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1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
4
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
7
8 \f
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
12
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
14
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
17
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 to list them.
21
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
24
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
27
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30
31 \f
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
33
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
36
37 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
38 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
39 Postscript files are included.
40
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
42 `dired-ref.tex'.
43
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
46
47 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
48 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
49 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
50 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
51 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
52 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
53
54 +++
55 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
56 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
57 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
58 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
59
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
62
63 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
64 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
65 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
66 character is still bound as before.
67
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
69 using that menu.
70
71 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
72 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
73
74 +++
75 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
76 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
77 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
78 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
79 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
80 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
81 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
82
83 +++
84 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
85 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
86 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
87 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
88 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
89 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
90 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
91 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
92 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
93
94 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
95 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
96
97 +++
98 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
99 point in a pop-up window.
100
101 +++
102 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
103 displays all characters in that character set.
104
105 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
106 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
107
108 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
109 on the context.
110
111 +++
112 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
113
114 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
115 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
116
117 +++
118 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
119 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
120 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
121 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
122
123 +++
124 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
125 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
126 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
127 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
128
129 +++
130 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
131 on the display using several methods
132
133 +++
134 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
135 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
136 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
137
138 +++
139 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
140 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
141
142 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
143
144 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
145 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
146
147 +++
148 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
149 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
150 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
151 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
152
153 +++
154 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
155 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
156 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
157
158 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
159 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
160
161 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
162 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
163 this behavior.
164
165 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
166 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
167 Emacs dump core.
168
169 +++
170 ** New X resources recognized
171
172 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
173 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
174 is useful for debugging X problems.
175
176 Example:
177
178 emacs.synchronous: true
179
180 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
181 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
182 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
183 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
184 visual class names are
185
186 TrueColor
187 PseudoColor
188 DirectColor
189 StaticColor
190 GrayScale
191 StaticGray
192
193 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
194 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
195 meaning.
196
197 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
198 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
199 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
200 visual.
201
202 Example:
203
204 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
205
206 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
207 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
208 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
209 resource values are `true' or `on'.
210
211 Example:
212
213 emacs.privateColormap: true
214
215 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
216 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
217 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
218
219 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
220 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
221 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
222 be customized.
223
224 +++
225 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
226
227 +++
228 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
229 all frames except the selected one.
230
231 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
232 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
233
234 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
235 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
236 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
237 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
238
239 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
240 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
241
242 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
243 read mail from the menu etc.
244
245 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
246 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
247
248 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
249
250 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
251 macros
252
253 Key binding Macro
254 -------------------------
255 C-c C-c C-s @strong
256 C-c C-c C-e @emph
257 C-c C-c u @url
258 C-c C-c q @quotation
259 C-c C-c m @email
260
261 ** Changes in Outline mode.
262
263 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
264 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
265 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
266
267 ** Changes to Emacs Server
268
269 *** There new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
270 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
271 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
272 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
273 buffers to kill, as before.
274
275 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
276 i.e. buffers visited which `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
277 this way.
278
279 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
280
281 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
282 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
283 use. Default is 1000.
284
285 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
286 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
287
288 +++
289 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
290 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
291 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
292 buffers.
293
294 +++
295 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
296 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
297 .emacs file.
298
299 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
300 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
301
302 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
303 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
304 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
305
306 ** Faces and frame parameters.
307
308 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
309 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
310 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
311 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
312 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
313 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
314 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
315
316 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
317 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
318 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
319 `default' face and vice versa.
320
321 ** New face `menu'.
322
323 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
324 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
325 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
326
327 +++
328 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
329
330 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
331 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
332 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
333 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
334
335 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
336 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
337 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
338
339 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
340 `ScreenGamma'.
341
342 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
343
344 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
345 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
346 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
347 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
348 the text.
349
350 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
351
352 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
353 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
354 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
355 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
356 specify a font.
357
358 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
359 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
360 under Lisp changes, below.
361
362 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
363
364 +++
365 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
366 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
367 otherwise, it is hollow.
368
369 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
370 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
371 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
372 customizing face `fringe'.
373
374 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
375 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
376
377 ** LessTif support.
378
379 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
380 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
381
382 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
383
384 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
385 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
386 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
387 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
388 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
389 Emacs.
390
391 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
392 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
393 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
394 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
395 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
396 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
397
398 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
399 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
400 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
401 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
402 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
403 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
404
405 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
406 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
407 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
408 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
409 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
410
411 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
412
413 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
414 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
415 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
416
417 +++
418 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
419
420 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
421 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
422 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
423 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
424 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
425 whitespace.
426
427 ** Busy-cursor.
428
429 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
430 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
431
432 +++
433 ** Blinking cursor
434
435 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
436 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
437 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
438 the group `cursor'.
439
440 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
441
442 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
443 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
444 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
445 details.
446
447 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
448 have to do anything to activate it.
449
450 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
451
452 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
453 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
454 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
455 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
456
457 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
458
459 +++
460 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
461
462 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
463
464 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
465 LessTif/Motif one.
466
467 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
468 LessTif and Motif.
469
470 ** Hscrolling in C code.
471
472 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
473 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
474 customized.
475
476 ** Tool bar support.
477
478 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
479 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
480
481 +++
482 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
483
484 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
485 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
486 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
487 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
488 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
489
490 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
491
492 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
493 buffers.
494
495 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
496 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
497
498 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
499
500 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
501 `*') toggles the status.
502
503 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
504
505 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
506
507 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
508 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
509 non-nil.
510
511 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
512
513 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
514 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
515 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
516 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
517 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
518 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
519 on terminals.
520
521 ** Sound support
522
523 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
524 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
525 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
526
527 +++
528 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
529 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
530 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
531 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
532 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
533 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
534
535 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
536
537 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
538
539 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
540 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
541 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
542
543 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
544 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
545
546 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
547 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
548 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
549
550 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
551
552 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
553 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
554 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
555 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
556
557 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
558 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
559 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
560 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
561
562 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
563 notably at the end of lines.
564
565 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
566 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
567
568 +++
569 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
570
571 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
572 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
573 after each match to get the replacement text.
574
575 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
576 you edit the replacement string.
577
578 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
579 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
580 lisp-complete-symbol.
581
582 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
583
584 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
585 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
586 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
587 window size by setting the following variable:
588
589 - User option: max-mini-window-height
590
591 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
592 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
593 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
594
595 Default is 0.25.
596
597 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
598
599 ** Changes to hideshow.el
600
601 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
602 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
603
604 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
605
606 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
607 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
608 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
609 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
610 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
611 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
612
613 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
614 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
615 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
616 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
617
618 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
619
620 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
621 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
622 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
623 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
624 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
625
626 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
627 something like this in your .emacs.
628
629 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
630 (lambda ()
631 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
632
633 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
634
635 +++
636 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
637 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
638 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
639
640 +++
641 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
642 buffer.
643
644 +++
645 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
646 a log file.
647
648 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
649 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
650
651 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
652 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
653 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
654 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
655
656 ** Changes in Font Lock
657
658 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
659 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
660 mode.
661
662 ** Comint (subshell) changes
663
664 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
665 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
666 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
667 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
668 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
669 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
670 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
671 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
672
673 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
674 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
675
676 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
677 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
678 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
679
680 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
681 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
682 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
683
684 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
685 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
686 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
687 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
688
689 ** Changes to Rmail mode
690
691 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
692 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
693 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
694 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
695 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
696 as correspondent.
697
698 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
699 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
700 regexp matching your mail addresses.
701
702 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
703 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
704 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
705 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
706 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
707
708 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
709 like `j'.
710
711 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
712 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
713 digest message.
714
715 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
716 in which folder to put messages automatically.
717
718 ** Changes to TeX mode
719
720 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
721 `latex-mode'.
722
723 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
724
725 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
726 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
727 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
728 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
729 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
730 can be edited from that buffer.
731
732 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
733 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
734 `A' to use all marked entries).
735
736 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
737 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
738
739 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
740 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
741 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
742 been cited.
743
744 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
745 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
746 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
747 in column 1 are always made leaves.
748
749 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
750 has the following new features:
751
752 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
753 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
754 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
755 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
756
757 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
758 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
759 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
760 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
761 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
762 defaults to 1.
763
764 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
765 file names.
766
767 +++
768 ** Tooltips.
769
770 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
771 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
772 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
773
774 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
775 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
776 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
777 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
778
779 +++
780 ** Customize changes
781
782 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
783 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
784 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
785
786 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
787 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
788 default).
789
790 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
791 between custom options. Example:
792
793 (defcustom default-input-method nil
794 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
795 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
796 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
797 :group 'mule
798 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
799 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
800
801 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
802 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
803 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
804
805 ** New features in evaluation commands
806
807 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
808 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
809 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
810 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
811 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
812
813 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
814 code when called with a prefix argument.
815
816 ** Ispell changes
817
818 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
819 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
820 spell-checks the current buffer.
821
822 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
823 added.
824
825 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
826 correction is made and re-checked.
827
828 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
829
830 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
831 cases.
832
833 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
834 on syntax errors.
835
836 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
837 end of the buffer.
838
839 ** Dired changes
840
841 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
842 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
843 is, delete only empty directories.
844
845 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
846 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
847 copy directories recursively.
848
849 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
850 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
851 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
852
853 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
854 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
855 directory.
856
857 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
858 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
859 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
860 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
861 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
862
863 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
864 from ls switches.
865
866 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
867 use the -f option when sending mail.
868
869 ** CC mode changes.
870
871 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
872 current user setups (although it's believed that these
873 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
874 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
875 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
876 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
877 release.
878
879 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
880 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
881 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
882 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
883 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
884 have to bother.
885
886 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
887 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
888 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
889 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
890 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
891 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
892
893 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
894 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
895 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
896 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
897 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
898 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
899 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
900 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
901
902 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
903 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
904 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
905 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
906 above.
907
908 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
909 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
910 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
911 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
912 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
913 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
914 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
915 function documentation for more info.
916
917 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
918 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
919 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
920 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
921 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
922 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
923 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
924 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
925
926 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
927
928 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
929 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
930
931 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
932 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
933 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
934 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
935 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
936 style system.
937
938 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
939 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
940 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
941 as far as possible.
942
943 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
944 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
945 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
946 chapter about this in the manual.
947
948 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
949 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
950 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
951 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
952 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
953
954 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
955 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
956 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
957
958 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
959 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
960
961 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
962 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
963 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
964 inside CC Mode.
965
966 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
967 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
968 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
969 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
970 cc-mode/).
971
972 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
973 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
974 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
975 literals.
976
977 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
978 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
979 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
980 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
981 this function.
982
983 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
984 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
985 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
986 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
987 Thanks to Eric Eide.
988
989 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
990 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
991 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
992
993 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
994
995 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
996 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
997 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
998 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
999
1000 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1001 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1002 the column specified by comment-column.
1003
1004 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1005 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1006 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1007 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1008 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1009 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1010
1011 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1012 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1013 arguments.
1014
1015 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1016
1017 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1018 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1019 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1020 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1021 Provan).
1022
1023 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1024
1025 ** Makefile mode changes
1026
1027 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1028
1029 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1030 Fontlock mode is active.
1031
1032 ** Isearch changes
1033
1034 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1035 so that searches can be resumed.
1036
1037 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1038 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1039 that started the search.
1040
1041 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1042 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1043
1044 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1045
1046 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1047 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1048 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1049 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1050 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1051 `secondary-selection'.
1052
1053 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1054 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1055 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1056 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1057 usual snappy response.
1058
1059 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1060 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1061 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1062 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1063
1064 ** Changes in sort.el
1065
1066 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1067 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1068 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1069 numeric base.
1070
1071 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1072
1073 +++
1074 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1075 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1076 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1077
1078 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1079 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1080
1081 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1082 output ^M at the end of lines.
1083
1084 ** Shell script mode changes.
1085
1086 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1087 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1088 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1089
1090 ** Etags changes.
1091
1092 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1093
1094 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1095 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1096 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1097 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1098 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1099
1100 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1101 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1102
1103 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1104 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1105
1106 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1107 types.
1108
1109 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1110
1111 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1112
1113 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1114 are now tagged.
1115
1116 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1117 variables are tagged.
1118
1119 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1120
1121 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1122 for PSWrap.
