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5275 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5276 range of characters.
5278 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5279 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5281 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5282 in the current buffer at position POS.
5284 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5285 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5286 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5287 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5288 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5289 binding input-method-function to nil.
5291 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5292 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5293 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5294 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5295 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5297 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5298 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5300 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5301 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5303 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5304 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5305 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5306 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5307 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5309 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5311 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5312 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5313 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5316 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5317 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5319 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5320 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5321 in your .emacs file.)
5323 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5324 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5326 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5327 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5329 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5330 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5333 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5334 delete the character before point, as usual.
5336 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5337 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5338 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5340 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5341 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5342 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5343 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5344 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5347 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5348 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5349 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5350 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5351 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5353 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5354 and is an alias for it.
5356 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5357 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5359 ** Scrolling changes
5361 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5362 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5364 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5365 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5368 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5369 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5370 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5371 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5373 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5374 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5375 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5376 recenters the window.
5378 ** International character set support (MULE)
5380 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5381 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5382 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5383 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5384 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5385 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5387 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5388 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5389 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5390 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5391 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5393 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5394 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5395 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5396 language, to make it possible to type them.
5398 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5399 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5401 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5402 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5404 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5406 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5408 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5409 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5410 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5411 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5412 characters for their work until they want to change.
5416 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5417 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5418 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5419 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5420 support several input methods.
5422 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5423 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5426 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5427 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5428 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5429 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5430 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5433 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5434 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5435 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5436 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5437 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5439 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5440 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5441 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5442 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5444 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5445 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5446 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5447 the first guess is wrong.
5449 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5450 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5452 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5453 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5454 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5455 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5457 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5458 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5459 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5460 translate automatically to and from either one.
5462 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5464 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5465 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5466 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5469 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5470 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5471 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5472 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5474 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5475 character conversion as well.
5477 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5479 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5480 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5481 requires using many fonts.
5483 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5484 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5486 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5487 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5488 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5489 you would use a font.
5491 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5492 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5493 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5495 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5496 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5497 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5498 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5499 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5501 *** Defining fontsets.
5503 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5504 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5505 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5507 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5508 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5509 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5510 standard fontset are created automatically.
5512 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5513 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5514 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5515 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5516 name is `fontset-startup'.
5518 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5519 The resource value should have this form:
5520 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5521 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5522 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5523 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5524 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5525 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5526 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5527 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5528 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5530 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5531 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5532 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5534 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5535 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5537 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5538 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5539 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5540 Here is the substitution rule:
5541 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5542 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5543 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5544 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5545 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5547 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5548 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5549 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5551 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5552 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5553 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5554 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5557 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5558 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5560 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5561 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5562 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5563 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5564 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5565 system for new files that you create.
5567 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5568 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5569 whole Emacs session.
5571 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5572 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5573 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5575 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5576 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5577 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5578 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5579 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5581 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5582 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5583 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5584 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5585 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5587 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5588 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5590 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5591 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5593 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5594 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5596 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5597 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5598 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5599 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5602 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5603 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5604 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5605 translated into that character code.
5607 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5608 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5610 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5612 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5613 the coding system for keyboard input.
5615 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5616 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5617 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5619 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5621 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5622 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5623 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5624 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5625 designed to work with terminals.
5627 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5628 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5629 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5630 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5631 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5632 in the corresponding buffer.
5634 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5636 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5637 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5638 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5640 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5641 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5642 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5645 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5646 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5648 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5649 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5650 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5651 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5653 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5654 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5655 related information.
5657 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5658 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5661 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5662 information about the support for a particular language.
5663 You specify the language as an argument.
5665 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5666 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5669 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5670 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5671 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5672 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5674 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5676 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5677 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5678 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5679 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5680 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5681 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5682 K euc-korea (Korean)
5685 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5688 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5689 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5690 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5694 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5695 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5696 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5697 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5699 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5700 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5702 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5703 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5704 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5705 Rmail files themselves.
5707 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5708 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5710 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5713 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5714 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5715 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5716 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5717 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5719 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5720 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5721 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5724 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5725 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5726 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5727 without any conversion.
5729 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5730 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5731 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5732 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5734 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5735 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5737 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5738 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5740 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5741 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5743 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5744 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5745 in the buffer before point.
5747 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5748 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5751 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5752 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5754 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5756 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5757 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5759 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5760 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5761 can become a bottleneck.
5763 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5764 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5765 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5766 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5767 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5768 so useful that the change is worth while.
5770 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5771 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5772 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5773 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5775 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5776 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5779 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5780 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5781 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5783 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5784 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5785 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5787 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5788 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5789 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5791 ** Changes in View mode.
5793 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5794 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5796 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5797 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5799 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5802 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5803 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5805 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5806 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5807 not just the selected window.
5809 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5810 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5811 turns View mode on or off.
5813 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5814 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5815 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5817 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5818 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5820 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5821 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5822 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5823 which version to compare with.
5825 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5826 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5828 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5829 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5830 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5831 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5833 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5834 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5835 blocks, all of them or none.
5837 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5838 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5841 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5842 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5843 However, the mode will not be changed if
5844 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5845 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5846 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5847 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5849 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5851 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5852 these commands do not change the major mode.
5854 ** M-x occur changes.
5856 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5857 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5859 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5860 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5861 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5863 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5864 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5865 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5866 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5867 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5869 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5870 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5871 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5872 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5874 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5875 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5876 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5878 ** Outline mode changes.
5880 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5882 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5884 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5885 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5886 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5889 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5890 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5893 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5894 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5896 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5898 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5899 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5900 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5901 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5903 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5904 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5905 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5907 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5908 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5911 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5912 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5913 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5914 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5916 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5917 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5918 can be. The default value is 30.
5920 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5922 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5923 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5924 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5925 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5926 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5929 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5930 compose-mail-other-frame.
5932 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5933 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5934 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5935 buffer that shows the original message.
5937 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5938 with separator lines around the contents.
5940 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5941 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5942 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5943 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5945 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5947 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5948 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5949 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5950 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5952 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5953 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5956 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5957 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5960 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5961 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5962 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5963 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5965 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5966 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5967 be taken to be magic.
5969 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5970 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5971 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5973 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5974 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5976 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5977 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5979 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5981 new key dired.el binding old key
5982 ------- ---------------- -------
5983 * c dired-change-marks c
5985 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5986 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5987 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5989 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5990 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5991 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5992 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5993 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5994 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5998 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5999 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6000 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6001 each time you run it.
6003 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6004 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6006 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6007 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6008 means to move in the opposite direction.
6010 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6011 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6013 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6014 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6015 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6016 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6021 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6023 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6026 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6027 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6029 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6032 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6034 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6036 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6038 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6039 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6040 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6042 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6044 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6046 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6047 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6049 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6050 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6051 used to pick articles.
6053 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6054 another have been added.
6056 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6058 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6059 generating lines in buffers.
6061 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6064 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6066 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6068 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6070 *** Scores can be decayed.
6072 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6074 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6075 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6077 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6080 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6082 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6083 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6085 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6087 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6088 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6090 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6091 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6093 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6096 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6097 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6099 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6101 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6103 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6105 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6107 Use the `Y c' command.
6109 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6111 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6113 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6115 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6116 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6118 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6120 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6122 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6123 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6125 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6127 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6128 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6129 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6130 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6133 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6134 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6135 particular news group. This can be done by:
6137 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6139 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6140 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6141 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6142 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6143 for reading and posting).
6145 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6146 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6147 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6148 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6151 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6152 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6154 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6155 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6156 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6157 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6158 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6160 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6161 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6165 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6166 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6167 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6168 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6169 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6172 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6173 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6174 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6175 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6176 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6177 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6179 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6180 of the current buffer.
6182 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6183 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6184 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6186 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6187 style that the Python developers like.
6189 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6190 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6191 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6195 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6196 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6197 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6199 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6200 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6203 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6204 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6206 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6207 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6208 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6209 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6211 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6212 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6214 ** Calendar changes.
6216 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6217 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6218 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6222 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6224 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6226 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6227 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6228 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6229 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6230 It defaults to `letter'.
6231 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6233 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6234 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6235 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6237 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6238 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6241 *** Horizontal layout
6243 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6244 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6245 All are measured in points.
6249 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6250 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6251 All are measured in points.
6255 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6256 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6257 margin above the text.
6259 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6260 framing box is printed around the header.
6262 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6263 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6265 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6266 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6267 `ps-header-font-size'.
6271 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6272 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6273 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6274 elements to this alist.
6276 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6277 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6279 ** hideshow changes.
6281 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6284 *** Support for java-mode added.
6286 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6287 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6289 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6290 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6291 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6293 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6294 robust and a lot faster.