1123
1124 ** Changes in etags.el
1125
1126 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1127 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1128 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1129
1130 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1131 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1132
1133 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1134 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1135 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1136 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1137
1138 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1139
1140 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1141 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1142
1143 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1144
1145 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1146 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1147 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1148
1149 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1150 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1151
1152 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1153 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1154
1155 +++
1156 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1157 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1158 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1159
1160 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1161 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1162 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1163 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1164
1165 +++
1166 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1167 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1168 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1169
1170 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1171
1172 +++
1173 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1174
1175 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1176 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1177 expression from that list, are not checked.
1178
1179 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1180 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1181 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1182 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1183
1184 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1185
1186 ** New modes and packages
1187
1188 +++
1189 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1190 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1191 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1192 on certain projects.
1193
1194 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1195 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1196
1197 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1198
1199 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1200 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1201 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1202 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1203 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1204 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1205 corresponding file is read.
1206
1207 +++
1208 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1209 Emacs is idle.
1210
1211 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1212 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1213
1214 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1215 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1216 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1217
1218 +++
1219 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1220 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1221 separate Texinfo file.
1222
1223 +++
1224 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1225 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1226 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1227 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1228 enter checkin log messages.
1229
1230 +++
1231 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1232 without invoking external programs.
1233
1234 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1235 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1236 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1237 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1238 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1239
1240 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1241 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1242
1243 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1244 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1245
1246 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1247 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1248 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1249 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1250 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1251 single step.
1252
1253 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1254 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1255 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1256 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1257
1258 +++
1259 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1260 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1261 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1262
1263 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1264 PostScript.
1265
1266 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1267
1268 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1269
1270 ; comment (until end of line)
1271 A non-terminal
1272 "C" terminal
1273 ?C? special
1274 $A default non-terminal
1275 $"C" default terminal
1276 $?C? default special
1277 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1278 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1279 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1280 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1281 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1282 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1283 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1284 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1285 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1286 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1287 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1288 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1289 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1290 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1291 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1292
1293 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1294
1295 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1296 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1297 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1298 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1299 equal signs of assignments.
1300
1301 +++
1302 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1303 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1304
1305 +++
1306 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1307 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1308 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1309 customize the package.
1310
1311 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1312
1313 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1314 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1315 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1316 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1317 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1318 which answers different needs.
1319
1320 +++
1321 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1322 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1323 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1324 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1325 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1326 to be enabled.
1327
1328 +++
1329 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1330 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1331
1332 +++
1333 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1334
1335 +++
1336 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1337
1338 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1339
1340 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1341 Pascal) language.
1342
1343 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1344 the text at point.
1345
1346 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1347
1348 +++
1349 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1350
1351 *** whitespace.el ???
1352
1353 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1354 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1355 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1356 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1357 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1358 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1359 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1360
1361 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1362
1363 Here is an example of columns:
1364
1365 horse apple bus
1366 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1367 porcupine strawberry airplane
1368
1369 Doing the following settings:
1370
1371 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1372 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1373 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1374 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1375
1376
1377 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1378
1379 M-x delimit-columns-region
1380
1381 It results:
1382
1383 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1384 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1385 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1386
1387 delim-col has the following options:
1388
1389 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1390 before all columns.
1391
1392 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1393 between each column.
1394
1395 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1396 after all columns.
1397
1398 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1399 each column.
1400
1401 delim-col has the following commands:
1402
1403 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1404 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1405
1406 +++
1407 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1408 were operated on recently.
1409
1410 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1411
1412 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1413 recentf at Emacs startup.
1414
1415 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1416 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1417 file list can be displayed:
1418
1419 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1420 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1421 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1422
1423 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1424 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1425
1426 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1427 text.
1428
1429 +++
1430 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1431 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1432 specific to Message mode.
1433
1434 +++
1435 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1436 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1437 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1438
1439 +++
1440 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1441 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1442 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1443
1444 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1445 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1446
1447 +++
1448 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1449
1450 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1451 minibuffer with completion.
1452
1453 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1454 with the diary features.
1455
1456 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1457 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1458
1459 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1460 Fill mode.
1461
1462 ** Withdrawn packages
1463
1464 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1465 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1466
1467 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1468
1469 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1470
1471 \f
1472 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1473 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1474
1475 +++
1476 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1477 is running in batch mode. For example,
1478
1479 (message "%s" (read t))
1480
1481 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1482 to standard output.
1483
1484 +++
1485 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1486 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1487
1488 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1489 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1490 frame or window.
1491
1492 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1493 were added
1494
1495 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1496
1497 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1498 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1499
1500 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1501
1502 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1503 comparison is done with `eq'.
1504
1505 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1506
1507 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1508 has been changed.
1509
1510 +++
1511 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1512 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1513 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1514
1515 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1516 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1517
1518 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1519 function was declared obsolete.
1520
1521 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1522 retained as an alias).
1523
1524 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1525 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1526 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1527
1528 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1529
1530 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1531
1532 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1533 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1534
1535 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1536
1537 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1538
1539 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1540
1541 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1542 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1543 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1544 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1545 returned.
1546
1547 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1548 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1549 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1550 minibuffer even if it is active.
1551
1552 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1553 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1554 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1555 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1556 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1557 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1558
1559 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1560 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1561 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1562 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1563 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1564 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1565 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1566
1567 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1568 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1569 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1570
1571 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1572 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1573 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1574 Default value is nil.
1575
1576 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1577 meaning no limit.
1578
1579 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1580 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1581 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1582
1583 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1584 of a primitive.
1585
1586 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1587 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1588 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1589 than replacing the local map.
1590
1591 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1592 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1593
1594 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1595
1596 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1597 promised long ago.
1598
1599 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1600 \f
1601 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1602
1603 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1604 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1605 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1606 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1607
1608 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1609 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1610 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1611 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1612
1613 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1614 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1615 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1616 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1617
1618 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1619 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1620 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1621
1622 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1623 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1624 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1625 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1626 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1627 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1628 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1629 eight-bit-graphic.
1630
1631 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1632
1633 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1634 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1635 character set as previously.
1636
1637 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1638 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1639 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1640
1641 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1642 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1643 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1644 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1645
1646 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1647 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1648
1649 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1650 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1651 "fontset-default".
1652
1653 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1654 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1655
1656 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1657 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1658 buffers and strings.
1659
1660 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1661 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1662 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1663 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1664 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1665 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1666 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1667 also been deleted.
1668
1669 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1670 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1671 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1672
1673 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1674 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1675 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1676 may differ between buffer and string text.
1677
1678 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1679 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1680
1681 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1682 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1683 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1684 `composition' from STRING.
1685
1686 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1687 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1688
1689 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1690 obsolete.
1691
1692 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1693 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1694 character set is not used.
1695
1696 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1697 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1698 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1699
1700 +++
1701 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1702 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1703 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1704
1705 +++
1706 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1707 that offset in the file before writing.
1708
1709 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1710 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1711
1712 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1713 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1714 from which the command was issued.
1715
1716 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1717 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1718 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1719 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1720 operate on.
1721
1722 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1723 to `window-buffer-height'.
1724
1725 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1726
1727 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1728 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1729 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1730
1731 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1732 respectively.
1733
1734 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1735 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1736
1737 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1738 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1739 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1740
1741 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1742 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1743 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1744 is currently displayed in some window.
1745
1746 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1747 argument function's results.
1748
1749 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1750 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1751
1752 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1753 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1754
1755 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1756 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1757
1758 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1759 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1760 as follows:
1761
1762 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1763 nil don't display a cursor
1764 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1765 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1766 others display a box cursor.
1767
1768 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1769 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1770 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1771 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1772
1773 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1774 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1775 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1776 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1777
1778 Example:
1779
1780 (string-to-syntax "()")
1781 => (4 . 41)
1782
1783 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1784 other than 10.
1785
1786 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1787 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1788
1789 #b1111
1790 => 15
1791 #b-1111
1792 => -15
1793
1794 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1795
1796 #o666
1797 => 438
1798
1799 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1800
1801 #xbeef
1802 => 48815
1803
1804 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1805
1806 #2R-111
1807 => -7
1808 #25rah
1809 => 267
1810
1811 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1812 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1813 and isn't a string.
1814
1815 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1816 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1817 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1818 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1819
1820 +++
1821 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1822
1823 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1824 for a regexp in a string.
1825
1826 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1827 `mouse-position-function'.
1828
1829 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1830 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1831
1832 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1833 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1834
1835 +++
1836 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1837 returns it.
1838
1839 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1840 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1841
1842 +++
1843 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1844 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1845 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1846 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1847 mode.
1848
1849 +++
1850 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1851 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1852
1853 +++
1854 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1855 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1856 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1857 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1858 been performed."
1859
1860 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1861 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1862 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1863 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1864
1865 +++
1866 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1867 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1868 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1869
1870 +++
1871 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1872 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1873 specified table.
1874
1875 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1876
1877 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1878 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1879 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1880 what BODY returns.
1881
1882 +++
1883 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1884 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1885
1886 +++
1887 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1888 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1889
1890 +++
1891 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1892 instead of being optional.
1893
1894 +++
1895 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1896 modify read-only text.
1897
1898 +++
1899 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1900
1901 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1902 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1903 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1904 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1905 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1906
1907 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1908 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1909 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1910 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1911 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1912 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1913 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1914
1915 +++
1916 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1917 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1918 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1919 start sequences.
1920
1921 +++
1922 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1923 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1924
1925 +++
1926 ** New function `propertize'
1927
1928 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1929 strings with text properties.
1930
1931 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1932
1933 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1934 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1935 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1936 specified value of that property. Example:
1937
1938 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1939
1940 +++
1941 ** push and pop macros.
1942
1943 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1944 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1945 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1946
1947 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1948 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1949 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1950
1951 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1952
1953 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1954 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1955
1956 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1957 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1958 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1959 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1960
1961 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1962 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1963 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1964 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1965
1966 +++
1967 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1968 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1969
1970 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1971 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1972 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1973 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1974 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1975 space, and DEL.
1976 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1977 and DEL.
1978 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1979 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1980 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1981 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1982 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1983 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1984 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1985 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1986 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1987 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1988 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1989 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1990 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1991 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1992 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1993
1994 +++
1995 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1996
1997 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1998
1999 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2000
2001 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2002 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2003
2004 :test TEST
2005
2006 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2007 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2008 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2009
2010 :size SIZE
2011
2012 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2013 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2014
2015 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2016
2017 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2018 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2019 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2020 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2021 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2022
2023 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2024
2025 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2026 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2027 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2028
2029 :weakness WEAK
2030
2031 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2032 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2033 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2034 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2035 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2036
2037 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2038
2039 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2040
2041 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2042
2043 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2044
2045 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2046
2047 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2048 values are shared.
2049
2050 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2051
2052 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2053
2054 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2055
2056 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2057
2058 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2059
2060 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2061
2062 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2063
2064 Returns the size of TABLE.
2065
2066 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2067
2068 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2069
2070 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2071
2072 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2073
2074 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2075
2076 Clear TABLE.
2077
2078 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2079
2080 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2081 not found.
2082
2083 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2084
2085 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2086 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2087
2088 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2089
2090 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2091
2092 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2093
2094 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2095 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2096
2097 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2098
2099 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2100
2101 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2102
2103 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2104 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2105 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2106 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2107 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2108
2109 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2110
2111 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2112 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2113 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2114
2115 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2116 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2117
2118 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2119 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2120
2121 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2122 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2123
2124 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2125 'case-fold-string-hash))
2126
2127 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2128
2129 +++
2130 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2131
2132 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2133 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2134 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2135
2136 +++
2137 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2138
2139 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2140 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2141
2142 +++
2143 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2144 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2145 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2146 is too short to reach that column.
2147
2148 +++
2149 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2150 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2151 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2152 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2153
2154 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2155 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2156 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2157
2158 +++
2159 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2160 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2161
2162 +++
2163 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2164 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2165
2166 +++
2167 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2168 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2169 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2170 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2171 temporary-file-directory instead.
2172
2173 +++
2174 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2175 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2176 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2177 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2178
2179 +++
2180 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2181 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2182
2183 +++
2184 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2185
2186 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2187 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2188 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2189
2190 +++
2191 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2192
2193 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2194 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2195 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2196 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2197 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2198 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2199
2200 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2201 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2202 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2203 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2204
2205 +++
2206 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2207
2208 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2209 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2210 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2211 result string.
2212
2213 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2214 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2215
2216 Example:
2217
2218 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2219 (s2 "world"))
2220 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2221 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2222 (format s1 s2))
2223
2224 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2225
2226 +++
2227 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2228
2229 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2230 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2231 argument in it.
2232
2233 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2234 (arg "world"))
2235 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2236 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2237 (message msg arg))
2238
2239 +++
2240 ** Sound support
2241
2242 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2243 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2244
2245 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2246 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2247 to enable sound support.
2248
2249 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2250 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2251 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2252 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2253 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2254
2255 The following sound properties are supported:
2256
2257 - `:file FILE'
2258
2259 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2260 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2261
2262 - `:data DATA'
2263
2264 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2265 may be present, but not both.
2266
2267 - `:volume VOLUME'
2268
2269 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2270 0..1. This property is optional.
2271
2272 Other properties are ignored.
2273
2274 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2275
2276 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2277 a keyword symbol.
2278
2279 ** Changes to garbage collection
2280
2281 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2282 of live and free strings.
2283
2284 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2285 strings that have been consed so far.
2286
2287 \f
2288 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2289 Lisp Manual
2290
2291 +++
2292 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2293
2294 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2295 image.
2296
2297 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2298
2299 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2300
2301 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2302 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2303 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2304 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2305 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2306
2307 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2308 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2309
2310 +++
2311 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2312 optional.
2313
2314 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2315
2316 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2317 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2318 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2319 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2320
2321 \f
2322 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2323
2324 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2325 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2326 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2327 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2328
2329 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2330 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2331
2332 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2333 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2334 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2335 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2336 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2337 just display it black instead.
2338
2339 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2340 a line like
2341
2342 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2343
2344 in your `.emacs'.
2345
2346 ** New face implementation.
2347
2348 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2349 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2350
2351 +++
2352 *** New faces.
2353
2354 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2355
2356 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2357
2358 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2359 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2360
2361 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2362
2363 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2364
2365 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2366
2367 6. Foreground color.
2368
2369 7. Background color.
2370
2371 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2372
2373 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2374
2375 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2376
2377 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2378
2379 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2380 color.
2381
2382 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2383 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2384
2385 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2386 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2387 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2388 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2389 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2390 attributes mentioned above.
2391
2392 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2393 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2394 created frames.
2395
2396 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2397 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2398 `fully-specified'.
2399
2400 +++
2401 *** Face merging.
2402
2403 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2404 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2405 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2406 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2407 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2408 results in a fully-specified face.
2409
2410 +++
2411 *** Face realization.
2412
2413 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2414 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2415 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2416 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2417 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2418 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2419
2420 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2421 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2422 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2423 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2424
2425 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2426 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2427 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2428 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2429 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2430
2431 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2432 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2433 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2434 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2435 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2436 Emacs.
2437
2438 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2439 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2440 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2441 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2442
2443 ++++
2444 **** Clearing face caches.
2445
2446 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2447 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2448 unused fonts.
2449
2450 +++
2451 *** Font selection.
2452
2453 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2454 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2455 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2456
2457 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2458 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2459 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2460 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2461 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2462
2463 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2464 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2465 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2466
2467 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2468
2469 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2470 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2471 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2472 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2473 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2474 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2475 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2476
2477 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2478 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2479 face doesn't exist.
2480
2481 +++
2482 **** Scalable fonts
2483
2484 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2485 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2486 servers.
2487
2488 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2489 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2490 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2491 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2492 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2493 that list. Example:
2494
2495 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2496
2497 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2498
2499 +++
2500 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2501
2502 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2503
2504 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2505 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2506 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2507
2508 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2509 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2510 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2511 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2512 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2513 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2514 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2515 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2516 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2517 of the face font sort order.
2518
2519 - Function: x-font-family-list
2520
2521 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2522 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2523 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2524 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2525
2526 - Variable: font-list-limit
2527
2528 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2529 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2530 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2531
2532 +++
2533 *** Setting face attributes.
2534
2535 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2536 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2537 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2538 `face-attribute'.
2539
2540 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2541 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2542
2543 The following attributes are recognized:
2544
2545 `:family'
2546
2547 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2548 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2549 and `?' are allowed.
2550
2551 `:width'
2552
2553 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2554 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2555 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2556 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2557
2558 `:height'
2559
2560 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2561 1/10 pt.
2562
2563 `:weight'
2564
2565 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2566 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2567 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2568
2569 `:slant'
2570
2571 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2572 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2573 `reverse-oblique'.
2574
2575 `:foreground', `:background'
2576
2577 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2578
2579 `:underline'
2580
2581 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2582 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2583 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2584 don't underline.
2585
2586 `:overline'
2587
2588 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2589 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2590 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2591 overline.
2592
2593 `:strike-through'
2594
2595 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2596 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2597 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2598 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2599
2600 `:box'
2601
2602 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2603 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2604 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2605 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2606 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2607 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2608 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2609 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2610 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2611 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2612 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2613 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2614 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2615 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2616 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2617 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2618 box.
2619
2620 `:inverse-video'
2621
2622 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2623 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2624
2625 `:stipple'
2626
2627 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2628 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2629 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2630 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2631 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2632 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2633
2634 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2635 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2636
2637 `:font'
2638
2639 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2640 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2641 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2642 versions of Emacs.
2643
2644 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2645 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2646 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2647
2648 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2649 `defface'.
2650
2651 *** Face attributes and X resources
2652
2653 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2654 from X resources:
2655
2656 Face attribute X resource class
2657 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2658 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2659 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2660 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2661 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2662 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2663 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2664 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2665 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2666 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2667 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2668 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2669 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2670 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2671 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2672 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2673 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2674 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2675 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2676 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2677
2678 +++
2679 *** Text property `face'.
2680
2681 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2682 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2683 specification can be
2684
2685 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2686
2687 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2688 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2689 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2690 for face attribute names.
2691
2692 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2693 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2694 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2695
2696 +++
2697 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2698
2699 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2700 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2701 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2702 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2703 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2704 used to clear the mapping table.
2705
2706 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2707
2708 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2709 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2710 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2711 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2712 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2713 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2714 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2715 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2716 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2717 modify their color-related behavior.
2718
2719 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2720 any frame type.
2721
2722 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2723
2724 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2725 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2726 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2727 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2728 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2729 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2730 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2731 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2732 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2733
2734 +++
2735 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2736
2737 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2738
2739 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2740 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2741 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2742
2743 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2744
2745 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2746 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2747 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2748
2749 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2750 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2751 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2752 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2753 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2754 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2755 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2756 functions.
2757
2758 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2759 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2760 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2761
2762 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2763
2764 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2765
2766 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2767
2768 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2769 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2770 constrained position if that is is different.
2771
2772 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2773 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2774 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2775 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2776 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2777 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2778 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2779 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2780 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2781
2782 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2783 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2784 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2785 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2786 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2787
2788 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2789 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2790
2791 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2792
2793 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2794
2795 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2796 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2797 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2798
2799 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2800
2801 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2802 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2803 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2804 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2805 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2806
2807 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2808
2809 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2810 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2811 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2812 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2813 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2814
2815 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2816
2817 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2818 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2819 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2820
2821 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2822
2823 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2824 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2825 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2826
2827 +++
2828 ** Image support.
2829
2830 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2831 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2832 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2833 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2834
2835 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2836 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2837 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2838 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2839 area.
2840
2841 IMAGE is an image specification.
2842
2843 *** Image specifications
2844
2845 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2846 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2847 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2848 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2849 described below are ignored.
2850
2851 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2852
2853 `:ascent ASCENT'
2854
2855 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2856 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2857 to use for its ascent.
2858
2859 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2860 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2861
2862 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2863 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2864 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2865 overlays that apply to the image.
2866
2867 `:margin MARGIN'
2868
2869 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2870 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2871
2872 `:relief RELIEF'
2873
2874 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2875 around an image.
2876
2877 `:algorithm ALGO'
2878
2879 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2880 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2881 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2882 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2883
2884 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2885
2886 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2887 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2888 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2889 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2890 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2891 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2892 background of the image.
2893
2894 `:file FILE'
2895
2896 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2897 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2898 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2899 may be present in the image specification.
2900
2901 `:data DATA'
2902
2903 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2904 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2905 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2906 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2907
2908 *** Supported image types
2909
2910 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2911
2912 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2913 properties supported are
2914
2915 `:foreground FG'
2916
2917 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2918 is the frame's foreground.
2919
2920 `:background FG'
2921
2922 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2923 the frame's background color.
2924
2925 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2926 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2927 instead of a `:file' property.
2928
2929 `:width WIDTH'
2930
2931 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2932
2933 `:height HEIGHT'
2934
2935 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2936
2937 `:data DATA'
2938
2939 DATA must be either
2940
2941 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2942 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2943
2944 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2945
2946 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2947 bitmap.
2948
2949 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2950 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2951 in the file.
2952
2953 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2954
2955 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2956 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2957 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2958 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2959
2960 Additional image properties supported are:
2961
2962 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2963
2964 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2965 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2966 name.
2967
2968 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2969 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2970
2971 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2972 to display compressed images.
2973
2974 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2975
2976 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2977 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2978 defined.
2979
2980 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2981
2982 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2983 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2984 are:
2985
2986 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2987
2988 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2989 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2990 properties defined.
2991
2992 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2993
2994 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2995 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2996
2997 Additional image properties supported are:
2998
2999 `:index INDEX'
3000
3001 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3002 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3003
3004 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3005 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3006 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3007 every 0.1 seconds.
3008
3009 (defun show-anim (file max)
3010 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3011 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3012
3013 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3014 (when (= idx max)
3015 (setq idx 0))
3016 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3017 (save-excursion
3018 (set-buffer buffer)
3019 (goto-char (point-min))
3020 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3021 (insert-image img "x"))
3022 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3023
3024 **** PNG, image type `png'
3025
3026 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3027 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3028 properties defined.
3029
3030 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3031
3032 Additional image properties supported are:
3033
3034 `:pt-width WIDTH'
3035
3036 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3037 integer. This is a required property.
3038
3039 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
3040
3041 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3042 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3043
3044 `:bounding-box BOX'
3045
3046 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3047 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3048 files. This is an required property.
3049
3050 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3051 lisp/gs.el.
3052
3053 *** Lisp interface.
3054
3055 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3056 which are supported in the current configuration.
3057
3058 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3059 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3060 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3061 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3062 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3063
3064 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3065
3066 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3067 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3068 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3069 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3070 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3071 buffer.
3072
3073 +++
3074 ** Display margins.
3075
3076 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3077 and images.
3078
3079 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3080 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3081 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3082 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3083 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3084 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3085 of the display margins.
3086
3087 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3088 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3089 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3090 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3091 in this file).
3092
3093 +++
3094 ** Help display
3095
3096 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3097 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3098 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3099 that have a `help-echo' property.
3100
3101 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3102 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3103 the window in which the help was found.
3104
3105 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3106 `help-echo' text property was found.
3107
3108 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3109 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3110
3111 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3112 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3113 mouse.
3114
3115 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3116 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3117
3118 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3119 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3120 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3121 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3122 used as help string.
3123
3124 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3125 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3126 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3127
3128 +++
3129 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3130
3131 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3132 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3133
3134 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3135 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3136 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3137 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3138 used.
3139
3140 (global-set-key [A-down]
3141 #'(lambda ()
3142 (interactive)
3143 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3144 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3145 (global-set-key [A-up]
3146 #'(lambda ()
3147 (interactive)
3148 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3149 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3150
3151 +++
3152 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3153
3154 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3155 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3156 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3157 is called with one argument, POS.
3158
3159 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3160 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3161 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3162 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3163 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3164
3165 +++
3166 ** Tool bar support.
3167
3168 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3169 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3170 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3171 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3172 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3173 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3174
3175 *** Tool bar item definitions
3176
3177 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3178 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3179 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3180
3181 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3182 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3183 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3184 property (see below).
3185
3186 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3187 binding are currently ignored.