6296 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6298 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6299 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6300 documentation for more details.
6302 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6304 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6305 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6306 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6307 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6308 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6310 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6311 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6312 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6313 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6319 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6320 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6321 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6322 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6323 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6324 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6326 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6328 *** Maximum decoration
6330 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6331 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6332 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6333 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6334 to get the old behavior.
6338 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6340 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6341 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6343 *** Configurable support
6345 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6346 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6347 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6348 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6349 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6350 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6351 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6353 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6354 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6355 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6357 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6359 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6360 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6363 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6365 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6371 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6372 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6373 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6374 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6376 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6378 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6379 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6380 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6382 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6384 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6385 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6386 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6387 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6388 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6389 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6390 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6392 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6393 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6394 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6395 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6396 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6397 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6399 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6401 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6402 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6403 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6404 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6406 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6409 ** Ada mode changes.
6411 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6412 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6413 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6414 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6417 *** There are two new commands:
6418 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6419 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6421 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6422 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6423 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6425 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6426 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6427 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6429 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6430 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6431 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6432 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6434 ** Scheme mode changes.
6436 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6437 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6438 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6439 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6442 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6443 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6444 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6445 variables as buffer-local variables.
6447 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6450 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6452 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6453 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6454 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6455 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6457 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6458 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6461 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6462 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6463 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6464 option takes precedence.
6466 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6467 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6468 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6470 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6471 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6474 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6475 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6477 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6478 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6481 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6482 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6483 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6484 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6485 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6486 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6488 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6489 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6490 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6491 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6493 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6494 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6495 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6496 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6497 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6499 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6500 since it applies only to the current frame.
6502 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6503 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6504 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6506 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6507 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6508 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6509 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6510 instead of just the file you are editing.
6514 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6515 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6516 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6517 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6518 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6521 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6522 knows which kind of label is needed.
6524 C-c ) reftex-reference
6525 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6526 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6528 C-c [ reftex-citation
6529 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6530 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6532 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6533 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6536 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6537 can quickly jump to every section.
6539 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6540 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6541 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6542 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6543 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6545 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6547 *** Info documentation is now available.
6549 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6550 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6552 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6553 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6555 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6556 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6558 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6559 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6560 appropriate functions.
6562 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6563 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6565 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6568 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6569 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6571 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6574 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6575 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6576 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6578 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6579 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6580 prefixed with `ALT'.
6582 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6583 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6584 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6587 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6588 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6589 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6591 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6592 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6594 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6595 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6596 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6598 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6600 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6602 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6605 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6606 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6609 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6612 *** Added support for imenu.
6614 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6615 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6616 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6617 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6619 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6620 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6622 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6624 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6626 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6627 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6628 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6631 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6632 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6634 ** browse-url changes
6636 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6637 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6638 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6639 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6640 customization variables.
6642 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6644 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6645 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6646 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6650 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6651 pops up the Info file for this command.
6653 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6654 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6655 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6658 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6659 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6660 files in the same directory.
6662 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6663 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6664 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6668 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6669 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6671 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6672 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6673 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6674 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6675 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6676 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6677 color when Viper is in insert state.
6678 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6679 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6680 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6684 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6685 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6686 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6687 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6688 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6690 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6692 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6693 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6695 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6696 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6697 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6699 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6700 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6701 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6702 methods and protocols.
6704 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6705 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6706 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6709 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6710 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6711 at least M times and as many as N times.
6713 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6714 in files has changed slightly.
6716 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6717 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6718 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6719 with old time-stamp-format values.
6721 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6722 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6723 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6726 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6727 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6728 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6729 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6730 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6731 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6733 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6734 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6735 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6737 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6738 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6739 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6740 recommended now will continue to work then.
6742 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6745 ** There are some additional major modes:
6747 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6748 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6749 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6751 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6752 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6755 ** New Lisp packages include:
6757 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6759 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6760 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6762 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6764 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6767 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6768 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6771 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6772 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6773 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6774 strings or comments.
6776 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6777 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6778 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6779 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6782 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6783 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6785 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6786 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6788 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6790 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6791 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6793 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6795 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6797 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6799 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6800 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6802 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6803 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6804 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6805 original place after inserting the copy.
6807 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6810 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6811 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6812 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6814 Enable mouse-drag with:
6815 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6817 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6819 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6820 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6822 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6823 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6827 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6828 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6829 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6830 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6831 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6832 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6833 instance) and vice versa.