3188
3189 The following properties are recognized:
3190
3191 `:enable FORM'.
3192
3193 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3194 or disabled.
3195
3196 `:visible FORM'
3197
3198 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3199
3200 `:filter FUNCTION'
3201
3202 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3203 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3204 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3205
3206 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3207
3208 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3209 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3210
3211 `:image IMAGES'
3212
3213 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3214 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3215 meaning of each of the four elements:
3216
3217 Index Use when item is
3218 ----------------------------------------
3219 0 enabled and selected
3220 1 enabled and deselected
3221 2 disabled and selected
3222 3 disabled and deselected
3223
3224 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3225 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3226
3227 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3228
3229 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3230 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3231
3232 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3233
3234 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3235 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3236 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3237
3238 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3239 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3240
3241 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3242 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3243 pixels. Default is 1.
3244
3245 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3246 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3247
3248 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3249
3250 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3251 a tool bar item. If
3252
3253 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3254 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3255 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3256
3257 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3258
3259 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3260
3261 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3262 item.
3263
3264 ** Mode line changes.
3265
3266 +++
3267 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3268
3269 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3270 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3271 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3272
3273 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3274 a `local-map' text property.
3275
3276 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3277 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3278
3279 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3280 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3281 `local-map' property.
3282
3283 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3284 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3285 example.
3286
3287 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3288 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3289
3290 +++
3291 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3292 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3293
3294 +++
3295 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3296
3297 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3298 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3299 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3300 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3301 line.
3302
3303 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3304 `header-line'.
3305
3306 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3307 position in the header-line.
3308
3309 +++
3310 ** Text property `display'
3311
3312 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3313 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3314 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3315 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3316
3317 *** Variable width and height spaces
3318
3319 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3320 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3321 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3322 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3323 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3324 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3325 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3326
3327 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3328 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3329 properties described below.
3330
3331 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3332 characters having the `display' property.
3333
3334 - :width WIDTH
3335
3336 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3337 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3338
3339 - :relative-width FACTOR
3340
3341 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3342 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3343 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3344 width of that character by FACTOR.
3345
3346 - :align-to HPOS
3347
3348 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3349 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3350
3351 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3352
3353 - :height HEIGHT
3354
3355 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3356 normal line height.
3357
3358 - :relative-height FACTOR
3359
3360 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3361 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3362
3363 - :ascent ASCENT
3364
3365 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3366 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3367 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3368 equal to 100.
3369
3370 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3371
3372 *** Images
3373
3374 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3375 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3376 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3377 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3378 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3379 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3380 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3381 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3382 as display specification.
3383
3384 *** Other display properties
3385
3386 - :space-width FACTOR
3387
3388 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3389 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3390 integer or float.
3391
3392 - :height HEIGHT
3393
3394 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3395
3396 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3397 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3398 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3399 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3400 a font is available counts as a step.
3401
3402 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3403 as tall as the frame's default font.
3404
3405 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3406 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3407
3408 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3409 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3410
3411 - :raise FACTOR
3412
3413 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3414 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3415 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3416 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3417 `:height' subproperty.
3418
3419 *** Conditional display properties
3420
3421 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3422 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3423 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3424 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3425 the text having the `display' property.
3426
3427 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3428 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3429
3430 +++
3431 ** New menu separator types.
3432
3433 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3434 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3435 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3436 to specify other menu separator types.
3437
3438 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3439
3440 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3441 separator occurs.
3442
3443 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3444
3445 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3446
3447 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3448
3449 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3450
3451 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3452
3453 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3454
3455 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3456
3457 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3458
3459 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3460
3461 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3462 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3463
3464 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3465
3466 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3467
3468 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3469
3470 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3471
3472 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3473
3474 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3475
3476 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3477
3478 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3479
3480 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3481
3482 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3483
3484 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3485
3486 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3487
3488 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3489
3490 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3491
3492 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3493 the corresponding single-line separators.
3494
3495 +++
3496 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3497
3498 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3499 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3500 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3501 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3502 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3503 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3504 default foreground is black.
3505
3506 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3507 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3508 `ScrollBarBackground').
3509
3510 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3511 settings for scroll bar colors.
3512
3513 +++
3514 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3515 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3516
3517 ---
3518 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3519 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3520 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3521 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3522 the original window start.
3523
3524 ---
3525 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3526 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3527 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3528
3529 +++
3530 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3531
3532 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3533 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3534 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3535 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3536
3537 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3538 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3539
3540 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3541
3542 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3543 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3544 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3545 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3546 temporarily to nil, for example
3547
3548 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3549 (enlarge-window 10))
3550
3551 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3552 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3553
3554 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3555 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3556 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3557 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3558 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3559 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3560
3561
3562 ^L
3563 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3564
3565 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3566 input.
3567
3568 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3569
3570 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3571
3572 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3573 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3574 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3575 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3576 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3577
3578 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3579 been added.
3580
3581 ^L
3582 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3583
3584 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3585
3586 ^L
3587 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3588
3589 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3590 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3591 \f
3592 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3593
3594 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3595
3596 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3597 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3598 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3599
3600 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3601 is the one that is used.
3602
3603 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3604 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3605 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3606 separate from the command's regular output.
3607 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3608 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3609 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3610 the buffer name.
3611
3612 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3613 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3614 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3615 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3616
3617 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3618 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3619 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3620 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3621
3622 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3623 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3624 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3625 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3626
3627 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3628 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3629 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3630 they never ignore case.
3631
3632 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3633 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3634 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3635 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3636 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3637 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3638 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3639
3640 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3641 the same format that was used in the file before.
3642
3643 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3644 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3645
3646 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3647 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3648 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3649
3650 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3651 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3652 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3653 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3654 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3655 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3656 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3657
3658 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3659 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3660 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3661 format. You can now customize these variables.
3662
3663 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3664 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3665 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3666 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3667
3668 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3669 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3670 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3671
3672 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3673 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3674 doesn't have any effect.
3675
3676 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3677 not one per buffer.
3678
3679 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3680 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3681 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3682
3683 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3684 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3685 `auto-show-mode' command.
3686
3687 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3688 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3689 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3690 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3691 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3692
3693 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3694 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3695
3696 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3697 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3698 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3699
3700 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3701 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3702 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3703 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3704
3705 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3706
3707 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3708 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3709 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3710 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3711 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3712
3713 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3714 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3715
3716 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3717 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3718 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3719 `?' on other systems.
3720
3721 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3722 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3723 Unix.
3724
3725 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3726 current codepage when it starts.
3727
3728 ** Mail changes
3729
3730 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3731 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3732 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3733 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3734 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3735 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3736 latin-1:
3737
3738 MIME-version: 1.0
3739 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3740 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3741
3742 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3743 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3744 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3745 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3746 buffer-file-coding-system.
3747
3748 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3749 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3750 mail.
3751
3752 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3753 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3754 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3755 list of possible coding systems.
3756
3757 ** CC Mode changes
3758
3759 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3760 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3761 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3762 docstring for details.
3763
3764 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3765 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3766 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3767 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3768 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3769
3770 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3771 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3772
3773 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3774 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3775
3776 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3777 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3778 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3779 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3780 anonymous classes.
3781
3782 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3783 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3784
3785 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3786 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3787 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3788 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3789
3790 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3791 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3792 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3793 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3794 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3795
3796 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3797
3798 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3799
3800 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3801 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3802
3803 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3804
3805 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3806 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3807 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3808 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3809 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3810
3811 ** Gnus changes.
3812
3813 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3814 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3815 Gnus manual for the full story.
3816
3817 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3818 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3819 group, which is created automatically.
3820
3821 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3822 values.
3823
3824 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3825
3826 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3827 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3828
3829 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3830 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3831
3832 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3833
3834 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3835 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3836
3837 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3838
3839 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3840 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3841
3842 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3843 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3844
3845 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3846 control over simplification.
3847
3848 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3849
3850 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3851 limit.
3852
3853 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3854
3855 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3856
3857 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3858 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3859 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3860
3861 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3862 `a' forces normal posting method.
3863
3864 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3865 -- `W d'.
3866
3867 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3868 to a non-nil value.
3869
3870 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3871 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3872
3873 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3874 has been added.
3875
3876 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3877
3878 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3879
3880 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3881 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3882
3883 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3884 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3885
3886 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3887
3888 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3889 been added.
3890
3891 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3892 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3893
3894 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3895 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3896
3897 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3898
3899 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3900
3901 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3902
3903 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3904
3905 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3906 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3907 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3908
3909 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3910 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3911 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3912 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3913 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3914
3915 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3916 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3917 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3918 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3919
3920 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3921 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3922 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3923 mismatch.
3924
3925 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3926
3927 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3928 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3929
3930 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3931 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3932 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3933 removed from the label.
3934
3935 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3936 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3937
3938 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3939 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3940
3941 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3942 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3943 expressions.
3944
3945 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3946
3947 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3948
3949 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3950 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3951
3952 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3953 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3954 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3955
3956 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3957 changes with a special face.
3958
3959 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3960 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3961 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3962 \f
3963 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3964
3965 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3966 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3967 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3968 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3969 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3970
3971 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3972 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3973 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3974
3975 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3976 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3977 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3978 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3979 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3980 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3981 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3982 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3983 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3984
3985 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3986 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3987 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3988 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3989 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3990 program.
3991
3992 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3993 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3994 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3995 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3996 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3997 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3998
3999 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4000 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4001 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4002 was not documented clearly before.
4003
4004 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4005 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4006 \f
4007 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4008
4009 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4010 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4011 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4012 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4013
4014 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4015 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4016 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4017
4018 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4019
4020 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4021 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4022
4023 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4024 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4025 integers.
4026
4027 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4028 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4029 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4030 file names and attributes are returned.
4031
4032 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4033 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4034 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4035 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4036 returns the result.
4037
4038 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4039 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4040
4041 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4042
4043 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4044 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4045 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4046 optionally.
4047
4048 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4049 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4050
4051 **
4052 The new function process-running-child-p
4053 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4054 terminal to its own child process.
4055
4056 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4057 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4058 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4059 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4060
4061 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4062 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4063
4064 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4065 :included is an alias for :visible.
4066
4067 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4068 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4069 to move or copy menu entries.
4070
4071 ** Multibyte editing changes
4072
4073 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4074 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4075 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4076 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4077 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4078 (setq char (sref str idx)
4079 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4080 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4081
4082 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4083 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4084 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4085
4086 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4087 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4088 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4089
4090 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4091
4092 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4093 across the boundary.
4094
4095 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4096 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4097 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4098 contains 8-bit characters.
4099 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4100 contains invalid characters.
4101
4102 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4103 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4104 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4105 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4106 way.
4107
4108 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4109 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4110 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4111 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4112
4113 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4114 compose Thai characters in a string.
4115
4116 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4117 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4118 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4119 menus should always use the third argument.
4120
4121 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4122 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4123 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4124 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4125
4126 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4127 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4128 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4129 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4130
4131 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4132 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4133 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4134 echo area contents.
4135
4136 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4137
4138 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4139 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4140 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4141
4142 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4143 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4144 means to clear out that attribute.
4145
4146 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4147 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4148
4149 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4150 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4151 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4152 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4153
4154 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4155 the gap of the current buffer.
4156
4157 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4158 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4159 current buffer.
4160
4161 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4162 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4163 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4164 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4165 \f
4166 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4167
4168 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4169 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4170 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4171 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4172 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4173
4174 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4175 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4176 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4177 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4178 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4179
4180 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4181 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4182 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4183
4184 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4185 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4186 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4187 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4188 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4189 results.
4190
4191 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4192 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4193 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4194 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4195 \f
4196 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4197
4198 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4199 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4200 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4201 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4202
4203 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4204 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4205 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4206 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4207 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4208 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4209 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4210 region.
4211
4212 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4213 selective undo.
4214
4215 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4216 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4217 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4218 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4219 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4220
4221 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4222 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4223 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4224 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4225
4226 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4227 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4228 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4229 something that most users not do.
4230
4231 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4232 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4233 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4234 applications.
4235
4236 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4237 pasting operations.
4238
4239 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4240 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4241 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4242 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4243 `ps-printer-name'.
4244
4245 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4246 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4247 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4248 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4249 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4250 hits a new word.