6835 To use this package load it using
6836 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6837 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6838 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6839 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6840 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6841 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6843 *** Interface to ph.
6845 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6847 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6848 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6851 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6853 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6854 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6855 while the real cursor does not move.
6857 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6858 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6860 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6861 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6865 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6866 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6867 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6868 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6870 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6872 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6874 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6876 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6877 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6878 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6879 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6880 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6882 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6883 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6884 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6885 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6886 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6887 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6889 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6891 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6892 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6893 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6894 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6896 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6897 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6899 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6900 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6903 ** Basic Lisp changes
6905 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6906 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6908 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6909 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6912 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6914 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6916 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6917 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6919 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6920 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6923 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6925 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6927 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6929 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6930 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6931 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6934 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6935 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6936 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6938 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6939 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6940 adding one of these suffixes.
6942 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6943 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6944 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6946 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6947 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6949 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6951 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6952 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6954 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6955 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6957 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6959 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6960 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6962 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6963 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6964 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6965 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6967 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6968 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6971 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6972 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6973 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6976 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6977 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6980 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6982 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6983 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6984 Then it returns that string.
6986 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6988 (with-output-to-string
6989 (princ "The buffer is ")
6990 (princ (buffer-name)))
6992 returns "The buffer is foo".
6994 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6997 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6998 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6999 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7001 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7002 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7004 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7005 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7006 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7007 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7008 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7009 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7011 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7012 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7013 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7016 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7017 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7018 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7019 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7020 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7022 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7023 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7024 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7025 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7027 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7028 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7030 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7032 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7033 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7034 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7035 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7038 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7039 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7042 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7044 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7045 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7046 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7047 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7048 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7050 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7052 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7053 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7054 more than the number of characters.
7056 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7057 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7058 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7059 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7060 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7061 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7063 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7064 and returns a string containing those characters.
7066 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7067 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7068 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7069 character, sref signals an error.
7071 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7072 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7073 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7075 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7076 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7077 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7079 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7080 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7081 to a vector of the characters in it.
7083 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7084 of a string. You call it as follows:
7086 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7088 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7089 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7090 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7091 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7092 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7094 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7095 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7097 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7098 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7100 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7101 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7102 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7103 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7105 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7107 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7109 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7110 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7111 are not included in the resulting value.
7113 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7114 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7115 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7116 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7118 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7119 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7120 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7121 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7122 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7123 column START-COLUMN.
7125 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7126 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7127 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7128 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7129 changed text, before the change.
7131 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7132 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7133 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7135 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7137 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7139 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7140 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7142 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7143 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7144 which identify the character within that character set.
7146 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7147 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7148 opposite of split-char.
7150 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7151 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7153 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7154 of all the characters in a string.
7156 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7157 and specifying coding systems.
7159 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7160 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7161 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7162 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7163 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7164 as what to do about code conversion.)
7166 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7167 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7169 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7170 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7171 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7173 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7174 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7175 to match against a file name.
7177 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7178 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7179 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7180 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7181 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7182 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7184 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7185 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7187 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7188 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7190 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7191 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7192 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7195 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7196 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7197 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7198 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7199 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7200 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7202 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7203 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7205 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7206 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7207 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7208 start the subprocess.
7210 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7211 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7212 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7213 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7214 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7216 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7217 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7220 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7221 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7222 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7223 connection permanently or until overridden.
7225 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7226 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7227 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7228 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7229 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7230 system for one operation at a time.
7232 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7233 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7235 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7236 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7237 The value is a cons cell,
7238 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7239 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7240 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7241 input to the subprocess.
7243 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7244 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7246 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7247 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7248 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7250 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7251 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7252 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7253 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7256 Thus, instead of writing
7258 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7259 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7261 you would now write this:
7263 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7264 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7268 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7269 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7270 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7271 for a description of them.
7273 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7274 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7276 (defgroup ispell nil
7277 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7280 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7281 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7282 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7283 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7284 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7286 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7287 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7288 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7289 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7290 first-level subgroups.
7292 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7294 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7295 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7299 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7300 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7301 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7302 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7303 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7304 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7306 ** Text property changes
7308 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7311 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7312 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7313 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7314 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7315 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7317 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7318 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7319 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7320 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7322 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7323 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7324 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7326 ** Changes in invisibility features
7328 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7329 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7330 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7331 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7332 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7333 make the overlay visible.