4251
4252 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4253 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4254 to be confused by TeX commands.
4255
4256 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4257 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4258 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4259 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4260
4261 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4262 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4263 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4264 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4265 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4266
4267 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4268 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4269
4270 ** Changes in input method usage.
4271
4272 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4273 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4274 respectively.
4275
4276 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4277
4278 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4279 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4280
4281 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4282 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4283
4284 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4285
4286 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4287
4288 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4289 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4290
4291 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4292 given in the following case:
4293 o When you are using a complex input method.
4294 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4295
4296 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4297 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4298 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4299 setting it to t is helpful.
4300
4301 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4302
4303 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4304 keys:
4305 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4306 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4307 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4308 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4309 environment.
4310
4311 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4312 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4313 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4314 get
4315
4316 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4317
4318 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4319
4320 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4321 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4322
4323 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4324 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4325 its owner and group.
4326
4327 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4328 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4329
4330 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4331 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4332
4333 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4334 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4335 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4336 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4337
4338 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4339 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4340 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4341 for writing keyboard macros.
4342
4343 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4344 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4345 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4346 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4347 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4348 info.
4349
4350 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4351
4352 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4353 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4354 contents only.
4355
4356 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4357 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4358 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4359 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4360
4361 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4362 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4363 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4364
4365 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4366 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4367 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4368 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4369
4370 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4371 failure if the command produces no output.
4372
4373 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4374 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4375 the mouse.
4376
4377 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4378 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4379 function and variable names.
4380
4381 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4382 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4383 file-coding-system-alist.
4384
4385 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4386 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4387 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4388 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4389 according to the current fontset.
4390
4391 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4392
4393 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4394 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4395 nonascii-insert-offset.
4396
4397 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4398 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4399 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4400 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4401
4402 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4403 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4404
4405 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4406 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4407
4408 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4409 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4410 command keys.
4411
4412 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4413 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4414
4415 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4416 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4417 all variables that have documentation.
4418
4419 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4420 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4421 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4422 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4423 it should show; the default is 20.
4424
4425 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4426 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4427 of your input.
4428
4429 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4430 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4431 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4432 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4433 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4434 Newly added options are included as well.
4435
4436 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4437 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4438 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4439
4440 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4441 Customize menu.
4442
4443 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4444 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4445
4446 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4447 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4448 invoked.
4449
4450 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4451 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4452 The default is 1.
4453
4454 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4455 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4456 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4457 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4458 sensibly.
4459
4460 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4461
4462 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4463 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4464 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4465
4466 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4467 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4468 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4469 every night.
4470
4471 ** Desktop changes
4472
4473 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4474 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4475
4476 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4477 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4478
4479 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4480 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4481
4482 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4483 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4484 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4485 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4486 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4487 made invisible again.
4488
4489 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4490
4491 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4492 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4493 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4494 toggle.
4495
4496 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4497 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4498 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4499 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4500 rmail-default-body-file.
4501
4502 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4503 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4504 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4505
4506 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4507 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4508 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4509
4510 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4511 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4512 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4513 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4514 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4515 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4516
4517 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4518 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4519 provided by feedmail are:
4520
4521 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4522 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4523 there is also a queue for draft messages
4524
4525 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4526 be prompted for confirmation
4527
4528 **** does smart filling of address headers
4529
4530 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4531 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4532 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4533
4534 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4535 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4536 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4537 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4538
4539 ** Dired changes
4540
4541 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4542 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4543
4544 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4545 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4546
4547 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4548 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4549 for a specified regexp.
4550
4551 ** VC Changes
4552
4553 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4554 conveniently.
4555
4556 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4557 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4558 Dired.
4559
4560 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4561 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4562 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4563 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4564
4565 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4566 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4567 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4568 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4569 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4570
4571 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4572 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4573 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4574 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4575 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4576
4577 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4578 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4579 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4580 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4581
4582 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4583 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4584 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4585
4586 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4587 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4588 session to resolve them.
4589
4590 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4591 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4592 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4593 uses as well).
4594
4595 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4596 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4597 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4598 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4599 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4600 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4601 using ediff.
4602
4603 ** Changes in Font Lock
4604
4605 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4606 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4607 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4608 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4609 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4610
4611 ** Frame name display changes
4612
4613 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4614 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4615 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4616 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4617
4618 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4619 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4620 menu.
4621
4622 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4623
4624 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4625 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4626 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4627
4628 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4629
4630 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4631 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4632 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4633
4634 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4635 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4636 the following line.
4637
4638 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4639 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4640 previously sent input.
4641
4642 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4643 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4644 as the search string.
4645
4646 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4647 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4648
4649 ** C mode changes
4650
4651 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4652 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4653 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4654 definition.
4655
4656 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4657 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4658 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4659 style is still the default however.
4660
4661 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4662
4663 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4664 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4665 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4666
4667 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4668 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4669
4670 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4671 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4672
4673 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4674 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4675
4676 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4677 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4678
4679 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4680 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4681 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4682 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4683
4684 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4685
4686 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4687 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4688 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4689
4690 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4691 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4692 expanding dynamically.
4693
4694 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4695 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4696
4697 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4698 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4699 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4700 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4701
4702 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4703
4704 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4705
4706 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4707 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4708 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4709 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4710 against the first word in the title.
4711
4712 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4713 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4714 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4715 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4716 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4717 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4718
4719 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4720 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4721 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4722 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4723
4724 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4725
4726 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4727 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4728 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4729 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4730 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4731 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4732
4733 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4734 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4735
4736 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4737 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4738 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4739
4740 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4741 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4742
4743 ** Ispell changes.
4744
4745 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4746 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4747 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4748
4749 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4750 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4751 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4752 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4753 include:
4754
4755 o URLs are automatically skipped
4756 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4757
4758 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4759
4760 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4761
4762 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4763 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4764 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4765 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4766
4767 *** New recursive parser.
4768
4769 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4770 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4771 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4772
4773 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4774
4775 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4776 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4777 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4778
4779 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4780
4781 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4782
4783 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4784
4785 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4786
4787 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4788
4789 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4790 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4791
4792 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4793
4794 *** References to external documents.
4795
4796 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4797 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4798 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4799 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4800 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4801 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4802 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4803
4804 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4805
4806 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4807 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4808
4809 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4810 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4811
4812 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4813
4814 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4815 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4816
4817 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4818
4819 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4820 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4821 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4822 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4823 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4824 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4825 more.
4826
4827 *** Support for the varioref package
4828
4829 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4830
4831 *** New hooks
4832
4833 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4834 and citations are created. These hooks are
4835 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4836 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4837
4838 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4839
4840 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4841 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4842
4843 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4844
4845 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4846 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4847 fontified, use
4848
4849 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4850
4851 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4852 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4853 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4854 directories that contain the same file name.
4855
4856 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4857 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4858 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4859 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4860 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4861 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4862 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4863 directory.
4864
4865 ** New modes and packages
4866
4867 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4868 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4869 it, but some do not.
4870
4871 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4872 code.
4873
4874 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4875 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4876 around in a buffer.
4877
4878 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4879
4880 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4881 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4882 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4883 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4884
4885 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4886 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4887 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4888
4889 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4890 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4891 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4892 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4893 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4894 the like.
4895
4896 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4897 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4898
4899 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4900 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4901 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4902 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4903
4904 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4905
4906 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4907 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4908 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4909 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4910 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4911 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4912 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4913 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4914 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4915 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4916 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4917
4918 Platform-specific modes:
4919
4920 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4921 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4922 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4923 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4924 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4925 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4926 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4927 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4928 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4929 \f
4930 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4931
4932 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4933 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4934 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4935 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4936
4937 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4938 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4939 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4940
4941 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4942 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4943 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4944 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4945
4946 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4947 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4948 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4949 environment.
4950
4951 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4952 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4953 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4954 current input method for reading this one event.
4955
4956 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4957 now control whether to output certain characters as
4958 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4959 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4960 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4961 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4962 \f
4963 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4964
4965 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4966 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4967
4968 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4969 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4970 always increases point by 1.
4971
4972 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4973 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4974
4975 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4976
4977 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4978 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4979 default value changed. For example,
4980
4981 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4982 :type 'integer
4983 :group 'foo
4984 :version "20.3")
4985
4986 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4987 :version "20.3")
4988
4989 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4990 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4991 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4992 `:version' in the top level group.
4993
4994 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4995
4996 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4997 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4998
4999 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5000 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5001 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5002 to themselves.
5003
5004 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5005 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5006 values whatever.
5007
5008 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5009 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5010 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5011
5012 ** Frame-local variables.
5013
5014 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5015 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5016 local bindings for that variable.
5017
5018 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5019 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5020 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5021 parameter name.
5022
5023 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5024 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5025 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5026 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5027
5028 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5029 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5030 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5031 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5032
5033 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5034 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5035 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5036 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5037 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5038
5039 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5040 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5041 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5042 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5043
5044 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5045 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5046
5047 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5048 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5049 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5050
5051 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5052 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5053 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5054 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5055
5056 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5057 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5058 empty input.
5059
5060 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5061 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5062 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5063 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5064 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5065
5066 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5067 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5068 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5069 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5070
5071 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5072 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5073 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5074 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5075 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5076
5077 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5078 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5079 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5080 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5081
5082 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5083 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5084 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5085
5086 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5087 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5088 was directed to display this buffer.
5089
5090 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5091 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5092 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5093 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5094 set-window-configuration.
5095
5096 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5097 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5098 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5099 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5100
5101 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5102 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5103 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5104
5105 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5106 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5107 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5108
5109 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5110 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5111
5112 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5113 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5114
5115 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5116 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5117 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5118
5119 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5120 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5121 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5122 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5123
5124 ** Menu changes
5125
5126 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5127 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5128 better supported.
5129
5130 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5131 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5132 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5133 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5134 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5135
5136 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5137
5138 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5139 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5140 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5141 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5142
5143 The format is:
5144 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5145 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5146 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5147 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5148 The supported properties include
5149
5150 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5151 item is enabled.
5152 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5153 item should appear in the menu.
5154 :filter FILTER-FN
5155 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5156 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5157 It should return a binding to use instead.
5158 :keys DESCRIPTION
5159 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5160 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5161 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5162 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5163 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5164 keyboard binding.
5165 :key-sequence nil
5166 This means that the command normally has no
5167 keyboard equivalent.
5168 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5169 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5170 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5171 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5172 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5173
5174 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5175 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5176
5177 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5178
5179 ** New event types
5180
5181 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5182 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5183 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5184 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5185
5186 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5187
5188 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5189 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5190 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5191 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5192 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5193 forward, away from the user.
5194
5195 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5196
5197 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5198 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5199 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5200 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5201 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5202
5203 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5204
5205 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5206 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5207 that were dragged and dropped.
5208
5209 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5210
5211 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5212
5213 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5214 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5215 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5216
5217 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5218 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5219 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5220
5221 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5222 in Emacs 19 and before.
5223
5224 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5225 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5226
5227 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5228 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5229 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5230 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5231
5232 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5233 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5234 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5235 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5236 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5237
5238 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5239 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5240 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5241 consistent with the new representation.
5242
5243 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5244 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5245 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5246 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5247
5248 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5249 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5250 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5251
5252 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5253 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5254 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5255
5256 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5257 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5258 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5259
5260 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5261 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5262
5263 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5264 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5265
5266 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5267 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5268 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5269 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5270
5271 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5272 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5273
5274 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5275 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5276 buffer or string being searched.
5277
5278 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5279 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5280 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5281 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5282 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5283 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5284 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5285
5286 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5287
5288 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5289 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5290 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5291 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5292 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5293 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5294 define-coding-system-alias.
5295
5296 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5297 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5298 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5299 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5300 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5301 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5302 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5303 `iso-8859-1'.
5304
5305 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5306 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5307 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5308 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5309
5310 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5311 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5312 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5313 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5314
5315 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5316 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5317 This function requires a user interaction.
5318
5319 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5320 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5321 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5322 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5323 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5324 select-safe-coding-system.
5325
5326 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5327 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5328 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5329 was done.
5330
5331 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5332 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5333 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5334
5335 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5336 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5337 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5338 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5339
5340 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5341 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5342 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5343 converted.