7335 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7336 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7337 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7338 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7339 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7340 t when it should hide it.
7342 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7344 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7345 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7346 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7347 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7348 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7349 Here is an example of how to do this:
7351 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7352 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7353 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7354 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7357 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7360 ;; When done with the overlays:
7361 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7363 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7365 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7367 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7368 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7369 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7370 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7372 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7373 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7374 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7376 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7377 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7379 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7380 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7382 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7383 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7384 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7386 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7387 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7388 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7389 determine the syntax type of the character.
7391 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7392 of the current buffer.
7394 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7395 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7396 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7398 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7399 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7400 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7401 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7402 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7404 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7407 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7408 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7409 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7411 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7412 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7413 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7414 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7415 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7417 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7418 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7419 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7421 ** Changes in face features
7423 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7424 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7426 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7427 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7429 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7430 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7432 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7433 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7435 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7436 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7437 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7438 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7441 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7442 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7444 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7446 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7447 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7448 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7449 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7451 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7454 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7455 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7457 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7458 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7460 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7461 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7463 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7464 character code conversion as well as other things.
7466 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7467 (formerly it did not).
7469 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7470 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7472 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7473 instead of constant strings.
7475 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7476 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7477 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7479 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7480 in the same way as before.
7482 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7483 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7484 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7486 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7487 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7488 else, and returns nil.
7490 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7491 directory cannot be listed.
7493 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7495 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7496 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7497 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7498 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7501 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7502 It is available through the history command M-n.
7504 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7505 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7506 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7507 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7508 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7510 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7511 argument in this way.
7513 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7514 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7515 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7517 ** Echo area features
7519 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7520 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7521 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7522 after the echo area is cleared.
7524 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7525 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7527 ** Keyboard input features
7529 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7530 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7532 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7533 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7536 ** Frame-related changes
7538 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7539 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7540 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7542 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7543 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7544 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7546 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7547 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7548 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7549 in the selected frame.
7551 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7552 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7553 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7555 ** X Windows features
7557 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7558 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7559 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7561 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7562 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7564 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7565 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7566 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7568 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7569 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7571 ** Subprocess features
7573 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7574 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7577 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7578 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7580 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7581 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7583 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7584 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7586 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7587 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7588 goes after the other menu items.
7590 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7591 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7592 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7595 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7596 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7598 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7599 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7602 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7603 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7604 but its hook is still run.
7606 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7607 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7609 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7610 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7611 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7613 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7614 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7615 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7618 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7619 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7621 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7622 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7623 functions like display-time.
7625 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7626 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7628 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7629 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7630 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7632 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7633 if there is an error in compilation.
7635 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7636 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7637 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7638 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7640 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7641 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7642 the *scratch* buffer.
7644 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7645 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7646 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7647 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7649 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7650 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7651 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7653 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7654 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7655 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7656 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7658 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7659 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7660 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7662 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7663 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7664 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7665 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7666 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7669 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7670 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7671 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7672 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7674 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7675 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7676 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7677 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7679 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7681 ** imenu.el changes.
7683 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7684 item from menu created by imenu.
7686 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7687 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7688 select one of those items.
7690 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7692 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7694 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7695 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7697 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7698 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7699 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7701 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7703 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7704 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7706 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7707 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7708 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7709 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7710 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7713 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7714 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7716 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7717 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7718 as in previous Emacs versions.
7720 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7721 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7722 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7725 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7726 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7727 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7728 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7731 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7732 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7733 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7734 line and then executing the macro.
7736 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7738 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7739 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7740 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7745 *** Font Lock support modes
7747 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7748 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7749 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7750 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7751 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7753 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7755 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7761 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7762 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7763 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7764 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7765 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7766 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7767 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7769 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7771 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7773 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7775 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7777 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7780 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7785 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7786 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7787 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7788 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7790 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7791 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7793 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7794 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7797 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7798 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7800 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7802 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7804 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7806 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7809 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7811 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7813 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7815 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7817 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7820 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7822 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7824 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7826 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7828 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7830 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7832 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7834 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7837 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7839 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7842 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7844 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7845 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7847 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7849 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7851 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7853 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7855 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7858 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7860 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7861 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7863 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7864 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7865 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7867 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7868 articles with the `*' command.
7870 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7872 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7874 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7876 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7878 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7879 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7881 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7884 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7886 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7888 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7890 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7892 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7894 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7896 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7898 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7900 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7902 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7903 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7905 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7908 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7910 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7911 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7913 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7915 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7917 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7919 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7922 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7924 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7926 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7927 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7929 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7931 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7933 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7935 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7937 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7939 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7942 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7944 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7945 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7946 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7949 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7952 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7955 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7956 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7959 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7960 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7961 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7962 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7963 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7966 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7968 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7970 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7971 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7972 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7973 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7974 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7976 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7977 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7978 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7980 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7982 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7983 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7984 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7985 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7986 chapter of the manual for details.
7988 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7989 customization variables take effect.
7991 ** Marking with the mouse.
7993 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7994 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7995 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7997 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7999 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8001 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8002 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8004 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8005 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8006 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8007 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8008 applications, these problems are significant.
8010 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8011 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8012 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8013 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8014 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8016 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8017 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8019 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8020 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8021 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8022 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8023 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8024 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8026 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8028 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8029 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8030 minibuffer contains.
8032 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8034 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8035 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8036 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8037 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8039 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8040 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8041 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8042 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8044 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8045 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8047 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8048 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8049 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8051 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8052 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8053 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8054 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8056 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8058 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8059 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8061 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8063 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8064 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8065 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8066 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8067 immediately after the selected one.
8069 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8070 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8072 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8074 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8075 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8076 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8077 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8080 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8081 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8084 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8085 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8086 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8087 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8088 now that the bug is fixed.
8090 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8092 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8093 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8094 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8095 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8097 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8098 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8099 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8100 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8102 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8103 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8104 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8106 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8107 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8108 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8109 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8112 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8113 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8115 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8116 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8117 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8118 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8120 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8121 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8122 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8123 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8124 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8125 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8127 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8128 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8129 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8130 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8132 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8133 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8134 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8136 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8137 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8138 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8139 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8140 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8141 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8142 to a limitation in font-lock).
8144 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8146 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8147 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8148 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8151 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8152 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8154 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8156 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8158 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8160 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8162 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8163 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8164 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8165 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8166 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8167 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8169 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8172 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8173 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8175 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8180 *** Global Font Lock mode
8182 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8183 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8184 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8185 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8186 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8188 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8190 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8194 *** Local Refontification
8196 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8197 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8198 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8199 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8201 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8202 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8203 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8204 above and below point.
8206 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8210 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8211 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8212 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8213 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8214 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8217 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8219 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8220 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8222 ** hide-show changes.
8224 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8225 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8228 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8229 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8231 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8232 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8233 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8237 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8238 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8240 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8241 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8243 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8245 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8246 pressing both mouse buttons.
8248 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8249 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8252 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8255 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8257 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8258 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8260 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8262 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8264 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8266 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8268 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8270 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8272 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8273 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8274 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8275 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8276 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8278 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8280 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8281 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8282 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8285 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8288 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8290 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8291 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8293 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8294 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8296 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8297 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8298 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8300 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8301 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8304 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8306 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8307 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8308 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8310 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8311 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8312 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8314 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8315 up if too much time passes.
8317 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8319 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8320 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8321 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8324 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8325 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8326 call looks like this:
8328 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8330 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8331 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8332 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8335 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8336 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8339 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8340 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8341 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8342 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8344 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8345 idle for SECS seconds.
8347 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8348 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8349 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8352 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8353 there is no answer within a certain time.
8355 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8357 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8358 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8359 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8361 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8362 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8363 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8364 arguments in between are ignored.
8366 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8367 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8369 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8370 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8371 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8372 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8375 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8376 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8377 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8378 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8379 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8380 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8382 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8383 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8384 systems with limited file name syntax.
8386 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8387 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8388 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8391 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8392 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8393 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8395 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8396 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8397 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8398 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8399 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8401 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8402 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8403 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8405 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8406 marker from its buffer position.
8408 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8409 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8410 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8412 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8413 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8414 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8415 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8416 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8417 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8419 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8420 errors that happen often during editing.
8422 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8423 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8424 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8426 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8427 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8429 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8430 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8431 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8432 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8433 and not get-buffer-window.
8435 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8436 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8437 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8439 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8440 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8441 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8442 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8443 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8444 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8445 over and over for the same text.
8447 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8449 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8450 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8452 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8455 in addition to the normal
8459 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8460 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8461 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8465 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8467 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8468 Copyright information:
8470 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8472 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8473 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8474 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8475 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8477 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8478 of this document, or of portions of it,
8479 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8480 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8484 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"