5344
5345 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5346 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5347
5348 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5349 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5350 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5351 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5352 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5353 range of characters.
5354
5355 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5356 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5357
5358 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5359 in the current buffer at position POS.
5360
5361 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5362 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5363 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5364 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5365 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5366 binding input-method-function to nil.
5367
5368 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5369 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5370 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5371 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5372 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5373
5374 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5375 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5376
5377 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5378 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5379
5380 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5381 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5382 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5383 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5384 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5385 \f
5386 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5387
5388 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5389 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5390 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5391 tree structure.
5392
5393 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5394 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5395
5396 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5397 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5398 in your .emacs file.)
5399
5400 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5401 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5402
5403 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5404 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5405
5406 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5407 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5408 kills the region.
5409
5410 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5411 delete the character before point, as usual.
5412
5413 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5414 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5415 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5416
5417 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5418 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5419 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5420 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5421 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5422 past.)
5423
5424 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5425 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5426 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5427 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5428 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5429
5430 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5431 and is an alias for it.
5432
5433 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5434 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5435
5436 ** Scrolling changes
5437
5438 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5439 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5440
5441 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5442 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5443 where it started.
5444
5445 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5446 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5447 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5448 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5449
5450 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5451 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5452 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5453 recenters the window.
5454
5455 ** International character set support (MULE)
5456
5457 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5458 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5459 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5460 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5461 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5462 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5463
5464 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5465 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5466 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5467 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5468 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5469
5470 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5471 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5472 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5473 language, to make it possible to type them.
5474
5475 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5476 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5477
5478 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5479 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5480
5481 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5482
5483 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5484
5485 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5486 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5487 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5488 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5489 characters for their work until they want to change.
5490
5491 *** Input methods
5492
5493 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5494 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5495 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5496 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5497 support several input methods.
5498
5499 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5500 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5501 work.
5502
5503 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5504 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5505 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5506 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5507 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5508 letter.
5509
5510 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5511 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5512 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5513 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5514 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5515
5516 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5517 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5518 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5519 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5520
5521 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5522 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5523 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5524 the first guess is wrong.
5525
5526 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5527 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5528
5529 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5530 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5531 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5532 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5533
5534 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5535 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5536 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5537 translate automatically to and from either one.
5538
5539 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5540
5541 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5542 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5543 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5544 what you want.
5545
5546 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5547 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5548 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5549 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5550
5551 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5552 character conversion as well.
5553
5554 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5555
5556 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5557 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5558 requires using many fonts.
5559
5560 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5561 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5562
5563 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5564 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5565 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5566 you would use a font.
5567
5568 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5569 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5570 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5571
5572 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5573 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5574 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5575 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5576 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5577
5578 *** Defining fontsets.
5579
5580 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5581 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5582 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5583
5584 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5585 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5586 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5587 standard fontset are created automatically.
5588
5589 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5590 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5591 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5592 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5593 name is `fontset-startup'.
5594
5595 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5596 The resource value should have this form:
5597 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5598 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5599 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5600 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5601 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5602 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5603 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5604 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5605 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5606
5607 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5608 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5609 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5610
5611 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5612 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5613 following resource,
5614 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5615 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5616 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5617 Here is the substitution rule:
5618 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5619 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5620 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5621 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5622 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5623
5624 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5625 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5626 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5627
5628 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5629 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5630 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5631 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5632 fontsets.
5633
5634 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5635 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5636
5637 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5638 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5639 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5640 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5641 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5642 system for new files that you create.
5643
5644 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5645 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5646 whole Emacs session.
5647
5648 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5649 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5650 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5651
5652 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5653 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5654 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5655 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5656 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5657
5658 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5659 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5660 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5661 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5662 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5663
5664 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5665 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5666
5667 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5668 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5669
5670 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5671 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5672
5673 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5674 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5675 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5676 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5677 of the file.
5678
5679 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5680 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5681 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5682 translated into that character code.
5683
5684 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5685 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5686
5687 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5688
5689 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5690 the coding system for keyboard input.
5691
5692 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5693 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5694 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5695
5696 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5697
5698 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5699 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5700 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5701 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5702 designed to work with terminals.
5703
5704 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5705 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5706 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5707 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5708 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5709 in the corresponding buffer.
5710
5711 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5712
5713 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5714 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5715 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5716
5717 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5718 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5719 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5720 want to use.
5721
5722 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5723 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5724
5725 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5726 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5727 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5728 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5729
5730 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5731 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5732 related information.
5733
5734 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5735 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5736 scripts.
5737
5738 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5739 information about the support for a particular language.
5740 You specify the language as an argument.
5741
5742 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5743 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5744 first dash.
5745
5746 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5747 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5748 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5749 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5750
5751 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5752 B big5 (Chinese)
5753 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5754 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5755 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5756 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5757 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5758 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5759 K euc-korea (Korean)
5760 R koi8 (Russian)
5761 Q tibetan
5762 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5763 T lao
5764 T tis620 (Thai)
5765 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5766 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5767 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5768 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5769 z hz (Chinese)
5770
5771 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5772 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5773 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5774 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5775
5776 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5777 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5778
5779 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5780 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5781 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5782 Rmail files themselves.
5783
5784 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5785 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5786
5787 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5788 for sending mail:
5789
5790 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5791 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5792 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5793 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5794 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5795
5796 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5797 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5798 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5799 translations.
5800
5801 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5802 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5803 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5804 without any conversion.
5805
5806 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5807 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5808 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5809 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5810
5811 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5812 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5813
5814 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5815 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5816
5817 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5818 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5819
5820 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5821 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5822 in the buffer before point.
5823
5824 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5825 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5826 you are using.
5827
5828 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5829 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5830
5831 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5832
5833 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5834 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5835
5836 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5837 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5838 can become a bottleneck.
5839
5840 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5841 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5842 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5843 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5844 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5845 so useful that the change is worth while.
5846
5847 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5848 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5849 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5850 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5851
5852 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5853 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5854 show-paren-mode.
5855
5856 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5857 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5858 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5859
5860 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5861 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5862 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5863
5864 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5865 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5866 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5867
5868 ** Changes in View mode.
5869
5870 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5871 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5872
5873 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5874 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5875
5876 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5877 previous state.
5878
5879 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5880 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5881
5882 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5883 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5884 not just the selected window.
5885
5886 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5887 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5888 turns View mode on or off.
5889
5890 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5891 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5892 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5893
5894 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5895 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5896
5897 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5898 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5899 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5900 which version to compare with.
5901
5902 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5903 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5904
5905 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5906 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5907 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5908 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5909
5910 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5911 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5912 blocks, all of them or none.
5913
5914 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5915 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5916 confirmation first.
5917
5918 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5919 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5920 However, the mode will not be changed if
5921 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5922 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5923 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5924 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5925
5926 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5927
5928 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5929 these commands do not change the major mode.
5930
5931 ** M-x occur changes.
5932
5933 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5934 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5935
5936 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5937 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5938 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5939
5940 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5941 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5942 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5943 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5944 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5945
5946 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5947 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5948 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5949 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5950
5951 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5952 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5953 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5954
5955 ** Outline mode changes.
5956
5957 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5958
5959 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5960
5961 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5962 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5963 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5964 was already active.
5965
5966 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5967 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5968 get confused by it.
5969
5970 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5971 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5972
5973 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5974
5975 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5976 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5977 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5978 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5979
5980 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5981 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5982 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5983
5984 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5985 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5986 values.
5987
5988 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5989 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5990 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5991 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5992
5993 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5994 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5995 can be. The default value is 30.
5996
5997 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5998
5999 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6000 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6001 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6002 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6003 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6004 behavior.
6005
6006 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6007 compose-mail-other-frame.
6008
6009 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6010 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6011 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6012 buffer that shows the original message.
6013
6014 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6015 with separator lines around the contents.
6016
6017 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6018 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6019 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6020 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6021
6022 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6023
6024 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6025 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6026 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6027 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6028
6029 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6030 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6031 /etc/passwd.
6032
6033 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6034 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6035 /etc/passwd.
6036
6037 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6038 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6039 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6040 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6041
6042 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6043 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6044 be taken to be magic.
6045
6046 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6047 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6048 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6049
6050 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6051 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6052
6053 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6054 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6055
6056 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6057
6058 new key dired.el binding old key
6059 ------- ---------------- -------
6060 * c dired-change-marks c
6061 * m dired-mark m
6062 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6063 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6064 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6065 * u dired-unmark u
6066 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6067 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6068 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6069 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6070 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6071 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6072
6073 ** Rmail changes.
6074
6075 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6076 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6077 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6078 each time you run it.
6079
6080 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6081 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6082
6083 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6084 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6085 means to move in the opposite direction.
6086
6087 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6088 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6089
6090 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6091 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6092 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6093 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6094 for output.
6095
6096 ** Gnus changes.
6097
6098 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6099
6100 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6101 Gnus.
6102
6103 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6104 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6105
6106 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6107 article mode line.
6108
6109 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6110
6111 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6112
6113 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6114
6115 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6116 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6117 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6118
6119 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6120
6121 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6122
6123 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6124 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6125
6126 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6127 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6128 used to pick articles.
6129
6130 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6131 another have been added.
6132
6133 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6134
6135 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6136 generating lines in buffers.
6137
6138 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6139 `M-C-_'.
6140
6141 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6142
6143 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6144
6145 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6146
6147 *** Scores can be decayed.
6148
6149 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6150
6151 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6152 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6153
6154 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6155 the native server.
6156
6157 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6158
6159 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6160 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6161
6162 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6163
6164 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6165 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6166
6167 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6168 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6169
6170 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6171 a group.
6172
6173 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6174 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6175
6176 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6177
6178 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6179
6180 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6181
6182 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6183
6184 Use the `Y c' command.
6185
6186 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6187
6188 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6189
6190 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6191
6192 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6193 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6194
6195 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6196
6197 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6198
6199 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6200 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6201
6202 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6203
6204 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6205 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6206 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6207 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6208 this issue.)
6209
6210 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6211 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6212 particular news group. This can be done by:
6213
6214 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6215
6216 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6217 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6218 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6219 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6220 for reading and posting).
6221
6222 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6223 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6224 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6225 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6226 there.
6227
6228 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6229 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6230
6231 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6232 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6233 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6234 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6235 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6236
6237 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6238 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6239
6240 ** CC mode changes.
6241
6242 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6243 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6244 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6245 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6246 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6247 loaded.
6248
6249 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6250 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6251 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6252 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6253 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6254 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6255
6256 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6257 of the current buffer.
6258
6259 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6260 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6261 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6262
6263 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6264 style that the Python developers like.
6265
6266 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6267 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6268 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6269
6270 ** VC Changes [new]
6271
6272 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6273 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6274 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6275
6276 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6277 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6278 developers.
6279
6280 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6281 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6282
6283 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6284 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6285 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6286 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6287
6288 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6289 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6290
6291 ** Calendar changes.
6292
6293 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6294 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6295 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6296
6297 ** ps-print changes
6298
6299 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6300
6301 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6302
6303 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6304 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6305 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6306 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6307 It defaults to `letter'.
6308 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6309
6310 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6311 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6312 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6313
6314 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6315 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6316 It defaults to 1.
6317
6318 *** Horizontal layout
6319
6320 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6321 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6322 All are measured in points.
6323
6324 *** Vertical layout
6325
6326 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6327 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6328 All are measured in points.
6329
6330 *** Headers
6331
6332 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6333 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6334 margin above the text.
6335
6336 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6337 framing box is printed around the header.
6338
6339 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6340 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6341
6342 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6343 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6344 `ps-header-font-size'.
6345
6346 *** Font managing
6347
6348 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6349 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6350 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6351 elements to this alist.
6352
6353 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6354 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6355
6356 ** hideshow changes.
6357
6358 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6359 C++, ; for lisp).
6360
6361 *** Support for java-mode added.
6362
6363 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6364 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6365
6366 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6367 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6368 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6369
6370 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6371 robust and a lot faster.
6372
6373 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6374
6375 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6376 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6377 documentation for more details.
6378
6379 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6380
6381 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6382 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6383 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6384 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6385 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6386
6387 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6388 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6389 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6390 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6391
6392 ** Font Lock mode
6393
6394 *** Custom support
6395
6396 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6397 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6398 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6399 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6400 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6401 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6402
6403 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6404
6405 *** Maximum decoration
6406
6407 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6408 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6409 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6410 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6411 to get the old behavior.
6412
6413 *** New support
6414
6415 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6416
6417 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6418 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6419
6420 *** Configurable support
6421
6422 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6423 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6424 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6425 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6426 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6427 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6428 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6429
6430 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6431 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6432 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6433
6434 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6435
6436 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6437 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6438 for any mode.
6439
6440 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6441
6442 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6443
6444 in your ~/.emacs.
6445
6446 *** New faces
6447
6448 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6449 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6450 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6451 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6452
6453 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6454
6455 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6456 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6457 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6458
6459 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6460
6461 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6462 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6463 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6464 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6465 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6466 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6467 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6468
6469 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6470 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6471 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6472 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6473 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6474 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6475
6476 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6477
6478 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6479 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6480 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6481 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6482
6483 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6484 settings.
6485
6486 ** Ada mode changes.
6487
6488 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6489 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6490 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6491 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6492 stubs.
6493
6494 *** There are two new commands:
6495 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6496 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6497
6498 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6499 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6500 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6501
6502 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6503 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6504 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6505
6506 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6507 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6508 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6509 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6510
6511 ** Scheme mode changes.
6512
6513 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6514 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6515 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6516 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6517 have any effect.
6518
6519 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6520 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6521 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6522 variables as buffer-local variables.
6523
6524 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6525 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6526
6527 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6528
6529 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6530 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6531 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6532 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6533
6534 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6535 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6536 buffer in Emacs.
6537
6538 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6539 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6540 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6541 option takes precedence.
6542
6543 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6544 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6545 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6546
6547 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6548 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6549 the current defun.
6550
6551 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6552 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6553
6554 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6555 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6556 necessary).
6557
6558 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6559 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6560 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6561 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6562 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6563 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6564
6565 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6566 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6567 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6568 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6569
6570 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6571 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6572 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6573 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6574 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6575
6576 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6577 since it applies only to the current frame.
6578
6579 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6580 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6581 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6582
6583 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6584 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6585 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6586 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6587 instead of just the file you are editing.
6588
6589 ** RefTeX mode
6590
6591 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6592 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6593 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6594 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6595 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6596
6597 C-c ( reftex-label
6598 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6599 knows which kind of label is needed.
6600
6601 C-c ) reftex-reference
6602 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6603 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6604
6605 C-c [ reftex-citation
6606 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6607 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6608
6609 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6610 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6611
6612 C-c = reftex-toc
6613 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6614 can quickly jump to every section.
6615
6616 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6617 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6618 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6619 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6620 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6621
6622 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6623
6624 *** Info documentation is now available.
6625
6626 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6627 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6628
6629 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6630 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6631
6632 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6633 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6634
6635 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6636 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6637 appropriate functions.
6638
6639 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6640 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6641
6642 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6643 been cleaned.
6644
6645 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6646 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6647
6648 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6649 shall be delimited.
6650
6651 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6652 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6653 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6654
6655 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6656 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6657 prefixed with `ALT'.
6658
6659 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6660 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6661 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6662 documentation).
6663
6664 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6665 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6666 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6667
6668 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6669 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6670
6671 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6672 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6673 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6674
6675 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6676
6677 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6678
6679 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6680 from alien sources.
6681
6682 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6683 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6684 crossref entries.
6685
6686 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6687 region.
6688
6689 *** Added support for imenu.
6690
6691 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6692 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6693 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6694 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6695
6696 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6697 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6698
6699 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6700
6701 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6702
6703 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6704 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6705 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6706 as an argument.
6707
6708 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6709 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6710
6711 ** browse-url changes
6712
6713 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6714 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6715 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6716 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6717 customization variables.
6718
6719 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6720
6721 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6722 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6723 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6724
6725 ** Changes in Ediff
6726
6727 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6728 pops up the Info file for this command.
6729
6730 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6731 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6732 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6733 directories).
6734
6735 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6736 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6737 files in the same directory.
6738
6739 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6740 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6741 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6742
6743 ** Changes in Viper
6744
6745 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6746 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6747 instead of vip-.
6748 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6749 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6750 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6751 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6752 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6753 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6754 color when Viper is in insert state.
6755 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6756 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6757 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6758
6759 ** Etags changes.
6760
6761 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6762 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6763 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6764 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6765 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6766
6767 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6768
6769 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6770 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6771
6772 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6773 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6774 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6775
6776 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6777 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6778 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6779 methods and protocols.
6780
6781 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6782 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6783 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6784 paragraph name.
6785
6786 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6787 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6788 at least M times and as many as N times.
6789
6790 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6791 in files has changed slightly.
6792
6793 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6794 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6795 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6796 with old time-stamp-format values.
6797
6798 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6799 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6800 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6801 reasons.
6802
6803 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6804 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6805 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6806 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6807 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6808 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6809
6810 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6811 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6812 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6813
6814 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6815 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6816 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6817 recommended now will continue to work then.
6818
6819 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6820 details.
6821
6822 ** There are some additional major modes:
6823
6824 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6825 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6826 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6827
6828 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6829 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6830 into Emacs.
6831
6832 ** New Lisp packages include:
6833
6834 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6835
6836 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6837 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6838
6839 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6840
6841 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6842 in shell buffers.
6843
6844 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6845 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6846 and `elint-defun'.
6847
6848 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6849 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6850 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6851 strings or comments.
6852
6853 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6854 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6855 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6856 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6857 at these points.
6858
6859 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6860 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6861
6862 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6863 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6864
6865 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6866
6867 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6868 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6869
6870 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6871
6872 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6873
6874 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6875
6876 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6877 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6878
6879 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6880 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6881 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6882 original place after inserting the copy.
6883
6884 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6885 on the buffer.
6886
6887 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6888 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6889 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6890
6891 Enable mouse-drag with:
6892 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6893 -or-
6894 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6895
6896 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6897 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6898
6899 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6900 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6901
6902 *** ogonek
6903
6904 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6905 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6906 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6907 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6908 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6909 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6910 instance) and vice versa.
6911
6912 To use this package load it using
6913 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6914 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6915 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6916 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6917 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6918 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6919
6920 *** Interface to ph.
6921
6922 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6923
6924 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6925 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6926 these servers.
6927
6928 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6929
6930 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6931 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6932 while the real cursor does not move.
6933
6934 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6935 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6936
6937 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6938 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6939
6940 ** movemail change
6941
6942 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6943 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6944 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6945 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6946
6947 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6948 \f
6949 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6950
6951 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6952
6953 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6954 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6955 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6956 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6957 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6958
6959 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6960 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6961 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6962 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6963 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6964 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6965 \f
6966 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6967
6968 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6969 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6970 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6971 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6972
6973 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6974 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6975
6976 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6977 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6978 "win".
6979
6980 ** Basic Lisp changes
6981
6982 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6983 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6984
6985 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6986 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6987 or by the user.
6988
6989 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6990
6991 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6992
6993 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6994 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6995
6996 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6997 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6998 its argument.
6999
7000 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7001
7002 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7003
7004 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7005
7006 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7007 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7008 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7009 `format' function.
7010
7011 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7012 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7013 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7014
7015 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7016 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7017 adding one of these suffixes.
7018
7019 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7020 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7021 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7022
7023 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7024 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7025
7026 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7027
7028 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7029 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7030
7031 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7032 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7033
7034 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7035
7036 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7037 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7038
7039 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7040 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7041 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7042 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7043
7044 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7045 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7046 of the last form.
7047
7048 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7049 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7050 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7051 as the last form.
7052
7053 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7054 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7055 matches.
7056
7057 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7058
7059 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7060 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7061 Then it returns that string.
7062
7063 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7064
7065 (with-output-to-string
7066 (princ "The buffer is ")
7067 (princ (buffer-name)))
7068
7069 returns "The buffer is foo".
7070
7071 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7072 is non-nil.
7073
7074 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7075 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7076 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7077
7078 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7079 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7080
7081 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7082 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7083 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7084 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7085 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7086 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7087
7088 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7089 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7090 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7091 characters".
7092
7093 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7094 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7095 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7096 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7097 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7098
7099 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7100 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7101 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7102 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7103
7104 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7105 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7106
7107 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7108
7109 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7110 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7111 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7112 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7113 guaranteed.
7114
7115 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7116 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7117 character).
7118
7119 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7120
7121 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7122 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7123 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7124 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7125 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7126
7127 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7128
7129 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7130 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7131 more than the number of characters.
7132
7133 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7134 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7135 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7136 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7137 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7138 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7139
7140 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7141 and returns a string containing those characters.
7142
7143 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7144 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7145 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7146 character, sref signals an error.
7147
7148 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7149 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7150 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7151
7152 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7153 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7154 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7155
7156 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7157 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7158 to a vector of the characters in it.
7159
7160 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7161 of a string. You call it as follows:
7162
7163 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7164
7165 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7166 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7167 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7168 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7169 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7170
7171 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7172 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7173
7174 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7175 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7176
7177 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7178 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7179 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7180 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7181
7182 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7183
7184 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7185
7186 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7187 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7188 are not included in the resulting value.
7189
7190 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7191 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7192 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7193 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7194
7195 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7196 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7197 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7198 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7199 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7200 column START-COLUMN.
7201
7202 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7203 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7204 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7205 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7206 changed text, before the change.
7207
7208 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7209 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7210 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7211
7212 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7213
7214 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7215
7216 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7217 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7218
7219 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7220 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7221 which identify the character within that character set.
7222
7223 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7224 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7225 opposite of split-char.
7226
7227 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7228 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7229
7230 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7231 of all the characters in a string.
7232
7233 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7234 and specifying coding systems.
7235
7236 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7237 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7238 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7239 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7240 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7241 as what to do about code conversion.)
7242
7243 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7244 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7245
7246 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7247 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7248 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7249
7250 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7251 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7252 to match against a file name.
7253
7254 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7255 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7256 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7257 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7258 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7259 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7260
7261 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7262 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7263
7264 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7265 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7266
7267 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7268 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7269 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7270 service names.
7271
7272 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7273 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7274 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7275 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7276 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7277 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7278
7279 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7280 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7281
7282 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7283 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7284 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7285 start the subprocess.
7286
7287 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7288 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7289 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7290 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7291 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7292
7293 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7294 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7295 subprocess.
7296
7297 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7298 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7299 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7300 connection permanently or until overridden.
7301
7302 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7303 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7304 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7305 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7306 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7307 system for one operation at a time.
7308
7309 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7310 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7311
7312 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7313 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7314 The value is a cons cell,
7315 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7316 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7317 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7318 input to the subprocess.
7319
7320 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7321 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7322
7323 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7324 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7325 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7326
7327 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7328 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7329 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7330 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7331 customization.
7332
7333 Thus, instead of writing
7334
7335 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7336 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7337
7338 you would now write this:
7339
7340 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7341 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7342 :type 'boolean
7343 :group foo)
7344
7345 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7346 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7347 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7348 for a description of them.
7349
7350 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7351 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7352
7353 (defgroup ispell nil
7354 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7355 :group 'processes)
7356
7357 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7358 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7359 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7360 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7361 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7362
7363 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7364 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7365 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7366 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7367 first-level subgroups.
7368
7369 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7370
7371 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7372 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7373
7374 ** easy-mmode
7375
7376 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7377 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7378 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7379 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7380 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7381 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7382
7383 ** Text property changes
7384
7385 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7386 text property.
7387
7388 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7389 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7390 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7391 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7392 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7393
7394 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7395 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7396 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7397 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7398
7399 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7400 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7401 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7402
7403 ** Changes in invisibility features
7404
7405 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7406 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7407 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7408 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7409 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7410 make the overlay visible.
7411
7412 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7413 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7414 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7415 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7416 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7417 t when it should hide it.
7418
7419 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7420
7421 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7422 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7423 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7424 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7425 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7426 Here is an example of how to do this:
7427
7428 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7429 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7430 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7431 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7432
7433 ...
7434 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7435
7436 ...
7437 ;; When done with the overlays:
7438 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7439 ;; Or respectively:
7440 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7441
7442 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7443
7444 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7445 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7446 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7447 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7448
7449 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7450 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7451 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7452
7453 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7454 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7455
7456 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7457 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7458
7459 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7460 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7461 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7462
7463 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7464 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7465 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7466 determine the syntax type of the character.
7467
7468 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7469 of the current buffer.
7470
7471 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7472 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7473 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7474
7475 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7476 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7477 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7478 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7479 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7480
7481 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7482 text property.
7483
7484 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7485 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7486 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7487
7488 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7489 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7490 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7491 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7492 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7493
7494 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7495 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7496 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7497
7498 ** Changes in face features
7499
7500 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7501 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7502
7503 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7504 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7505
7506 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7507 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7508
7509 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7510 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7511
7512 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7513 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7514 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7515 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7516 overlay property).
7517
7518 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7519 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7520
7521 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7522
7523 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7524 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7525 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7526 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7527
7528 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7529 begins with ~.
7530
7531 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7532 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7533
7534 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7535 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7536
7537 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7538 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7539
7540 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7541 character code conversion as well as other things.
7542
7543 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7544 (formerly it did not).
7545
7546 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7547 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7548
7549 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7550 instead of constant strings.
7551
7552 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7553 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7554 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7555
7556 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7557 in the same way as before.
7558
7559 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7560 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7561 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7562
7563 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7564 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7565 else, and returns nil.
7566
7567 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7568 directory cannot be listed.
7569
7570 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7571
7572 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7573 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7574 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7575 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7576 ways:
7577
7578 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7579 It is available through the history command M-n.
7580
7581 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7582 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7583 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7584 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7585 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7586
7587 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7588 argument in this way.
7589
7590 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7591 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7592 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7593
7594 ** Echo area features
7595
7596 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7597 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7598 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7599 after the echo area is cleared.
7600
7601 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7602 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7603
7604 ** Keyboard input features
7605
7606 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7607 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7608
7609 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7610 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7611 by keyboard macros.
7612
7613 ** Frame-related changes
7614
7615 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7616 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7617 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7618
7619 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7620 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7621 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7622
7623 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7624 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7625 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7626 in the selected frame.
7627
7628 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7629 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7630 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7631
7632 ** X Windows features
7633
7634 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7635 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7636 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7637
7638 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7639 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7640
7641 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7642 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7643 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7644
7645 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7646 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7647
7648 ** Subprocess features
7649
7650 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7651 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7652 automatically.
7653
7654 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7655 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7656
7657 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7658 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7659
7660 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7661 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7662
7663 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7664 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7665 goes after the other menu items.
7666
7667 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7668 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7669 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7670 are in use.
7671
7672 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7673 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7674
7675 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7676 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7677 form.
7678
7679 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7680 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7681 but its hook is still run.
7682
7683 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7684 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7685
7686 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7687 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7688 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7689
7690 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7691 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7692 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7693 warned.
7694
7695 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7696 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7697
7698 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7699 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7700 functions like display-time.
7701
7702 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7703 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7704
7705 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7706 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7707 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7708
7709 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7710 if there is an error in compilation.
7711
7712 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7713 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7714 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7715 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7716
7717 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7718 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7719 the *scratch* buffer.
7720
7721 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7722 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7723 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7724 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7725
7726 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7727 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7728 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7729
7730 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7731 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7732 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7733 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7734
7735 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7736 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7737 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7738
7739 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7740 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7741 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7742 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7743 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7744 files at all.
7745
7746 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7747 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7748 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7749 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7750
7751 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7752 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7753 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7754 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7755
7756 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7757
7758 ** imenu.el changes.
7759
7760 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7761 item from menu created by imenu.
7762
7763 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7764 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7765 select one of those items.
7766 \f
7767 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7768 \f
7769 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7770
7771 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7772 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7773
7774 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7775 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7776 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7777 \f
7778 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7779
7780 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7781 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7782
7783 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7784 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7785 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7786 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7787 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7788 all caps.
7789
7790 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7791 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7792
7793 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7794 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7795 as in previous Emacs versions.
7796
7797 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7798 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7799 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7800 frames.
7801
7802 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7803 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7804 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7805 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7806 accident.
7807
7808 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7809 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7810 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7811 line and then executing the macro.
7812
7813 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7814
7815 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7816 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7817 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7818 characters.
7819
7820 ** Font Lock mode
7821
7822 *** Font Lock support modes
7823
7824 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7825 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7826 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7827 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7828 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7829
7830 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7831
7832 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7833
7834 in your ~/.emacs.
7835
7836 *** lazy-lock
7837
7838 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7839 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7840 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7841 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7842 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7843 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7844 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7845
7846 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7847
7848 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7849
7850 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7851
7852 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7853
7854 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7855 paren and key.
7856
7857 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7858 supported.
7859
7860 ** Gnus changes.
7861
7862 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7863 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7864 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7865 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7866
7867 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7868 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7869
7870 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7871 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7872 obsolete.
7873
7874 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7875 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7876
7877 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7878
7879 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7880
7881 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7882
7883 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7884 referred.
7885
7886 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7887
7888 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7889
7890 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7891
7892 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7893
7894 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7895 buffers.
7896
7897 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7898
7899 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7900
7901 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7902
7903 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7904
7905 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7906
7907 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7908
7909 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7910
7911 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7912 is possible.
7913
7914 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7915
7916 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7917 groups of groups.
7918
7919 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7920
7921 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7922 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7923
7924 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7925
7926 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7927
7928 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7929
7930 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7931
7932 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7933 expiration times.
7934
7935 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7936
7937 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7938 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7939
7940 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7941 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7942 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7943
7944 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7945 articles with the `*' command.
7946
7947 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7948
7949 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7950
7951 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7952
7953 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7954
7955 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7956 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7957
7958 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7959 buffer.
7960
7961 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7962
7963 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7964
7965 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7966
7967 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7968
7969 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7970
7971 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7972
7973 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7974
7975 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7976
7977 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7978
7979 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7980 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7981
7982 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7983 refetching.
7984
7985 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7986
7987 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7988 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7989
7990 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7991
7992 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7993
7994 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7995
7996 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7997 articles.
7998
7999 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8000
8001 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8002
8003 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8004 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8005
8006 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8007
8008 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8009
8010 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8011
8012 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8013
8014 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8015
8016 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8017 in greater detail.
8018 \f
8019 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8020
8021 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8022 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8023 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8024 exists.
8025
8026 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8027 as well as lists.
8028
8029 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8030 of a given keymap.
8031
8032 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8033 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8034 keymap or nil.
8035
8036 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8037 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8038 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8039 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8040 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8041 alias.
8042 \f
8043 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8044
8045 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8046
8047 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8048 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8049 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8050 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8051 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8052
8053 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8054 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8055 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8056
8057 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8058
8059 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8060 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8061 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8062 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8063 chapter of the manual for details.
8064
8065 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8066 customization variables take effect.
8067
8068 ** Marking with the mouse.
8069
8070 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8071 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8072 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8073
8074 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8075
8076 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8077
8078 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8079 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8080
8081 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8082 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8083 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8084 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8085 applications, these problems are significant.
8086
8087 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8088 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8089 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8090 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8091 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8092
8093 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8094 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8095
8096 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8097 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8098 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8099 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8100 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8101 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8102
8103 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8104
8105 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8106 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8107 minibuffer contains.
8108
8109 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8110
8111 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8112 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8113 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8114 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8115
8116 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8117 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8118 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8119 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8120
8121 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8122 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8123
8124 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8125 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8126 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8127
8128 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8129 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8130 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8131 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8132
8133 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8134
8135 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8136 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8137
8138 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8139
8140 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8141 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8142 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8143 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8144 immediately after the selected one.
8145
8146 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8147 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8148
8149 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8150
8151 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8152 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8153 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8154 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8155 recover-session.
8156
8157 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8158 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8159 will not work.
8160
8161 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8162 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8163 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8164 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8165 now that the bug is fixed.
8166
8167 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8168
8169 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8170 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8171 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8172 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8173
8174 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8175 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8176 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8177 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8178
8179 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8180 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8181 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8182
8183 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8184 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8185 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8186 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8187 remain normal.
8188
8189 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8190 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8191
8192 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8193 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8194 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8195 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8196
8197 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8198 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8199 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8200 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8201 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8202 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8203
8204 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8205 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8206 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8207 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8208
8209 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8210 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8211 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8212
8213 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8214 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8215 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8216 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8217 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8218 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8219 to a limitation in font-lock).
8220
8221 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8222
8223 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8224 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8225 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8226 this example:
8227
8228 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8229 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8230
8231 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8232
8233 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8234
8235 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8236
8237 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8238
8239 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8240 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8241 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8242 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8243 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8244 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8245
8246 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8247 does the same job.
8248
8249 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8250 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8251
8252 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8253 text.
8254
8255 ** Font Lock mode
8256
8257 *** Global Font Lock mode
8258
8259 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8260 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8261 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8262 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8263 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8264
8265 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8266
8267 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8268
8269 in your ~/.emacs.
8270
8271 *** Local Refontification
8272
8273 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8274 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8275 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8276 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8277
8278 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8279 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8280 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8281 above and below point.
8282
8283 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8284
8285 ** Follow mode
8286
8287 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8288 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8289 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8290 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8291 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8292 follow-mode.
8293
8294 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8295
8296 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8297 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8298
8299 ** hide-show changes.
8300
8301 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8302 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8303 normal hooks.
8304
8305 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8306 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8307
8308 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8309 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8310 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8311
8312 ** MSDOS Changes
8313
8314 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8315 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8316
8317 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8318 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8319
8320 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8321
8322 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8323 pressing both mouse buttons.
8324
8325 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8326 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8327 are:
8328
8329 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8330 now works.
8331
8332 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8333
8334 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8335 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8336
8337 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8338
8339 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8340
8341 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8342
8343 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8344
8345 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8346 \f
8347 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8348
8349 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8350 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8351 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8352 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8353 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8354
8355 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8356
8357 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8358 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8359 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8360 be different.
8361
8362 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8363 than `system-type'.
8364
8365 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8366
8367 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8368 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8369
8370 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8371 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8372
8373 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8374 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8375 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8376
8377 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8378 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8379 like this:
8380
8381 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8382
8383 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8384 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8385 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8386
8387 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8388 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8389 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8390
8391 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8392 up if too much time passes.
8393
8394 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8395
8396 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8397 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8398 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8399 form in BODY.
8400
8401 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8402 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8403 call looks like this:
8404
8405 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8406
8407 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8408 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8409 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8410 ARGS.
8411
8412 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8413 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8414 command.
8415
8416 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8417 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8418 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8419 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8420
8421 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8422 idle for SECS seconds.
8423
8424 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8425 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8426 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8427 instead.
8428
8429 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8430 there is no answer within a certain time.
8431
8432 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8433
8434 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8435 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8436 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8437
8438 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8439 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8440 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8441 arguments in between are ignored.
8442
8443 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8444 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8445
8446 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8447 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8448 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8449 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8450 version.
8451
8452 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8453 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8454 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8455 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8456 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8457 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8458
8459 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8460 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8461 systems with limited file name syntax.
8462
8463 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8464 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8465 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8466 completions.el:
8467
8468 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8469 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8470 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8471
8472 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8473 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8474 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8475 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8476 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8477
8478 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8479 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8480 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8481
8482 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8483 marker from its buffer position.
8484
8485 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8486 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8487 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8488
8489 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8490 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8491 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8492 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8493 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8494 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8495
8496 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8497 errors that happen often during editing.
8498
8499 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8500 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8501 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8502
8503 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8504 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8505
8506 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8507 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8508 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8509 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8510 and not get-buffer-window.
8511
8512 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8513 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8514 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8515
8516 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8517 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8518 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8519 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8520 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8521 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8522 over and over for the same text.
8523
8524 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8525
8526 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8527 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8528
8529 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8530 ;; $HEADER: text $
8531
8532 in addition to the normal
8533
8534 ;; HEADER: text
8535
8536 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8537 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8538 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8539
8540
8541 \f
8542 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8543
8544 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8545 Copyright information:
8546
8547 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8548
8549 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8550 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8551 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8552 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8553
8554 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8555 of this document, or of portions of it,
8556 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8557 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8558 \f
8559 Local variables:
8560 mode: outline
8561 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8562 end: