1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2003-05-21
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
7 For older news, see the file ONEWS
8 You can narrow news to the specific version by calling
9 `view-emacs-news' with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
12 +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
13 --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
14 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
15 so we will look at it and add it to the manual.
18 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.4
20 ** Emacs includes now support for loading image libraries on demand.
21 (Currently this feature is only used on MS Windows.) You can configure
22 the supported image types and their associated dynamic libraries by
23 setting the variable `image-library-alist'.
26 ** New translations of the Emacs Tutorial are available in the following
27 languages: Brasilian, Bulgarian, Chinese (both with simplified and
28 traditional characters), French, and Italian. Type `C-u C-h t' to
29 choose one of them in case your language setup doesn't automatically
32 ** You can build Emacs with Gtk+ widgets by specifying `--with-x-toolkit=gtk'
33 when you run configure. This requires Gtk+ 2.0 or newer. This port
34 provides a way to display multilingual text in menus (with some caveats).
37 ** Emacs can now be built without sound support.
39 ** The `emacsserver' program has been removed, replaced with elisp code.
42 ** Emacs now supports new configure options `--program-prefix',
43 `--program-suffix' and `--program-transform-name' that affect the names of
47 ** By default, Emacs now uses a setgid helper program to update game
48 scores. The directory ${localstatedir}/games/emacs is the normal
49 place for game scores to be stored. This may be controlled by the
50 configure option `--with-game-dir'. The specific user that Emacs uses
51 to own the game scores is controlled by `--with-game-user'. If access
52 to a game user is not available, then scores will be stored separately
53 in each user's home directory.
56 ** Leim is now part of the Emacs distribution.
57 You no longer need to download a separate tarball in order to build
61 ** The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is now part of the distribution.
63 The ELisp reference manual in Info format is built as part of the
64 Emacs build procedure and installed together with the Emacs User
65 Manual. A menu item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy
66 accessible (Help->More Manuals->Emacs Lisp Reference).
69 ** The Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp manual is now part of
72 This manual is now part of the standard distribution and is installed,
73 together with the Emacs User Manual, into the Info directory. A menu
74 item was added to the menu bar that makes it easy accessible
75 (Help->More Manuals->Introduction to Emacs Lisp).
77 ** Support for Cygwin was added.
80 ** Support for FreeBSD/Alpha has been added.
83 ** Support for GNU/Linux systems on S390 machines was added.
86 ** Support for MacOS X was added.
87 See the files mac/README and mac/INSTALL for build instructions.
90 ** Support for GNU/Linux systems on X86-64 machines was added.
93 ** A French translation of the `Emacs Survival Guide' is available.
96 ** Building with -DENABLE_CHECKING does not automatically build with union
97 types any more. Add -DUSE_LISP_UNION_TYPE if you want union types.
100 * Changes in Emacs 21.4
102 ** Control characters and escape glyphs are now shown in the new
105 ** Non-breaking space and hyphens are now prefixed with an escape
106 character, unless the new user variable `show-nonbreak-escape' is set
109 ** display-battery has been replaced by display-battery-mode.
111 ** calculator.el now has radix grouping mode, which is available when
112 `calculator-output-radix' is non-nil. In this mode a separator
113 character is used every few digits, making it easier to see byte
114 boundries etc. For more info, see the documentation of the variable
115 `calculator-radix-grouping-mode'.
117 ** You can now follow links by clicking Mouse-1 on the link.
119 Traditionally, Emacs uses a Mouse-1 click to set point and a Mouse-2
120 click to follow a link, whereas most other applications use a Mouse-1
121 click for both purposes, depending on whether you click outside or
122 inside a link. With release 21.4, the behaviour of a Mouse-1 click
123 has been changed to match this context-sentitive dual behaviour.
125 Depending on the current mode, a Mouse-2 click in Emacs may do much
126 more than just follow a link, so the new Mouse-1 behaviour is only
127 activated for modes which explicitly mark a clickable text as a "link"
128 (see the new function `mouse-on-link-p' for details). The lisp
129 packages that are included in release 21.4 have been adapted to do
130 this, but external packages may not yet support this. However, there
131 is no risk in using such packages, as the worst thing that could
132 happen is that you get the original Mouse-1 behaviour when you click
133 on a link, which typically means that you set point where you click.
135 If you want to get the original Mouse-1 action also inside a link, you
136 just need to press the Mouse-1 button a little longer than a normal
137 click (i.e. press and hold the Mouse-1 button for half a second before
140 Dragging the Mouse-1 inside a link still performs the original
141 drag-mouse-1 action, typically copy the text.
143 You can customize the new Mouse-1 behaviour via the new user option
144 `mouse-1-click-follows-link'.
147 ** require-final-newline now has two new possible values:
149 `visit' means add a newline (as an undoable change) if it's needed
150 when visiting the file.
152 `visit-save' means add a newline (as an undoable change) if it's
153 needed when visiting the file, and also add a newline if it's needed
154 when saving the file.
157 ** The new option mode-require-final-newline controls how certain
158 major modes enable require-final-newline. Any major mode that's
159 designed for a kind of file that should normally end in a newline
160 sets require-final-newline based on mode-require-final-newline.
161 So you can customize mode-require-final-newline to control what these
165 ** When the undo information of the current command gets really large
166 (beyond the value of `undo-outer-limit'), Emacs asks you whether to
167 discard it or keep it.
169 ** line-move-ignore-invisible now defaults to t.
171 ** In Outline mode, hide-body no longer hides lines at the top
172 of the file that precede the first header line.
175 ** In Enriched mode, `set-left-margin' and `set-right-margin' are now
176 by default bound to `C-c [' and `C-c ]' instead of the former `C-c C-l'
180 ** In processing a local variables list, Emacs strips the prefix and
181 suffix are from every line before processing all the lines.
184 ** `apply-macro-to-region-lines' now operates on all lines that begin
185 in the region, rather than on all complete lines in the region.
187 ** global-whitespace-mode is a new alias for whitespace-global-mode.
190 ** There are now two new regular expression operators, \_< and \_>,
191 for matching the beginning and end of a symbol. A symbol is a
192 non-empty sequence of either word or symbol constituent characters, as
193 specified by the syntax table.
195 ** Passing resources on the command line now works on MS Windows.
196 You can use --xrm to pass resource settings to Emacs, overriding any
197 existing values. For example:
199 emacs --xrm "Emacs.Background:red" --xrm "Emacs.Geometry:100x20"
201 will start up Emacs on an initial frame of 100x20 with red background,
202 irrespective of geometry or background setting on the Windows registry.
204 ** The terminal emulation code in term.el has been improved, it can
205 run most curses applications now.
207 ** New features in evaluation commands
210 *** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) called on defface reinitializes
211 the face to the value specified in the defface expression.
213 *** Typing C-x C-e twice prints the value of the integer result
214 in additional formats (octal, hexadecimal, character) specified
215 by the new function `eval-expression-print-format'. The same
216 function also defines the result format for `eval-expression' (M-:),
217 `eval-print-last-sexp' (C-j) and some edebug evaluation functions.
219 ** New input method chinese-sisheng for inputting Chinese Pinyin
222 ** New command quail-show-key shows what key (or key sequence) to type
223 in the current input method to input a character at point.
225 ** Convenient commands to switch buffers in a cyclic order are C-x <left>
226 (prev-buffer) and C-x <right> (next-buffer).
228 ** Commands winner-redo and winner-undo, from winner.el, are now bound to
229 C-c <left> and C-c <right>, respectively. This is an incompatible change.
231 ** Help commands `describe-function' and `describe-key' now show function
232 arguments in lowercase italics on displays that support it. To change the
233 default, customize face `help-argument-name' or redefine the function
234 `help-default-arg-highlight'.
237 ** The comint prompt can now be made read-only, using the new user
238 option `comint-prompt-read-only'. This is not enabled by default,
239 except in IELM buffers. The read-only status of IELM prompts can be
240 controlled with the new user option `ielm-prompt-read-only', which
241 overrides `comint-prompt-read-only'.
243 The new commands `comint-kill-whole-line' and `comint-kill-region'
244 support editing comint buffers with read-only prompts.
246 `comint-kill-whole-line' is like `kill-whole-line', but ignores both
247 read-only and field properties. Hence, it always kill entire
248 lines, including any prompts.
250 `comint-kill-region' is like `kill-region', except that it ignores
251 read-only properties, if it is safe to do so. This means that if any
252 part of a prompt is deleted, then the entire prompt must be deleted
253 and that all prompts must stay at the beginning of a line. If this is
254 not the case, then `comint-kill-region' behaves just like
255 `kill-region' if read-only are involved: it copies the text to the
256 kill-ring, but does not delete it.
258 ** You can now use next-error (C-x `) and previous-error to advance to
259 the next/previous matching line found by M-x occur.
261 ** Telnet now prompts you for a port number with C-u M-x telnet.
264 ** New command line option -Q.
266 This is like using -q --no-site-file, but in addition it also disables
267 the menu-bar, the tool-bar, the scroll-bars, tool tips, the blinking
268 cursor, and the fancy startup screen.
270 ** C-h v and C-h f commands now include a hyperlink to the C source for
271 variables and functions defined in C (if the C source is available).
273 ** When used interactively, `format-write-file' now asks for confirmation
274 before overwriting an existing file, unless a prefix argument is
275 supplied. This behavior is analogous to `write-file'.
277 ** You can now use Auto Revert mode to `tail' a file.
278 If point is at the end of a file buffer before reverting, Auto Revert
279 mode keeps it at the end after reverting. Similarly if point is
280 displayed at the end of a file buffer in any window, it stays at
281 the end of the buffer in that window. This allows to tail a file:
282 just put point at the end of the buffer and it stays there. This
283 rule applies to file buffers. For non-file buffers, the behavior may
286 If you are sure that the file will only change by growing at the end,
287 then you can tail the file more efficiently by using the new minor
288 mode Auto Revert Tail mode. The function `auto-revert-tail-mode'
291 ** Auto Revert mode is now more careful to avoid excessive reverts and
292 other potential problems when deciding which non-file buffers to
293 revert. This matters especially if Global Auto Revert mode is enabled
294 and `global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers' is non-nil. Auto Revert
295 mode only reverts a non-file buffer if the buffer has a non-nil
296 `revert-buffer-function' and a non-nil `buffer-stale-function', which
297 decides whether the buffer should be reverted. Currently, this means
298 that auto reverting works for Dired buffers (although this may not
299 work properly on all operating systems) and for the Buffer Menu.
301 ** If the new user option `auto-revert-check-vc-info' is non-nil, Auto
302 Revert mode reliably updates version control info (such as the version
303 control number in the mode line), in all version controlled buffers in
304 which it is active. If the option is nil, the default, then this info
305 only gets updated whenever the buffer gets reverted.
307 ** New command `Buffer-menu-toggle-files-only' toggles display of file
308 buffers only in the Buffer Menu. It is bound to `T' in Buffer Menu
311 ** M-x compile has become more robust and reliable
313 Quite a few more kinds of messages are recognized. Messages that are
314 recognized as warnings or informational come in orange or green, instead of
315 red. Informational messages are by default skipped with `next-error'
316 (controlled by `compilation-skip-threshold').
318 Location data is collected on the fly as the *compilation* buffer changes.
319 This means you could modify messages to make them point to different files.
320 This also means you can not go to locations of messages you may have deleted.
322 The variable `compilation-error-regexp-alist' has now become customizable. If
323 you had added your own regexps to this, you'll probably need to include a
324 leading `^', otherwise they'll match anywhere on a line. There is now also a
325 `compilation-mode-font-lock-keywords' and it nicely handles all the checks
326 that configure outputs and -o options so you see at a glance where you are.
328 The new file etc/compilation.txt gives examples of each type of message.
330 ** Compilation mode enhancements:
333 *** New user option `compilation-environment'.
334 This option allows you to specify environment variables for inferior
335 compilation processes without affecting the environment that all
336 subprocesses inherit.
338 ** Grep has been decoupled from compilation mode setup.
340 *** There's a new separate package grep.el.
342 *** M-x grep has been adapted to new compile
344 Hits are fontified in green, and hits in binary files in orange. Grep buffers
345 can be saved and automatically revisited with the new Grep mode.
347 *** Grep commands now have their own submenu and customization group.
349 *** The new variables `grep-window-height', `grep-auto-highlight', and
350 `grep-scroll-output' can be used to override the corresponding
351 compilation mode settings for grep commands.
353 *** New option `grep-highlight-matches' highlightes matches in *grep*
354 buffer. It uses a special feature of some grep programs which accept
355 --color option to output markers around matches. When going to the next
356 match with `next-error' the exact match is highlighted in the source
357 buffer. Otherwise, if `grep-highlight-matches' is nil, the whole
358 source line is highlighted.
360 *** New key bindings in grep output window:
361 SPC and DEL scrolls window up and down. C-n and C-p moves to next and
362 previous match in the grep window. RET jumps to the source line of
363 the current match. `n' and `p' shows next and previous match in
364 other window, but does not switch buffer. `{' and `}' jumps to the
365 previous or next file in the grep output. TAB also jumps to the next
368 ** New options `next-error-highlight' and `next-error-highlight-no-select'
369 specify the method of highlighting of the corresponding source line
370 in new face `next-error'.
372 ** A new minor mode `next-error-follow-minor-mode' can be used in
373 compilation-mode, grep-mode, occur-mode, and diff-mode (i.e. all the
374 modes that can use `next-error'). In this mode, cursor motion in the
375 buffer causes automatic display in another window of the corresponding
376 matches, compilation errors, etc. This minor mode can be toggled with
379 ** M-x diff uses diff-mode instead of compilation-mode.
381 ** M-x compare-windows now can automatically skip non-matching text to
382 resync points in both windows.
384 ** New command `strokes-global-set-stroke-string'.
385 This is like `strokes-global-set-stroke', but it allows you to bind
386 the stroke directly to a string to insert. This is convenient for
387 using strokes as an input method.
391 *** Gnus now includes Sieve and PGG
392 Sieve is a library for managing Sieve scripts. PGG is a library to handle
395 *** There are many news features, bug fixes and improvements.
396 See the file GNUS-NEWS or the node "Oort Gnus" in the Gnus manual for details.
401 *** Desktop saving is now a minor mode, desktop-save-mode. Variable
402 desktop-enable is obsolete. Customize desktop-save-mode to enable desktop
405 *** Buffers are saved in the desktop file in the same order as that in the
408 *** The desktop package can be customized to restore only some buffers immediately,
409 remaining buffers are restored lazily (when Emacs is idle).
412 - desktop-revert reverts to the last loaded desktop.
413 - desktop-change-dir kills current desktop and loads a new.
414 - desktop-save-in-desktop-dir saves desktop in the directory from which
416 - desktop-lazy-complete runs the desktop load to completion.
417 - desktop-lazy-abort aborts lazy loading of the desktop.
419 *** New customizable variables:
420 - desktop-save. Determins whether the desktop should be saved when it is
422 - desktop-file-name-format. Format in which desktop file names should be saved.
423 - desktop-path. List of directories in which to lookup the desktop file.
424 - desktop-locals-to-save. List of local variables to save.
425 - desktop-globals-to-clear. List of global variables that `desktop-clear' will clear.
426 - desktop-clear-preserve-buffers-regexp. Regexp identifying buffers that `desktop-clear'
428 - desktop-restore-eager. Number of buffers to restore immediately. Remaining buffers are
429 restored lazily (when Emacs is idle).
430 - desktop-lazy-verbose. Verbose reporting of lazily created buffers.
431 - desktop-lazy-idle-delay. Idle delay before starting to create buffers.
433 *** New command line option --no-desktop
436 - desktop-after-read-hook run after a desktop is loaded.
437 - desktop-no-desktop-file-hook run when no desktop file is found.
440 ** The saveplace.el package now filters out unreadable files.
441 When you exit Emacs, the saved positions in visited files no longer
442 include files that aren't readable, e.g. files that don't exist.
443 Customize the new option `save-place-forget-unreadable-files' to nil
444 to get the old behavior. The new options `save-place-save-skipped'
445 and `save-place-skip-check-regexp' allow further fine-tuning of this
448 ** You can have several Emacs servers on the same machine.
450 % emacs --eval '(setq server-name "foo")' -f server-start &
451 % emacs --eval '(setq server-name "bar")' -f server-start &
452 % emacsclient -s foo file1
453 % emacsclient -s bar file2
456 ** On window systems, lines which are exactly as wide as the window
457 (not counting the final newline character) are no longer broken into
458 two lines on the display (with just the newline on the second line).
459 Instead, the newline now "overflows" into the right fringe, and the
460 cursor will be displayed in the fringe when positioned on that newline.
462 The new user option 'overflow-newline-into-fringe' may be set to nil to
463 revert to the old behaviour of continuing such lines.
466 ** The buffer boundaries (i.e. first and last line in the buffer) may
467 now be marked with angle bitmaps in the fringes. In addition, up and
468 down arrow bitmaps may be shown at the top and bottom of the left or
469 right fringe if the window can be scrolled in either direction.
471 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
472 `indicate-buffer-boundaries' to a non-nil value. The default value of
473 this variable is found in `default-indicate-buffer-boundaries'.
475 If value is `left' or `right', both angle and arrow bitmaps are
476 displayed in the left or right fringe, resp.
478 Value may also be an alist which specifies the presense and position
479 of each bitmap individually.
481 For example, ((top . left) (t . right)) places the top angle bitmap
482 in left fringe, the bottom angle bitmap in right fringe, and both
483 arrow bitmaps in right fringe. To show just the angle bitmaps in the
484 left fringe, but no arrow bitmaps, use ((top . left) (bottom . left)).
486 ** New command `display-local-help' displays any local help at point
487 in the echo area. It is bound to `C-h .'. It normally displays the
488 same string that would be displayed on mouse-over using the
489 `help-echo' property, but, in certain cases, it can display a more
490 keyboard oriented alternative.
492 ** New user option `help-at-pt-display-when-idle' allows to
493 automatically show the help provided by `display-local-help' on
494 point-over, after suitable idle time. The amount of idle time is
495 determined by the user option `help-at-pt-timer-delay' and defaults
496 to one second. This feature is turned off by default.
498 ** New commands `scan-buf-next-region' and `scan-buf-previous-region'
499 move to the start of the next (previous, respectively) region with
500 non-nil help-echo property and display any help found there in the
501 echo area, using `display-local-help'.
504 ** Help mode now only makes hyperlinks for faces when the face name is
505 preceded or followed by the word `face'. It no longer makes
506 hyperlinks for variables without variable documentation, unless
507 preceded by one of the words `variable' or `option'. It now makes
508 hyperlinks to Info anchors (or nodes) if the anchor (or node) name is
509 enclosed in single quotes and preceded by `info anchor' or `Info
510 anchor' (in addition to earlier `info node' and `Info node').
512 ** The max size of buffers and integers has been doubled.
513 On 32bit machines, it is now 256M (i.e. 268435455).
516 ** The -f option, used from the command line to call a function,
517 now reads arguments for the function interactively if it is
518 an interactively callable function.
523 *** The variable `sql-product' controls the highlightng of different
524 SQL dialects. This variable can be set globally via Customize, on a
525 buffer-specific basis via local variable settings, or for the current
526 session using the new SQL->Product submenu. (This menu replaces the
527 SQL->Highlighting submenu.)
529 The following values are supported:
531 ansi ANSI Standard (default)
545 The current product name will be shown on the mode line following the
548 The technique of setting `sql-mode-font-lock-defaults' directly in
549 your .emacs will no longer establish the default highlighting -- Use
550 `sql-product' to accomplish this.
552 ANSI keywords are always highlighted.
554 *** The function `sql-add-product-keywords' can be used to add
555 font-lock rules to the product specific rules. For example, to have
556 all identifiers ending in "_t" under MS SQLServer treated as a type,
557 you would use the following line in your .emacs file:
559 (sql-add-product-keywords 'ms
560 '(("\\<\\w+_t\\>" . font-lock-type-face)))
562 *** Oracle support includes keyword highlighting for Oracle 9i. Most
563 SQL and PL/SQL keywords are implemented. SQL*Plus commands are
564 highlighted in `font-lock-doc-face'.
566 *** Microsoft SQLServer support has been significantly improved.
567 Keyword highlighting for SqlServer 2000 is implemented.
568 sql-interactive-mode defaults to use osql, rather than isql, because
569 osql flushes its error stream more frequently. Thus error messages
570 are displayed when they occur rather than when the session is
573 If the username and password are not provided to `sql-ms', osql is
574 called with the -E command line argument to use the operating system
575 credentials to authenticate the user.
577 *** Postgres support is enhanced.
578 Keyword highlighting of Postgres 7.3 is implemented. Prompting for
579 the username and the pgsql `-U' option is added.
581 *** MySQL support is enhanced.
582 Keyword higlighting of MySql 4.0 is implemented.
584 *** Imenu support has been enhanced to locate tables, views, indexes,
585 packages, procedures, functions, triggers, sequences, rules, and
588 *** Added SQL->Start SQLi Session menu entry which calls the
589 appropriate sql-interactive-mode wrapper for the current setting of
592 ** M-x view-file and commands that use it now avoid interfering
593 with special modes such as Tar mode.
595 ** Enhancements to apropos commands:
597 *** The apropos commands now accept a list of words to match.
598 When more than one word is specified, at least two of those words must
599 be present for an item to match. Regular expression matching is still
602 *** The new option `apropos-sort-by-scores' causes the matching items
603 to be sorted according to their score. The score for an item is a
604 number calculated to indicate how well the item matches the words or
605 regular expression that you entered to the apropos command. The best
606 match is listed first, and the calculated score is shown for each
610 ** The old bindings C-M-delete and C-M-backspace have been deleted,
611 since there are situations where one or the other will shut down
612 the operating system or your X server.
614 ** New minor mode, Visible mode, toggles invisibility in the current buffer.
615 When enabled, it makes all invisible text visible. When disabled, it
616 restores the previous value of `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
618 ** New command `kill-whole-line' kills an entire line at once.
619 By default, it is bound to C-S-<backspace>.
621 ** New commands to operate on pairs of open and close characters:
622 `insert-pair', `delete-pair', `raise-sexp'.
624 ** A prefix argument of C-M-q in Emacs Lisp mode pretty-printifies the
625 list starting after point.
629 *** New faces dired-header, dired-mark, dired-marked, dired-flagged,
630 dired-ignored, dired-directory, dired-symlink, dired-warning
631 introduced for Dired mode instead of font-lock faces.
633 *** New Dired command `dired-compare-directories' marks files
634 with different file attributes in two dired buffers.
637 *** New Dired command `dired-do-touch' (bound to T) changes timestamps
638 of marked files with the value entered in the minibuffer.
641 *** In Dired's ! command (dired-do-shell-command), `*' and `?' now
642 control substitution of the file names only when they are surrounded
643 by whitespace. This means you can now use them as shell wildcards
644 too. If you want to use just plain `*' as a wildcard, type `*""'; the
645 doublequotes make no difference in the shell, but they prevent
646 special treatment in `dired-do-shell-command'.
648 *** In Dired, the w command now copies the current line's file name
649 into the kill ring. With a zero prefix arg, copies absolute file names.
654 *** Omitting files is now a minor mode, dired-omit-mode. The mode toggling
655 command is bound to M-o. A new command dired-mark-omitted, bound to M-O,
656 marks omitted files. The variable dired-omit-files-p is obsoleted, use the
657 mode toggling function instead.
660 ** find-file-read-only visits multiple files in read-only mode,
661 when the file name contains wildcard characters.
664 ** find-alternate-file replaces the current file with multiple files,
665 when the file name contains wildcard characters.
670 *** New ffap commands and keybindings: C-x C-r (`ffap-read-only'),
671 C-x C-v (`ffap-alternate-file'), C-x C-d (`ffap-list-directory'),
672 C-x 4 r (`ffap-read-only-other-window'), C-x 4 d (`ffap-dired-other-window'),
673 C-x 5 r (`ffap-read-only-other-frame'), C-x 5 d (`ffap-dired-other-frame').
676 *** FFAP accepts wildcards in a file name by default. C-x C-f passes
677 it to `find-file' with non-nil WILDCARDS argument, which visits
678 multiple files, and C-x d passes it to `dired'.
682 *** A numeric prefix argument of `info' selects an Info buffer
683 with the number appended to the *info* buffer name (e.g. "*info*<2>").
685 *** Regexp isearch (C-M-s and C-M-r) can search through multiple nodes.
686 Failed isearch wraps to the top/final node.
688 *** New search commands: `Info-search-case-sensitively' (bound to S),
689 `Info-search-backward', and `Info-search-next' which repeats the last
690 search without prompting for a new search string.
692 *** New command `Info-history-forward' (bound to r and new toolbar icon)
693 moves forward in history to the node you returned from after using
694 `Info-history-back' (renamed from `Info-last').
696 *** New command `Info-history' (bound to L) displays a menu of visited nodes.
698 *** New command `Info-toc' (bound to T) creates a node with table of contents
699 from the tree structure of menus of the current Info file.
701 *** New command `info-apropos' searches the indices of the known
702 Info files on your system for a string, and builds a menu of the
705 *** New command `Info-copy-current-node-name' (bound to w) copies
706 the current Info node name into the kill ring. With a zero prefix
707 arg, puts the node name inside the `info' function call.
709 *** New face `info-xref-visited' distinguishes visited nodes from unvisited
710 and a new option `Info-fontify-visited-nodes' to control this.
712 *** http and ftp links in Info are now operational: they look like cross
713 references and following them calls `browse-url'.
716 *** Info now hides node names in menus and cross references by default.
717 If you prefer the old behavior, you can set the new user option
718 `Info-hide-note-references' to nil.
720 *** Images in Info pages are supported.
721 Info pages show embedded images, in Emacs frames with image support.
722 Info documentation that includes images, processed with makeinfo
723 version 4.7 or newer, compiles to Info pages with embedded images.
726 *** The default value for `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' is now nil.
729 *** Info-index offers completion.
731 ** Support for the SQLite interpreter has been added to sql.el by calling
735 *** The new command bibtex-url browses a URL for the BibTeX entry at
736 point (bound to C-c C-l and mouse-2, RET on clickable fields).
738 *** The new command bibtex-entry-update (bound to C-c C-u) updates
739 an existing BibTeX entry.
741 *** New `bibtex-entry-format' option `required-fields', enabled by default.
743 *** bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries can take values `plain',
744 `crossref', and `entry-class' which control the sorting scheme used
745 for BibTeX entries. `bibtex-sort-entry-class' controls the sorting
746 scheme `entry-class'. TAB completion for reference keys and
747 automatic detection of duplicates does not require anymore that
748 bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil.
750 *** If the new variable bibtex-parse-keys-fast is non-nil,
751 use fast but simplified algorithm for parsing BibTeX keys.
753 *** If the new variable bibtex-autoadd-commas is non-nil,
754 automatically add missing commas at end of BibTeX fields.
756 *** The new variable bibtex-autofill-types contains a list of entry
757 types for which fields are filled automatically (if possible).
759 *** The new command bibtex-complete completes word fragment before
760 point according to context (bound to M-tab).
762 *** The new commands bibtex-find-entry and bibtex-find-crossref
763 locate entries and crossref'd entries (bound to C-c C-s and C-c C-x).
764 Crossref fields are clickable (bound to mouse-2, RET).
766 *** In BibTeX mode the command fill-paragraph (bound to M-q) fills
767 individual fields of a BibTeX entry.
769 *** The new variables bibtex-files and bibtex-file-path define a set
770 of BibTeX files that are searched for entry keys.
772 *** The new command bibtex-validate-globally checks for duplicate keys
773 in multiple BibTeX files.
775 *** The new command bibtex-copy-summary-as-kill pushes summary
776 of BibTeX entry to kill ring (bound to C-c C-t).
778 ** When display margins are present in a window, the fringes are now
779 displayed between the margins and the buffer's text area, rather than
780 at the edges of the window.
782 ** A window may now have individual fringe and scroll-bar settings,
783 in addition to the individual display margin settings.
785 Such individual settings are now preserved when windows are split
786 horizontally or vertically, a saved window configuration is restored,
787 or when the frame is resized.
789 ** New functions frame-current-scroll-bars and window-current-scroll-bars.
791 These functions return the current locations of the vertical and
792 horizontal scroll bars in a frame or window.
795 ** Emacs now supports drag and drop for X. Dropping a file on a window
796 opens it, dropping text inserts the text. Dropping a file on a dired
797 buffer copies or moves the file to that directory.
799 ** Under X, mouse-wheel-mode is turned on by default.
801 ** The X resource useXIM can be used to turn off use of XIM, which may
802 speed up Emacs with slow networking to the X server.
804 If the configure option `--without-xim' was used to turn off use of
805 XIM by default, the X resource useXIM can be used to turn it on.
807 ** `undo-only' does an undo which does not redo any previous undo.
809 ** `uniquify-strip-common-suffix' tells uniquify to prefer
810 `file|dir1' and `file|dir2' to `file|dir1/subdir' and `file|dir2/subdir'.
812 ** If the user visits a file larger than `large-file-warning-threshold',
813 Emacs prompts her for confirmation.
815 ** A UTF-7 coding system is available in the library `utf-7'.
817 ** GUD mode has its own tool bar for controlling execution of the inferior
818 and other common debugger commands.
822 The recent file list is now automatically cleanup when recentf mode is
823 enabled. The new option `recentf-auto-cleanup' controls when to do
826 With the more advanced option: `recentf-filename-handler', you can
827 specify a function that transforms filenames handled by recentf. For
828 example, if set to `file-truename', the same file will not be in the
829 recent list with different symbolic links.
831 To follow naming convention, `recentf-keep-non-readable-files-flag'
832 and `recentf-menu-append-commands-flag' respectively replace the
833 misnamed options `recentf-keep-non-readable-files-p' and
834 `recentf-menu-append-commands-p'. The old names remain available as
835 aliases, but have been marked obsolete.
837 ** The default for the paper size (variable ps-paper-type) is taken
842 You can now put the init files .emacs and .emacs_SHELL under
843 ~/.emacs.d or directly under ~. Emacs will find them in either place.
845 ** partial-completion-mode now does partial completion on directory names.
847 ** skeleton.el now supports using - to mark the skeleton-point without
848 interregion interaction. @ has reverted to only setting
849 skeleton-positions and no longer sets skeleton-point. Skeletons
850 which used @ to mark skeleton-point independent of _ should now use -
851 instead. The updated skeleton-insert docstring explains these new
852 features along with other details of skeleton construction.
856 Upgraded to MH-E version 7.82. There have been major changes since
857 version 5.0.2; see MH-E-NEWS for details.
860 ** The `emacsclient' command understands the options `--eval' and
861 `--display' which tell Emacs respectively to evaluate the given elisp
862 expression and to use the given display when visiting files.
864 ** User option `server-mode' can be used to start a server process.
867 ** The mode line position information now comes before the major mode.
868 When the file is maintained under version control, that information
869 appears between the position information and the major mode.
871 ** C-x s (save-some-buffers) now offers an option `d' to diff a buffer
872 against its file, so you can see what changes you would be saving.
875 ** You can now customize the use of window fringes. To control this
876 for all frames, use M-x fringe-mode or the Show/Hide submenu of the
877 top-level Options menu, or customize the `fringe-mode' variable. To
878 control this for a specific frame, use the command M-x
882 ** There is a new user option `mail-default-directory' that allows you
883 to specify the value of `default-directory' for mail buffers. This
884 directory is used for auto-save files of mail buffers. It defaults to
888 ** When you are root, and you visit a file whose modes specify
889 read-only, the Emacs buffer is now read-only too. Type C-x C-q if you
890 want to make the buffer writable. (As root, you can in fact alter the
893 ** The new command `revert-buffer-with-coding-system' (C-x RET r)
894 revisits the current file using a coding system that you specify.
896 ** The new command `recode-file-name' changes the encoding of the name
900 ** `ps-print' can now print characters from the mule-unicode charsets.
902 Printing text with characters from the mule-unicode-* sets works with
903 ps-print, provided that you have installed the appropriate BDF fonts.
904 See the file INSTALL for URLs where you can find these fonts.
907 ** The new options `buffers-menu-show-directories' and
908 `buffers-menu-show-status' let you control how buffers are displayed
909 in the menu dropped down when you click "Buffers" from the menu bar.
911 `buffers-menu-show-directories' controls whether the menu displays
912 leading directories as part of the file name visited by the buffer.
913 If its value is `unless-uniquify', the default, directories are
914 shown unless uniquify-buffer-name-style' is non-nil. The value of nil
915 and t turn the display of directories off and on, respectively.
917 `buffers-menu-show-status' controls whether the Buffers menu includes
918 the modified and read-only status of the buffers. By default it is
919 t, and the status is shown.
921 Setting these variables directly does not take effect until next time
922 the Buffers menu is regenerated.
925 ** The commands M-x customize-face and M-x customize-face-other-window
926 now look at the character after point. If a face or faces are
927 specified for that character, the commands by default customize those
930 ** New language environments: French, Ukrainian, Tajik,
931 Bulgarian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, UTF-8, Windows-1255, Welsh, Latin-6,
932 Latin-7, Lithuanian, Latvian, Swedish, Slovenian, Croatian, Georgian,
933 Italian, Russian, Malayalam, Tamil, Russian, Chinese-EUC-TW. (Set up
934 automatically according to the locale.)
936 ** Indian support has been updated.
937 The in-is13194 coding system is now Unicode-based. CDAC fonts are
938 assumed. There is a framework for supporting various
939 Indian scripts, but currently only Devanagari, Malayalam and Tamil are
943 ** New input methods: latin-alt-postfix, latin-postfix, latin-prefix,
944 ukrainian-computer, belarusian, bulgarian-bds, russian-computer,
945 vietnamese-telex, lithuanian-numeric, lithuanian-keyboard,
946 latvian-keyboard, welsh, georgian, rfc1345, ucs, sgml,
947 bulgarian-phonetic, dutch, slovenian, croatian, malayalam-inscript,
951 ** A new coding system `euc-tw' has been added for traditional Chinese
952 in CNS encoding; it accepts both Big 5 and CNS as input; on saving,
953 Big 5 is then converted to CNS.
956 ** Many new coding systems are available by loading the `code-pages'
957 library. These include complete versions of most of those in
958 codepage.el, based on Unicode mappings. `codepage-setup' is now
959 obsolete and is used only in the MS-DOS port of Emacs. windows-1252
960 and windows-1251 are preloaded since the former is so common and the
961 latter is used by GNU locales.
963 ** The utf-8/16 coding systems have been enhanced.
964 By default, untranslatable utf-8 sequences are simply composed into
965 single quasi-characters. User option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' (it is
966 turned on by default) arranges to translate many utf-8 CJK character
967 sequences into real Emacs characters in a similar way to the Mule-UCS
968 system. As this loads a fairly big data on demand, people who are not
969 interested in CJK characters may want to customize it to nil.
970 You can augment/amend the CJK translation via hash tables
971 `ucs-mule-cjk-to-unicode' and `ucs-unicode-to-mule-cjk'. The utf-8
972 coding system now also encodes characters from most of Emacs's
973 one-dimensional internal charsets, specifically the ISO-8859 ones.
974 The utf-16 coding system is affected similarly.
976 ** New variable `utf-translate-cjk-unicode-range' controls which
977 Unicode characters to translate in `utf-translate-cjk-mode'.
979 ** iso-10646-1 (`Unicode') fonts can be used to display any range of
980 characters encodable by the utf-8 coding system. Just specify the
981 fontset appropriately.
983 ** New command `ucs-insert' inserts a character specified by its
987 ** Limited support for character `unification' has been added.
988 Emacs now knows how to translate between different representations of
989 the same characters in various Emacs charsets according to standard
990 Unicode mappings. This applies mainly to characters in the ISO 8859
991 sets plus some other 8-bit sets, but can be extended. For instance,
992 translation works amongst the Emacs ...-iso8859-... charsets and the
993 mule-unicode-... ones.
995 By default this translation happens automatically on encoding.
996 Self-inserting characters are translated to make the input conformant
997 with the encoding of the buffer in which it's being used, where
1000 You can force a more complete unification with the user option
1001 unify-8859-on-decoding-mode. That maps all the Latin-N character sets
1002 into Unicode characters (from the latin-iso8859-1 and
1003 mule-unicode-0100-24ff charsets) on decoding. Note that this mode
1004 will often effectively clobber data with an iso-2022 encoding.
1006 ** There is support for decoding Greek and Cyrillic characters into
1007 either Unicode (the mule-unicode charsets) or the iso-8859 charsets,
1008 when possible. The latter are more space-efficient. This is
1009 controlled by user option utf-fragment-on-decoding.
1011 ** The new command `set-file-name-coding-system' (C-x RET F) sets
1012 coding system for encoding and decoding file names. A new menu item
1013 (Options->Mule->Set Coding Systems->For File Name) invokes this
1017 ** The scrollbar under LessTif or Motif has a smoother drag-scrolling.
1018 On the other hand, the size of the thumb does not represent the actual
1019 amount of text shown any more (only a crude approximation of it).
1022 ** The pop up menus for Lucid now stay up if you do a fast click and can
1023 be navigated with the arrow keys (like Gtk+, Mac and W32).
1026 ** Dialogs for Lucid/Athena and Lesstif/Motif now pops down when pressing
1027 ESC, like they do for Gtk+, Mac and W32.
1030 ** Dialogs and menus pop down when pressing C-g.
1033 ** The menu item "Open File..." has been split into two items, "New File..."
1034 and "Open File...". "Open File..." now opens only existing files. This is
1035 to support existing GUI file selection dialogs better.
1038 ** The file selection dialog for Gtk+, Mac, W32 and Motif/Lesstif can be
1039 disabled by customizing the variable `use-file-dialog'.
1042 ** For Gtk+ version 2.4, you can make Emacs use the old file dialog
1043 by setting the variable `x-use-old-gtk-file-dialog' to t. Default is to use
1047 ** Emacs can produce an underscore-like (horizontal bar) cursor.
1048 The underscore cursor is set by putting `(cursor-type . hbar)' in
1049 default-frame-alist. It supports variable heights, like the `bar'
1053 ** On X, MS Windows, and Mac OS, the blinking cursor's "off" state is
1054 now controlled by the variable `blink-cursor-alist'.
1056 ** Filesets are collections of files. You can define a fileset in
1057 various ways, such as based on a directory tree or based on
1058 program files that include other program files.
1060 Once you have defined a fileset, you can perform various operations on
1061 all the files in it, such as visiting them or searching and replacing
1065 ** PO translation files are decoded according to their MIME headers
1066 when Emacs visits them.
1069 ** The game `mpuz' is enhanced.
1071 `mpuz' now allows the 2nd factor not to have two identical digits. By
1072 default, all trivial operations involving whole lines are performed
1073 automatically. The game uses faces for better visual feedback.
1075 ** The new variable `x-select-request-type' controls how Emacs
1076 requests X selection. The default value is nil, which means that
1077 Emacs requests X selection with types COMPOUND_TEXT and UTF8_STRING,
1078 and use the more appropriately result.
1081 ** The parameters of automatic hscrolling can now be customized.
1082 The variable `hscroll-margin' determines how many columns away from
1083 the window edge point is allowed to get before automatic hscrolling
1084 will horizontally scroll the window. The default value is 5.
1086 The variable `hscroll-step' determines how many columns automatic
1087 hscrolling scrolls the window when point gets too close to the
1088 window edge. If its value is zero, the default, Emacs scrolls the
1089 window so as to center point. If its value is an integer, it says how
1090 many columns to scroll. If the value is a floating-point number, it
1091 gives the fraction of the window's width to scroll the window.
1093 The variable `automatic-hscrolling' was renamed to
1094 `auto-hscroll-mode'. The old name is still available as an alias.
1097 *** C-c C-c prompts for a command to run, and tries to offer a good default.
1099 *** The user option `tex-start-options-string' has been replaced
1100 by two new user options: `tex-start-options', which should hold
1101 command-line options to feed to TeX, and `tex-start-commands' which should hold
1102 TeX commands to use at startup.
1103 *** verbatim environments are now highlighted in courier by font-lock
1104 and super/sub-scripts are made into super/sub-scripts.
1106 *** New major mode doctex-mode for *.dtx files.
1109 ** New display feature: focus follows the mouse from one Emacs window
1110 to another, even within a frame. If you set the variable
1111 mouse-autoselect-window to non-nil value, moving the mouse to a
1112 different Emacs window will select that window (minibuffer window can
1113 be selected only when it is active). The default is nil, so that this
1114 feature is not enabled.
1116 ** On X, when the window manager requires that you click on a frame to
1117 select it (give it focus), the selected window and cursor position
1118 normally changes according to the mouse click position. If you set
1119 the variable x-mouse-click-focus-ignore-position to t, the selected
1120 window and cursor position do not change when you click on a frame
1124 ** The new command `describe-char' (C-u C-x =) pops up a buffer with
1125 description various information about a character, including its
1126 encodings and syntax, its text properties, how to input, overlays, and
1127 widgets at point. You can get more information about some of them, by
1128 clicking on mouse-sensitive areas or moving there and pressing RET.
1131 ** The new command `multi-occur' is just like `occur', except it can
1132 search multiple buffers. There is also a new command
1133 `multi-occur-by-filename-regexp' which allows you to specify the
1134 buffers to search by their filename. Internally, Occur mode has been
1135 rewritten, and now uses font-lock, among other changes.
1137 ** The default values of paragraph-start and indent-line-function have
1138 been changed to reflect those used in Text mode rather than those used
1139 in Indented-Text mode.
1141 ** New user option `query-replace-skip-read-only': when non-nil,
1142 `query-replace' and related functions simply ignore
1143 a match if part of it has a read-only property.
1145 ** When used interactively, the commands `query-replace-regexp' and
1146 `replace-regexp' allow \,expr to be used in a replacement string,
1147 where expr is an arbitrary Lisp expression evaluated at replacement
1148 time. In many cases, this will be more convenient than using
1149 `query-replace-regexp-eval'. `\#' in a replacement string now refers
1150 to the count of replacements already made by the replacement command.
1151 All regular expression replacement commands now allow `\?' in the
1152 replacement string to specify a position where the replacement string
1153 can be edited for each replacement.
1155 ** query-replace uses isearch lazy highlighting when the new user option
1156 `query-replace-lazy-highlight' is non-nil.
1158 ** The current match in query-replace is highlighted in new face
1159 `query-replace' which by default inherits from isearch face.
1162 ** Emacs normally highlights mouse sensitive text whenever the mouse
1163 is over the text. By setting the new variable `mouse-highlight', you
1164 can optionally enable mouse highlighting only after you move the
1165 mouse, so that highlighting disappears when you press a key. You can
1166 also disable mouse highlighting.
1168 ** You can now customize if selecting a region by dragging the mouse
1169 shall not copy the selected text to the kill-ring by setting the new
1170 variable mouse-drag-copy-region to nil.
1173 ** font-lock: in modes like C and Lisp where the fontification assumes that
1174 an open-paren in column 0 is always outside of any string or comment,
1175 font-lock now highlights any such open-paren-in-column-zero in bold-red
1176 if it is inside a string or a comment, to indicate that it can cause
1177 trouble with fontification and/or indentation.
1180 ** There's a new face `minibuffer-prompt'.
1181 Emacs adds this face to the list of text properties stored in the
1182 variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', which is used to display the
1186 ** The new face `mode-line-inactive' is used to display the mode line
1187 of non-selected windows. The `mode-line' face is now used to display
1188 the mode line of the currently selected window.
1190 The new variable `mode-line-in-non-selected-windows' controls whether
1191 the `mode-line-inactive' face is used.
1194 ** A menu item "Show/Hide" was added to the top-level menu "Options".
1195 This menu allows you to turn various display features on and off (such
1196 as the fringes, the tool bar, the speedbar, and the menu bar itself).
1197 You can also move the vertical scroll bar to either side here or turn
1198 it off completely. There is also a menu-item to toggle displaying of
1199 current date and time, current line and column number in the
1203 ** Speedbar has moved from the "Tools" top level menu to "Show/Hide".
1206 ** Emacs can now indicate in the mode-line the presence of new e-mail
1207 in a directory or in a file. See the documentation of the user option
1208 `display-time-mail-directory'.
1211 ** LDAP support now defaults to ldapsearch from OpenLDAP version 2.
1214 ** You can now disable pc-selection-mode after enabling it.
1215 M-x pc-selection-mode behaves like a proper minor mode, and with no
1216 argument it toggles the mode.
1218 Turning off PC-Selection mode restores the global key bindings
1219 that were replaced by turning on the mode.
1222 ** Emacs now displays a splash screen by default even if command-line
1223 arguments were given. The new command-line option --no-splash
1224 disables the splash screen; see also the variable
1225 `inhibit-startup-message' (which is also aliased as
1226 `inhibit-splash-screen').
1228 ** Changes in support of colors on character terminals
1231 *** The new command-line option --color=MODE lets you specify a standard
1232 mode for a tty color support. It is meant to be used on character
1233 terminals whose capabilities are not set correctly in the terminal
1234 database, or with terminal emulators which support colors, but don't
1235 set the TERM environment variable to a name of a color-capable
1236 terminal. "emacs --color" uses the same color commands as GNU `ls'
1237 when invoked with "ls --color", so if your terminal can support colors
1238 in "ls --color", it will support "emacs --color" as well. See the
1239 user manual for the possible values of the MODE parameter.
1242 *** Emacs now supports several character terminals which provide more
1243 than 8 colors. For example, for `xterm', 16-color, 88-color, and
1244 256-color modes are supported. Emacs automatically notes at startup
1245 the extended number of colors, and defines the appropriate entries for
1246 all of these colors.
1249 *** Emacs now uses the full range of available colors for the default
1250 faces when running on a color terminal, including 16-, 88-, and
1251 256-color xterms. This means that when you run "emacs -nw" on an
1252 88-color or 256-color xterm, you will see essentially the same face
1256 *** There's a new support for colors on `rxvt' terminal emulator.
1259 ** Emacs can now be invoked in full-screen mode on a windowed display.
1261 When Emacs is invoked on a window system, the new command-line options
1262 `--fullwidth', `--fullheight', and `--fullscreen' produce a frame
1263 whose width, height, or both width and height take up the entire
1264 screen size. (For now, this does not work with some window managers.)
1267 ** Emacs now tries to set up buffer coding systems for HTML/XML files
1271 ** The new command `comint-insert-previous-argument' in comint-derived
1272 modes (shell-mode etc) inserts arguments from previous command lines,
1273 like bash's `ESC .' binding. It is bound by default to `C-c .', but
1274 otherwise behaves quite similarly to the bash version.
1277 ** Changes in C-h bindings:
1279 C-h e displays the *Messages* buffer.
1281 C-h followed by a control character is used for displaying files
1284 C-h C-f displays the FAQ.
1285 C-h C-e displays the PROBLEMS file.
1287 The info-search bindings on C-h C-f, C-h C-k and C-h C-i
1288 have been moved to C-h F, C-h K and C-h S.
1290 C-h c, C-h k, C-h w, and C-h f now handle remapped interactive commands.
1292 - C-h c and C-h k report the actual command (after possible remapping)
1293 run by the key sequence.
1295 - C-h w and C-h f on a command which has been remapped now report the
1296 command it is remapped to, and the keys which can be used to run
1299 For example, if C-k is bound to kill-line, and kill-line is remapped
1300 to new-kill-line, these commands now report:
1302 - C-h c and C-h k C-k reports:
1303 C-k runs the command new-kill-line
1305 - C-h w and C-h f kill-line reports:
1306 kill-line is remapped to new-kill-line which is on C-k, <deleteline>
1308 - C-h w and C-h f new-kill-line reports:
1309 new-kill-line is on C-k
1312 ** Vertical scrolling is now possible within incremental search.
1313 To enable this feature, customize the new user option
1314 `isearch-allow-scroll'. User written commands which satisfy stringent
1315 constraints can be marked as "scrolling commands". See the Emacs manual
1319 ** C-w in incremental search now grabs either a character or a word,
1320 making the decision in a heuristic way. This new job is done by the
1321 command `isearch-yank-word-or-char'. To restore the old behavior,
1322 bind C-w to `isearch-yank-word' in `isearch-mode-map'.
1325 ** C-y in incremental search now grabs the next line if point is already
1326 at the end of a line.
1329 ** C-M-w deletes and C-M-y grabs a character in isearch mode.
1330 Another method to grab a character is to enter the minibuffer by `M-e'
1331 and to type `C-f' at the end of the search string in the minibuffer.
1334 ** M-% typed in isearch mode invokes `query-replace' or
1335 `query-replace-regexp' (depending on search mode) with the current
1336 search string used as the string to replace.
1339 ** Isearch no longer adds `isearch-resume' commands to the command
1340 history by default. To enable this feature, customize the new
1341 user option `isearch-resume-in-command-history'.
1344 ** New user option `history-delete-duplicates'.
1345 If set to t when adding a new history element, all previous identical
1346 elements are deleted.
1349 ** Yanking text now discards certain text properties that can
1350 be inconvenient when you did not expect them. The variable
1351 `yank-excluded-properties' specifies which ones. Insertion
1352 of register contents and rectangles also discards these properties.
1355 ** Occur, Info, and comint-derived modes now support using
1356 M-x font-lock-mode to toggle fontification. The variable
1357 `Info-fontify' is no longer applicable; to disable fontification,
1358 remove `turn-on-font-lock' from `Info-mode-hook'.
1361 ** M-x grep now tries to avoid appending `/dev/null' to the command line
1362 by using GNU grep `-H' option instead. M-x grep automatically
1363 detects whether this is possible or not the first time it is invoked.
1364 When `-H' is used, the grep command line supplied by the user is passed
1365 unchanged to the system to execute, which allows more complicated
1366 command lines to be used than was possible before.
1369 ** The face-customization widget has been reworked to be less confusing.
1370 In particular, when you enable a face attribute using the corresponding
1371 check-box, there's no longer a redundant `*' option in value selection
1372 for that attribute; the values you can choose are only those which make
1373 sense for the attribute. When an attribute is de-selected by unchecking
1374 its check-box, then the (now ignored, but still present temporarily in
1375 case you re-select the attribute) value is hidden.
1378 ** When you set or reset a variable's value in a Customize buffer,
1379 the previous value becomes the "backup value" of the variable.
1380 You can go back to that backup value by selecting "Use Backup Value"
1381 under the "[State]" button.
1383 ** The new customization type `float' specifies numbers with floating
1384 point (no integers are allowed).
1387 ** In GUD mode, when talking to GDB, C-x C-a C-j "jumps" the program
1388 counter to the specified source line (the one where point is).
1391 ** GUD mode improvements for jdb:
1393 *** Search for source files using jdb classpath and class
1394 information. Fast startup since there is no need to scan all
1395 source files up front. There is also no need to create and maintain
1396 lists of source directories to scan. Look at `gud-jdb-use-classpath'
1397 and `gud-jdb-classpath' customization variables documentation.
1399 *** Supports the standard breakpoint (gud-break, gud-clear)
1400 set/clear operations from java source files under the classpath, stack
1401 traversal (gud-up, gud-down), and run until current stack finish
1404 *** Supports new jdb (Java 1.2 and later) in addition to oldjdb
1407 *** The previous method of searching for source files has been
1408 preserved in case someone still wants/needs to use it.
1409 Set gud-jdb-use-classpath to nil.
1411 Added Customization Variables
1413 *** gud-jdb-command-name. What command line to use to invoke jdb.
1415 *** gud-jdb-use-classpath. Allows selection of java source file searching
1416 method: set to t for new method, nil to scan gud-jdb-directories for
1417 java sources (previous method).
1419 *** gud-jdb-directories. List of directories to scan and search for java
1420 classes using the original gud-jdb method (if gud-jdb-use-classpath
1425 *** The STARTTLS elisp wrapper (starttls.el) can now use GNUTLS
1426 instead of the OpenSSL based "starttls" tool. For backwards
1427 compatibility, it prefers "starttls", but you can toggle
1428 `starttls-use-gnutls' to switch to GNUTLS (or simply remove the
1431 *** Do not allow debugger output history variable to grow without bounds.
1434 ** hide-ifdef-mode now uses overlays rather than selective-display
1435 to hide its text. This should be mostly transparent but slightly
1436 changes the behavior of motion commands like C-e and C-p.
1439 ** Unquoted `$' in file names do not signal an error any more when
1440 the corresponding environment variable does not exist.
1441 Instead, the `$ENVVAR' text is left as is, so that `$$' quoting
1442 is only rarely needed.
1446 *** jit-lock can now be delayed with `jit-lock-defer-time'.
1448 If this variable is non-nil, its value should be the amount of Emacs
1449 idle time in seconds to wait before starting fontification. For
1450 example, if you set `jit-lock-defer-time' to 0.25, fontification will
1451 only happen after 0.25s of idle time.
1453 *** contextual refontification is now separate from stealth fontification.
1455 jit-lock-defer-contextually is renamed jit-lock-contextually and
1456 jit-lock-context-time determines the delay after which contextual
1457 refontification takes place.
1460 ** Marking commands extend the region when invoked multiple times. If
1461 you hit M-C-SPC (mark-sexp), M-@ (mark-word), M-h (mark-paragraph), or
1462 C-M-h (mark-defun) repeatedly, the marked region extends each time, so
1463 you can mark the next two sexps with M-C-SPC M-C-SPC, for example.
1464 This feature also works for mark-end-of-sentence, if you bind that to
1465 a key. It also extends the region when the mark is active in Transient
1466 Mark mode, regardless of the last command. To start a new region with
1467 one of marking commands in Transient Mark mode, you can deactivate the
1468 active region with C-g, or set the new mark with C-SPC.
1471 ** Some commands do something special in Transient Mark mode when the
1472 mark is active--for instance, they limit their operation to the
1473 region. Even if you don't normally use Transient Mark mode, you might
1474 want to get this behavior from a particular command. There are two
1475 ways you can enable Transient Mark mode and activate the mark, for one
1478 One method is to type C-SPC C-SPC; this enables Transient Mark mode
1479 and sets the mark at point. The other method is to type C-u C-x C-x.
1480 This enables Transient Mark mode temporarily but does not alter the
1483 After these commands, Transient Mark mode remains enabled until you
1484 deactivate the mark. That typically happens when you type a command
1485 that alters the buffer, but you can also deactivate the mark by typing
1489 ** A prefix argument is no longer required to repeat a jump to a
1490 previous mark, i.e. C-u C-SPC C-SPC C-SPC ... cycles through the
1491 mark ring. Use C-u C-u C-SPC to set the mark immediately after a jump.
1493 ** Movement commands `beginning-of-buffer', `end-of-buffer',
1494 `beginning-of-defun', `end-of-defun' do not set the mark if the mark
1495 is already active in Transient Mark mode.
1498 ** In the *Occur* buffer, `o' switches to it in another window, and
1499 C-o displays the current line's occurrence in another window without
1503 ** When you specify a frame size with --geometry, the size applies to
1504 all frames you create. A position specified with --geometry only
1505 affects the initial frame.
1508 ** M-h (mark-paragraph) now accepts a prefix arg.
1509 With positive arg, M-h marks the current and the following paragraphs;
1510 if the arg is negative, it marks the current and the preceding
1514 ** The variables dired-free-space-program and dired-free-space-args
1515 have been renamed to directory-free-space-program and
1516 directory-free-space-args, and they now apply whenever Emacs puts a
1517 directory listing into a buffer.
1520 ** mouse-wheels can now scroll a specific fraction of the window
1521 (rather than a fixed number of lines) and the scrolling is `progressive'.
1523 ** Unexpected yanking of text due to accidental clicking on the mouse
1524 wheel button (typically mouse-2) during wheel scrolling is now avoided.
1525 This behaviour can be customized via the mouse-wheel-click-event and
1526 mouse-wheel-inhibit-click-time variables.
1529 ** The keyboard-coding-system is now automatically set based on your
1530 current locale settings if you are not using a window system. This
1531 may mean that the META key doesn't work but generates non-ASCII
1532 characters instead, depending on how the terminal (or terminal
1533 emulator) works. Use `set-keyboard-coding-system' (or customize
1534 keyboard-coding-system) if you prefer META to work (the old default)
1535 or if the locale doesn't describe the character set actually generated
1536 by the keyboard. See Info node `Single-Byte Character Support'.
1539 ** Emacs now reads the standard abbrevs file ~/.abbrev_defs
1540 automatically at startup, if it exists. When Emacs offers to save
1541 modified buffers, it saves the abbrevs too if they have changed. It
1542 can do this either silently or asking for confirmation first,
1543 according to the value of `save-abbrevs'.
1546 ** Display of hollow cursors now obeys the buffer-local value (if any)
1547 of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' in the buffer that the cursor
1550 ** The variable `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' can now be set to any
1551 of the recognized cursor types.
1554 ** The variable `auto-save-file-name-transforms' now has a third element that
1555 controls whether or not the function `make-auto-save-file-name' will
1556 attempt to construct a unique auto-save name (e.g. for remote files).
1559 ** There is a new calendar package, icalendar.el, that can be used to
1560 convert Emacs diary entries to/from the iCalendar format.
1563 ** Diary sexp entries can have custom marking in the calendar.
1564 Diary sexp functions which only apply to certain days (such as
1565 `diary-block' or `diary-cyclic') now take an optional parameter MARK,
1566 which is the name of a face or a single-character string indicating
1567 how to highlight the day in the calendar display. Specifying a
1568 single-character string as @var{mark} places the character next to the
1569 day in the calendar. Specifying a face highlights the day with that
1570 face. This lets you have different colors or markings for vacations,
1571 appointments, paydays or anything else using a sexp.
1574 ** The new function `calendar-goto-day-of-year' (g D) prompts for a
1575 year and day number, and moves to that date. Negative day numbers
1576 count backward from the end of the year.
1579 ** The new Calendar function `calendar-goto-iso-week' (g w)
1580 prompts for a year and a week number, and moves to the first
1581 day of that ISO week.
1584 ** The functions `holiday-easter-etc' and `holiday-advent' now take
1585 optional arguments, in order to only report on the specified holiday
1586 rather than all. This makes customization of variables such as
1587 `christian-holidays' simpler.
1589 ** The function `simple-diary-display' now by default sets a header line.
1590 This can be controlled through the variables `diary-header-line-flag'
1591 and `diary-header-line-format'.
1594 ** The procedure for activating appointment reminders has changed: use
1595 the new function `appt-activate'. The new variable
1596 `appt-display-format' controls how reminders are displayed, replacing
1597 appt-issue-message, appt-visible, and appt-msg-window.
1599 ** The new functions `diary-from-outlook', `diary-from-outlook-gnus',
1600 and `diary-from-outlook-rmail' can be used to import diary entries
1601 from Outlook-format appointments in mail messages. The variable
1602 `diary-outlook-formats' can be customized to recognize additional
1608 *** The key C-x C-q no longer checks files in or out, it only changes
1609 the read-only state of the buffer (toggle-read-only). We made this
1610 change because we held a poll and found that many users were unhappy
1611 with the previous behavior. If you do prefer this behavior, you
1612 can bind `vc-toggle-read-only' to C-x C-q in your .emacs:
1614 (global-set-key "\C-x\C-q" 'vc-toggle-read-only)
1616 The function `vc-toggle-read-only' will continue to exist.
1619 *** There is a new user option `vc-cvs-global-switches' that allows
1620 you to specify switches that are passed to any CVS command invoked
1621 by VC. These switches are used as "global options" for CVS, which
1622 means they are inserted before the command name. For example, this
1623 allows you to specify a compression level using the "-z#" option for
1626 *** New backends for Subversion and Meta-CVS.
1631 *** When comparing directories.
1632 Typing D brings up a buffer that lists the differences between the contents of
1633 directories. Now it is possible to use this buffer to copy the missing files
1634 from one directory to another.
1637 *** When comparing files or buffers.
1638 Typing the = key now offers to perform the word-by-word comparison of the
1639 currently highlighted regions in an inferior Ediff session. If you answer 'n'
1640 then it reverts to the old behavior and asks the user to select regions for
1643 *** The new command `ediff-backup' compares a file with its most recent
1644 backup using `ediff'. If you specify the name of a backup file,
1645 `ediff-backup' compares it with the file of which it is a backup.
1650 *** New regular expressions features
1652 **** New syntax for regular expressions, multi-line regular expressions.
1653 The syntax --ignore-case-regexp=/regex/ is now undocumented and retained
1654 only for backward compatibility. The new equivalent syntax is
1655 --regex=/regex/i. More generally, it is --regex=/TAGREGEX/TAGNAME/MODS,
1656 where `/TAGNAME' is optional, as usual, and MODS is a string of 0 or
1657 more characters among `i' (ignore case), `m' (multi-line) and `s'
1658 (single-line). The `m' and `s' modifiers behave as in Perl regular
1659 expressions: `m' allows regexps to match more than one line, while `s'
1660 (which implies `m') means that `.' matches newlines. The ability to
1661 span newlines allows writing of much more powerful regular expressions
1662 and rapid prototyping for tagging new languages.
1664 **** Regular expressions can use char escape sequences as in Gcc.
1665 The escaped character sequence \a, \b, \d, \e, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v,
1666 respectively, stand for the ASCII characters BEL, BS, DEL, ESC, FF, NL,
1669 **** Regular expressions can be bound to a given language.
1670 The syntax --regex={LANGUAGE}REGEX means that REGEX is used to make tags
1671 only for files of language LANGUAGE, and ignored otherwise. This is
1672 particularly useful when storing regexps in a file.
1674 **** Regular expressions can be read from a file.
1675 The --regex=@regexfile option means read the regexps from a file, one
1676 per line. Lines beginning with space or tab are ignored.
1678 *** New language parsing features
1680 **** The `::' qualifier triggers C++ parsing in C file.
1681 Previously, only the `template' and `class' keywords had this effect.
1683 **** The gnucc __attribute__ keyword is now recognised and ignored.
1685 **** New language HTML.
1686 Title and h1, h2, h3 are tagged. Also, tags are generated when name= is
1687 used inside an anchor and whenever id= is used.
1689 **** In Makefiles, constants are tagged.
1690 If you want the old behavior instead, thus avoiding to increase the
1691 size of the tags file, use the --no-globals option.
1693 **** New language Lua.
1694 All functions are tagged.
1696 **** In Perl, packages are tags.
1697 Subroutine tags are named from their package. You can jump to sub tags
1698 as you did before, by the sub name, or additionally by looking for
1701 **** In Prolog, etags creates tags for rules in addition to predicates.
1703 **** New language PHP.
1704 Tags are functions, classes and defines.
1705 If the --members option is specified to etags, tags are variables also.
1707 **** New default keywords for TeX.
1708 The new keywords are def, newcommand, renewcommand, newenvironment and
1711 *** Honour #line directives.
1712 When Etags parses an input file that contains C preprocessor's #line
1713 directives, it creates tags using the file name and line number
1714 specified in those directives. This is useful when dealing with code
1715 created from Cweb source files. When Etags tags the generated file, it
1716 writes tags pointing to the source file.
1718 *** New option --parse-stdin=FILE.
1719 This option is mostly useful when calling etags from programs. It can
1720 be used (only once) in place of a file name on the command line. Etags
1721 reads from standard input and marks the produced tags as belonging to
1727 *** Font lock support.
1728 CC Mode now provides font lock support for all its languages. This
1729 supersedes the font lock patterns that have been in the core font lock
1730 package for C, C++, Java and Objective-C. Like indentation, font
1731 locking is done in a uniform way across all languages (except the new
1732 AWK mode - see below). That means that the new font locking will be
1733 different from the old patterns in various details for most languages.
1735 The main goal of the font locking in CC Mode is accuracy, to provide a
1736 dependable aid in recognizing the various constructs. Some, like
1737 strings and comments, are easy to recognize while others like
1738 declarations and types can be very tricky. CC Mode can go to great
1739 lengths to recognize declarations and casts correctly, especially when
1740 the types aren't recognized by standard patterns. This is a fairly
1741 demanding analysis which can be slow on older hardware, and it can
1742 therefore be disabled by choosing a lower decoration level with the
1743 variable font-lock-maximum-decoration.
1745 Note that the most demanding font lock level has been tuned with lazy
1746 fontification in mind, i.e. there should be a support mode that waits
1747 with the fontification until the text is actually shown
1748 (e.g. Just-in-time Lock mode, which is the default, or Lazy Lock
1749 mode). Fontifying a file with several thousand lines in one go can
1750 take the better part of a minute.
1752 **** The (c|c++|objc|java|idl|pike)-font-lock-extra-types variables
1753 are now used by CC Mode to recognize identifiers that are certain to
1754 be types. (They are also used in cases that aren't related to font
1755 locking.) At the maximum decoration level, types are often recognized
1756 properly anyway, so these variables should be fairly restrictive and
1757 not contain patterns for uncertain types.
1759 **** Support for documentation comments.
1760 There is a "plugin" system to fontify documentation comments like
1761 Javadoc and the markup within them. It's independent of the host
1762 language, so it's possible to e.g. turn on Javadoc font locking in C
1763 buffers. See the variable c-doc-comment-style for details.
1765 Currently two kinds of doc comment styles are recognized: Suns Javadoc
1766 and Autodoc which is used in Pike. This is by no means a complete
1767 list of the most common tools; if your doc comment extractor of choice
1768 is missing then please drop a note to bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.
1770 **** Better handling of C++ templates.
1771 As a side effect of the more accurate font locking, C++ templates are
1772 now handled much better. The angle brackets that delimit them are
1773 given parenthesis syntax so that they can be navigated like other
1776 This also improves indentation of templates, although there still is
1777 work to be done in that area. E.g. it's required that multiline
1778 template clauses are written in full and then refontified to be
1779 recognized, and the indentation of nested templates is a bit odd and
1780 not as configurable as it ought to be.
1782 **** Improved handling of Objective-C and CORBA IDL.
1783 Especially the support for Objective-C and IDL has gotten an overhaul.
1784 The special "@" declarations in Objective-C are handled correctly.
1785 All the keywords used in CORBA IDL, PSDL, and CIDL are recognized and
1786 handled correctly, also wrt indentation.
1788 *** Support for the AWK language.
1789 Support for the AWK language has been introduced. The implementation is
1790 based around GNU AWK version 3.1, but it should work pretty well with
1791 any AWK. As yet, not all features of CC Mode have been adapted for AWK.
1794 **** Indentation Engine
1795 The CC Mode indentation engine fully supports AWK mode.
1797 AWK mode handles code formatted in the conventional AWK fashion: `{'s
1798 which start actions, user-defined functions, or compound statements are
1799 placed on the same line as the associated construct; the matching `}'s
1800 are normally placed under the start of the respective pattern, function
1801 definition, or structured statement.
1803 The predefined indentation functions haven't yet been adapted for AWK
1804 mode, though some of them may work serendipitously. There shouldn't be
1805 any problems writing custom indentation functions for AWK mode.
1807 The command C-c C-q (c-indent-defun) hasn't yet been adapted for AWK,
1808 though in practice it works properly nearly all the time. Should it
1809 fail, explicitly set the region around the function (using C-u C-SPC:
1810 C-M-h probably won't work either) then do C-M-\ (indent-region).
1813 There is a single level of font locking in AWK mode, rather than the
1814 three distinct levels the other modes have. There are several
1815 idiosyncrasies in AWK mode's font-locking due to the peculiarities of
1816 the AWK language itself.
1818 **** Comment Commands
1819 M-; (indent-for-comment) works fine. None of the other CC Mode
1820 comment formatting commands have yet been adapted for AWK mode.
1822 **** Movement Commands
1823 Most of the movement commands work in AWK mode. The most important
1824 exceptions are M-a (c-beginning-of-statement) and M-e
1825 (c-end-of-statement) which haven't yet been adapted.
1827 The notion of "defun" has been augmented to include AWK pattern-action
1828 pairs. C-M-a (c-awk-beginning-of-defun) and C-M-e (c-awk-end-of-defun)
1829 recognise these pattern-action pairs, as well as user defined
1832 **** Auto-newline Insertion and Clean-ups
1833 Auto-newline insertion hasn't yet been adapted for AWK. Some of
1834 the clean-ups can actually convert good AWK code into syntactically
1835 invalid code. These features are best disabled in AWK buffers.
1837 *** New syntactic symbols in IDL mode.
1838 The top level constructs "module" and "composition" (from CIDL) are
1839 now handled like "namespace" in C++: They are given syntactic symbols
1840 module-open, module-close, inmodule, composition-open,
1841 composition-close, and incomposition.
1843 *** New functions to do hungry delete without enabling hungry delete mode.
1844 The functions c-hungry-backspace and c-hungry-delete-forward can be
1845 bound to keys to get this feature without toggling a mode.
1846 Contributed by Kevin Ryde.
1848 *** Better control over require-final-newline. The variable that
1849 controls how to handle a final newline when the buffer is saved,
1850 require-final-newline, is now customizable on a per-mode basis through
1851 c-require-final-newline. That is a list of modes, and only those
1852 modes set require-final-newline. By default that's C, C++ and
1855 The specified modes set require-final-newline based on
1856 mode-require-final-newline, as usual.
1858 *** Format change for syntactic context elements.
1859 The elements in the syntactic context returned by c-guess-basic-syntax
1860 and stored in c-syntactic-context has been changed somewhat to allow
1861 attaching more information. They are now lists instead of single cons
1862 cells. E.g. a line that previously had the syntactic analysis
1864 ((inclass . 11) (topmost-intro . 13))
1868 ((inclass 11) (topmost-intro 13))
1870 In some cases there are more than one position given for a syntactic
1873 This change might affect code that call c-guess-basic-syntax directly,
1874 and custom lineup functions if they use c-syntactic-context. However,
1875 the argument given to lineup functions is still a single cons cell
1876 with nil or an integer in the cdr.
1878 *** API changes for derived modes.
1879 There have been extensive changes "under the hood" which can affect
1880 derived mode writers. Some of these changes are likely to cause
1881 incompatibilities with existing derived modes, but on the other hand
1882 care has now been taken to make it possible to extend and modify CC
1883 Mode with less risk of such problems in the future.
1885 **** New language variable system.
1886 See the comment blurb near the top of cc-langs.el.
1888 **** New initialization functions.
1889 The initialization procedure has been split up into more functions to
1890 give better control: c-basic-common-init, c-font-lock-init, and
1891 c-init-language-vars.
1893 *** Changes in analysis of nested syntactic constructs.
1894 The syntactic analysis engine has better handling of cases where
1895 several syntactic constructs appear nested on the same line. They are
1896 now handled as if each construct started on a line of its own.
1898 This means that CC Mode now indents some cases differently, and
1899 although it's more consistent there might be cases where the old way
1900 gave results that's more to one's liking. So if you find a situation
1901 where you think that the indentation has become worse, please report
1902 it to bug-cc-mode@gnu.org.
1904 **** New syntactic symbol substatement-label.
1905 This symbol is used when a label is inserted between a statement and
1906 its substatement. E.g:
1912 *** Better handling of multiline macros.
1914 **** Syntactic indentation inside macros.
1915 The contents of multiline #define's are now analyzed and indented
1916 syntactically just like other code. This can be disabled by the new
1917 variable c-syntactic-indentation-in-macros. A new syntactic symbol
1918 cpp-define-intro has been added to control the initial indentation
1921 **** New lineup function c-lineup-cpp-define.
1922 Now used by default to line up macro continuation lines. The behavior
1923 of this function closely mimics the indentation one gets if the macro
1924 is indented while the line continuation backslashes are temporarily
1925 removed. If syntactic indentation in macros is turned off, it works
1926 much line c-lineup-dont-change, which was used earlier, but handles
1927 empty lines within the macro better.
1929 **** Automatically inserted newlines continues the macro if used within one.
1930 This applies to the newlines inserted by the auto-newline mode, and to
1931 c-context-line-break and c-context-open-line.
1933 **** Better alignment of line continuation backslashes.
1934 c-backslash-region tries to adapt to surrounding backslashes. New
1935 variable c-backslash-max-column which put a limit on how far out
1936 backslashes can be moved.
1938 **** Automatic alignment of line continuation backslashes.
1939 This is controlled by the new variable c-auto-align-backslashes. It
1940 affects c-context-line-break, c-context-open-line and newlines
1941 inserted in auto-newline mode.
1943 **** Line indentation works better inside macros.
1944 Regardless whether syntactic indentation and syntactic indentation
1945 inside macros are enabled or not, line indentation now ignores the
1946 line continuation backslashes. This is most noticeable when syntactic
1947 indentation is turned off and there are empty lines (save for the
1948 backslash) in the macro.
1950 *** indent-for-comment is more customizable.
1951 The behavior of M-; (indent-for-comment) is now configurable through
1952 the variable c-indent-comment-alist. The indentation behavior based
1953 on the preceding code on the line, e.g. to get two spaces after #else
1954 and #endif but indentation to comment-column in most other cases
1955 (something which was hardcoded earlier).
1957 *** New function c-context-open-line.
1958 It's the open-line equivalent of c-context-line-break.
1960 *** New lineup functions
1962 **** c-lineup-string-cont
1963 This lineup function lines up a continued string under the one it
1966 result = prefix + "A message "
1967 "string."; <- c-lineup-string-cont
1969 **** c-lineup-cascaded-calls
1970 Lines up series of calls separated by "->" or ".".
1972 **** c-lineup-knr-region-comment
1973 Gives (what most people think is) better indentation of comments in
1974 the "K&R region" between the function header and its body.
1976 **** c-lineup-gcc-asm-reg
1977 Provides better indentation inside asm blocks. Contributed by Kevin
1980 **** c-lineup-argcont
1981 Lines up continued function arguments after the preceding comma.
1982 Contributed by Kevin Ryde.
1984 *** Better caching of the syntactic context.
1985 CC Mode caches the positions of the opening parentheses (of any kind)
1986 of the lists surrounding the point. Those positions are used in many
1987 places as anchor points for various searches. The cache is now
1988 improved so that it can be reused to a large extent when the point is
1989 moved. The less it moves, the less needs to be recalculated.
1991 The effect is that CC Mode should be fast most of the time even when
1992 opening parens are hung (i.e. aren't in column zero). It's typically
1993 only the first time after the point is moved far down in a complex
1994 file that it'll take noticeable time to find out the syntactic
1997 *** Statements are recognized in a more robust way.
1998 Statements are recognized most of the time even when they occur in an
1999 "invalid" context, e.g. in a function argument. In practice that can
2000 happen when macros are involved.
2002 *** Improved the way c-indent-exp chooses the block to indent.
2003 It now indents the block for the closest sexp following the point
2004 whose closing paren ends on a different line. This means that the
2005 point doesn't have to be immediately before the block to indent.
2006 Also, only the block and the closing line is indented; the current
2007 line is left untouched.
2009 *** Added toggle for syntactic indentation.
2010 The function c-toggle-syntactic-indentation can be used to toggle
2011 syntactic indentation.
2013 ** The command line option --no-windows has been changed to
2014 --no-window-system. The old one still works, but is deprecated.
2017 ** The command `list-text-properties-at' has been deleted because
2018 C-u C-x = gives the same information and more.
2021 ** `buffer-menu' and `list-buffers' now list buffers whose names begin
2022 with a space, when those buffers are visiting files. Normally buffers
2023 whose names begin with space are omitted.
2026 ** You can now customize fill-nobreak-predicate to control where
2027 filling can break lines. We provide two sample predicates,
2028 fill-single-word-nobreak-p and fill-french-nobreak-p.
2031 ** New user option `add-log-always-start-new-record'.
2032 When this option is enabled, M-x add-change-log-entry always
2033 starts a new record regardless of when the last record is.
2036 ** SGML mode has indentation and supports XML syntax.
2037 The new variable `sgml-xml-mode' tells SGML mode to use XML syntax.
2038 When this option is enabled, SGML tags are inserted in XML style,
2039 i.e., there is always a closing tag.
2040 By default, its setting is inferred on a buffer-by-buffer basis
2041 from the file name or buffer contents.
2044 ** `xml-mode' is now an alias for `sgml-mode', which has XML support.
2047 ** Lisp mode now uses font-lock-doc-face for the docstrings.
2050 ** Perl mode has a new variable `perl-indent-continued-arguments'.
2053 ** Fortran mode has a new variable `fortran-directive-re'.
2054 Adapt this to match the format of any compiler directives you use.
2055 Lines that match are never indented, and are given distinctive font-locking.
2058 ** F90 mode has new navigation commands `f90-end-of-block',
2059 `f90-beginning-of-block', `f90-next-block', `f90-previous-block'.
2061 ** F90 mode now has support for hs-minor-mode (hideshow).
2062 It cannot deal with every code format, but ought to handle a sizeable
2066 ** The new function `f90-backslash-not-special' can be used to change
2067 the syntax of backslashes in F90 buffers.
2070 ** Prolog mode has a new variable `prolog-font-lock-keywords'
2071 to support use of font-lock.
2074 ** `special-display-buffer-names' and `special-display-regexps' now
2075 understand two new boolean pseudo-frame-parameters `same-frame' and
2079 ** M-x setenv now expands environment variables of the form `$foo' and
2080 `${foo}' in the specified new value of the environment variable. To
2081 include a `$' in the value, use `$$'.
2084 ** File-name completion can now ignore directories.
2085 If an element of the list in `completion-ignored-extensions' ends in a
2086 slash `/', it indicates a subdirectory that should be ignored when
2087 completing file names. Elements of `completion-ignored-extensions'
2088 which do not end in a slash are never considered when a completion
2089 candidate is a directory.
2092 ** The completion commands TAB, SPC and ? in the minibuffer apply only
2093 to the text before point. If there is text in the buffer after point,
2094 it remains unchanged.
2096 ** Enhanced visual feedback in *Completions* buffer.
2098 Completions lists use faces to highlight what all completions
2099 have in common and where they begin to differ.
2101 The common prefix shared by all possible completions uses the face
2102 `completions-common-part', while the first character that isn't the
2103 same uses the face `completions-first-difference'. By default,
2104 `completions-common-part' inherits from `default', and
2105 `completions-first-difference' inherits from `bold'. The idea of
2106 `completions-common-part' is that you can use it to make the common
2107 parts less visible than normal, so that the rest of the differing
2108 parts is, by contrast, slightly highlighted.
2111 ** New user option `inhibit-startup-buffer-menu'.
2112 When loading many files, for instance with `emacs *', Emacs normally
2113 displays a buffer menu. This option turns the buffer menu off.
2116 ** Rmail now displays 5-digit message ids in its summary buffer.
2119 ** On MS Windows, the "system caret" now follows the cursor.
2120 This enables Emacs to work better with programs that need to track
2121 the cursor, for example screen magnifiers and text to speech programs.
2124 ** Tooltips now work on MS Windows.
2125 See the Emacs 21.1 NEWS entry for tooltips for details.
2128 ** Images are now supported on MS Windows.
2129 PBM and XBM images are supported out of the box. Other image formats
2130 depend on external libraries. All of these libraries have been ported
2131 to Windows, and can be found in both source and binary form at
2132 http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. Note that libpng also depends on
2133 zlib, and tiff depends on the version of jpeg that it was compiled
2134 against. For additional information, see nt/INSTALL.
2137 ** Sound is now supported on MS Windows.
2138 WAV format is supported on all versions of Windows, other formats such
2139 as AU, AIFF and MP3 may be supported in the more recent versions of
2140 Windows, or when other software provides hooks into the system level
2141 sound support for those formats.
2144 ** Different shaped mouse pointers are supported on MS Windows.
2145 The mouse pointer changes shape depending on what is under the pointer.
2148 ** Pointing devices with more than 3 buttons are now supported on MS Windows.
2149 The new variable `w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system' controls
2150 whether Emacs should handle the extra buttons itself (the default), or
2151 pass them to Windows to be handled with system-wide functions.
2154 ** Emacs takes note of colors defined in Control Panel on MS-Windows.
2155 The Control Panel defines some default colors for applications in much
2156 the same way as wildcard X Resources do on X. Emacs now adds these
2157 colors to the colormap prefixed by System (eg SystemMenu for the
2158 default Menu background, SystemMenuText for the foreground), and uses
2159 some of them to initialize some of the default faces.
2160 `list-colors-display' shows the list of System color names, in case
2161 you wish to use them in other faces.
2164 ** Under X11, it is possible to swap Alt and Meta (and Super and Hyper).
2165 The new variables `x-alt-keysym', `x-hyper-keysym', `x-meta-keysym',
2166 and `x-super-keysym' can be used to choose which keysyms Emacs should
2167 use for the modifiers. For example, the following two lines swap
2169 (setq x-alt-keysym 'meta)
2170 (setq x-meta-keysym 'alt)
2173 ** vc-annotate-mode enhancements
2175 In vc-annotate mode, you can now use the following key bindings for
2176 enhanced functionality to browse the annotations of past revisions, or
2177 to view diffs or log entries directly from vc-annotate-mode:
2179 P: annotates the previous revision
2180 N: annotates the next revision
2181 J: annotates the revision at line
2182 A: annotates the revision previous to line
2183 D: shows the diff of the revision at line with its previous revision
2184 L: shows the log of the revision at line
2185 W: annotates the workfile (most up to date) version
2188 ** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d y' command to view the diffs
2189 between the local version of the file and yesterday's head revision
2193 ** In pcl-cvs mode, there is a new `d r' command to view the changes
2194 anyone has committed to the repository since you last executed
2195 "checkout", "update" or "commit". That means using cvs diff options
2198 ** New variable `hs-set-up-overlay' allows customization of the overlay
2199 used to effect hiding for hideshow minor mode. Integration with isearch
2200 handles the overlay property `display' specially, preserving it during
2201 temporary overlay showing in the course of an isearch operation.
2203 ** New command `recode-region' decodes the region again by a specified
2207 * New modes and packages in Emacs 21.4
2209 ** The new package conf-mode.el handles thousands of configuration files, with
2210 varying syntaxes for comments (;, #, //, /* */ or !), assignment (var = value,
2211 var : value, var value or keyword var value) and sections ([section] or
2212 section { }). Many files under /etc/, or with suffixes like .cf through
2213 .config, .properties (Java), .desktop (KDE/Gnome), .ini and many others are
2216 ** The new package password.el provide a password cache and expiring mechanism.
2218 ** The new package dns-mode.el add syntax highlight of DNS master files.
2219 The key binding C-c C-s (`dns-mode-soa-increment-serial') can be used
2220 to increment the SOA serial.
2222 ** The new package flymake.el does on-the-fly syntax checking of program
2223 source files. See the Flymake's Info manual for more details.
2225 ** The library tree-widget.el provides a new widget to display a set
2226 of hierarchical data as an outline. For example, the tree-widget is
2227 well suited to display a hierarchy of directories and files.
2229 ** The wdired.el package allows you to use normal editing commands on Dired
2230 buffers to change filenames, permissions, etc...
2232 ** The thumbs.el package allows you to preview image files as thumbnails
2233 and can be invoked from a Dired buffer.
2235 ** The new python.el package is used to edit Python and Jython programs.
2237 ** The URL package (which had been part of W3) is now part of Emacs.
2240 ** The new global minor mode `size-indication-mode' (off by default)
2241 shows the size of accessible part of the buffer on the mode line.
2243 ** GDB-Script-mode is used for files like .gdbinit.
2246 ** Ido mode is now part of the Emacs distribution.
2248 The ido (interactively do) package is an extension of the iswitchb
2249 package to do interactive opening of files and directories in addition
2250 to interactive buffer switching. Ido is a superset of iswitchb (with
2251 a few exceptions), so don't enable both packages.
2254 ** CUA mode is now part of the Emacs distribution.
2256 The new cua package provides CUA-like keybindings using C-x for
2257 cut (kill), C-c for copy, C-v for paste (yank), and C-z for undo.
2258 With cua, the region can be set and extended using shifted movement
2259 keys (like pc-selection-mode) and typed text replaces the active
2260 region (like delete-selection-mode). Do not enable these modes with
2261 cua-mode. Customize the variable `cua-mode' to enable cua.
2263 In addition, cua provides unified rectangle support with visible
2264 rectangle highlighting: Use S-return to start a rectangle, extend it
2265 using the movement commands (or mouse-3), and cut or copy it using C-x
2266 or C-c (using C-w and M-w also works).
2268 Use M-o and M-c to `open' or `close' the rectangle, use M-b or M-f, to
2269 fill it with blanks or another character, use M-u or M-l to upcase or
2270 downcase the rectangle, use M-i to increment the numbers in the
2271 rectangle, use M-n to fill the rectangle with a numeric sequence (such
2272 as 10 20 30...), use M-r to replace a regexp in the rectangle, and use
2273 M-' or M-/ to restrict command on the rectangle to a subset of the
2274 rows. See the commentary in cua-base.el for more rectangle commands.
2276 Cua also provides unified support for registers: Use a numeric
2277 prefix argument between 0 and 9, i.e. M-0 .. M-9, for C-x, C-c, and
2278 C-v to cut or copy into register 0-9, or paste from register 0-9.
2280 The last text deleted (not killed) is automatically stored in
2281 register 0. This includes text deleted by typing text.
2283 Finally, cua provides a global mark which is set using S-C-space.
2284 When the global mark is active, any text which is cut or copied is
2285 automatically inserted at the global mark position. See the
2286 commentary in cua-base.el for more global mark related commands.
2288 The features of cua also works with the standard emacs bindings for
2289 kill, copy, yank, and undo. If you want to use cua mode, but don't
2290 want the C-x, C-c, C-v, and C-z bindings, you may customize the
2291 `cua-enable-cua-keys' variable.
2293 Note: This version of cua mode is not backwards compatible with older
2294 versions of cua.el and cua-mode.el. To ensure proper operation, you
2295 must remove older versions of cua.el or cua-mode.el as well as the
2296 loading and customization of those packages from the .emacs file.
2298 ** The new keypad setup package provides several common bindings for
2299 the numeric keypad which is available on most keyboards. The numeric
2300 keypad typically has the digits 0 to 9, a decimal point, keys marked
2301 +, -, /, and *, an Enter key, and a NumLock toggle key. The keypad
2302 package only controls the use of the digit and decimal keys.
2304 By customizing the variables `keypad-setup', `keypad-shifted-setup',
2305 `keypad-numlock-setup', and `keypad-numlock-shifted-setup', or by
2306 using the function `keypad-setup', you can rebind all digit keys and
2307 the decimal key of the keypad in one step for each of the four
2308 possible combinations of the Shift key state (not pressed/pressed) and
2309 the NumLock toggle state (off/on).
2311 The choices for the keypad keys in each of the above states are:
2312 `Plain numeric keypad' where the keys generates plain digits,
2313 `Numeric keypad with decimal key' where the character produced by the
2314 decimal key can be customized individually (for internationalization),
2315 `Numeric Prefix Arg' where the keypad keys produce numeric prefix args
2316 for emacs editing commands, `Cursor keys' and `Shifted Cursor keys'
2317 where the keys work like (shifted) arrow keys, home/end, etc., and
2318 `Unspecified/User-defined' where the keypad keys (kp-0, kp-1, etc.)
2319 are left unspecified and can be bound individually through the global
2323 ** The new kmacro package provides a simpler user interface to
2324 emacs' keyboard macro facilities.
2326 Basically, it uses two function keys (default F3 and F4) like this:
2327 F3 starts a macro, F4 ends the macro, and pressing F4 again executes
2328 the last macro. While defining the macro, F3 inserts a counter value
2329 which automatically increments every time the macro is executed.
2331 There is now a keyboard macro ring which stores the most recently
2334 The C-x C-k sequence is now a prefix for the kmacro keymap which
2335 defines bindings for moving through the keyboard macro ring,
2336 C-x C-k C-p and C-x C-k C-n, editing the last macro C-x C-k C-e,
2337 manipulating the macro counter and format via C-x C-k C-c,
2338 C-x C-k C-a, and C-x C-k C-f. See the commentary in kmacro.el
2341 The normal macro bindings C-x (, C-x ), and C-x e now interfaces to
2342 the keyboard macro ring.
2344 The C-x e command now automatically terminates the current macro
2345 before calling it, if used while defining a macro.
2347 In addition, when ending or calling a macro with C-x e, the macro can
2348 be repeated immediately by typing just the `e'. You can customize
2349 this behaviour via the variable kmacro-call-repeat-key and
2350 kmacro-call-repeat-with-arg.
2352 Keyboard macros can now be debugged and edited interactively.
2353 C-x C-k SPC steps through the last keyboard macro one key sequence
2354 at a time, prompting for the actions to take.
2357 ** The old Octave mode bindings C-c f and C-c i have been changed
2358 to C-c C-f and C-c C-i. The C-c C-i subcommands now have duplicate
2359 bindings on control characters--thus, C-c C-i C-b is the same as
2360 C-c C-i b, and so on.
2362 ** The printing package is now part of the Emacs distribution.
2364 If you enable the printing package by including (require 'printing) in
2365 the .emacs file, the normal Print item on the File menu is replaced
2366 with a Print sub-menu which allows you to preview output through
2367 ghostview, use ghostscript to print (if you don't have a PostScript
2368 printer) or send directly to printer a PostScript code generated by
2369 `ps-print' package. Use M-x pr-help for more information.
2372 ** Calc is now part of the Emacs distribution.
2374 Calc is an advanced desk calculator and mathematical tool written in
2375 Emacs Lisp. Its documentation is in a separate manual; within Emacs,
2376 type "C-h i m calc RET" to read that manual. A reference card is
2377 available in `etc/calccard.tex' and `etc/calccard.ps'.
2380 ** Tramp is now part of the distribution.
2382 This package is similar to Ange-FTP: it allows you to edit remote
2383 files. But whereas Ange-FTP uses FTP to access the remote host,
2384 Tramp uses a shell connection. The shell connection is always used
2385 for filename completion and directory listings and suchlike, but for
2386 the actual file transfer, you can choose between the so-called
2387 `inline' methods (which transfer the files through the shell
2388 connection using base64 or uu encoding) and the `out-of-band' methods
2389 (which invoke an external copying program such as `rcp' or `scp' or
2390 `rsync' to do the copying).
2392 Shell connections can be acquired via `rsh', `ssh', `telnet' and also
2396 ** The new global minor mode `file-name-shadow-mode' modifies the way
2397 filenames being entered by the user in the minibuffer are displayed, so
2398 that it's clear when part of the entered filename will be ignored due to
2399 emacs' filename parsing rules. The ignored portion can be made dim,
2400 invisible, or otherwise less visually noticable. The display method may
2401 be displayed by customizing the variable `file-name-shadow-properties'.
2404 ** The ruler-mode.el library provides a minor mode for displaying an
2405 "active" ruler in the header line. You can use the mouse to visually
2406 change the `fill-column', `window-margins' and `tab-stop-list'
2410 ** The minor mode Reveal mode makes text visible on the fly as you
2411 move your cursor into hidden regions of the buffer.
2412 It should work with any package that uses overlays to hide parts
2413 of a buffer, such as outline-minor-mode, hs-minor-mode, hide-ifdef-mode, ...
2415 There is also Global Reveal mode which affects all buffers.
2418 ** The new package ibuffer provides a powerful, completely
2419 customizable replacement for buff-menu.el.
2421 ** The new package table.el implements editable, WYSIWYG, embedded
2422 `text tables' in Emacs buffers. It simulates the effect of putting
2423 these tables in a special major mode. The package emulates WYSIWYG
2424 table editing available in modern word processors. The package also
2425 can generate a table source in typesetting and markup languages such
2426 as latex and html from the visually laid out text table.
2429 ** SES mode (ses-mode) is a new major mode for creating and editing
2430 spreadsheet files. Besides the usual Emacs features (intuitive command
2431 letters, undo, cell formulas in Lisp, plaintext files, etc.) it also offers
2432 viral immunity and import/export of tab-separated values.
2435 ** Support for `magic cookie' standout modes has been removed.
2436 Emacs will still work on terminals that require magic cookies in order
2437 to use standout mode, however they will not be able to display
2438 mode-lines in inverse-video.
2441 ** cplus-md.el has been removed to avoid problems with Custom.
2443 ** New package benchmark.el contains simple support for convenient
2444 timing measurements of code (including the garbage collection component).
2446 ** The new Lisp library fringe.el controls the appearance of fringes.
2448 ** `cfengine-mode' is a major mode for editing GNU Cfengine
2449 configuration files.
2451 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.4
2454 ** Mode line display ignores text properties as well as the
2455 :propertize and :eval forms in the value of a variable whose
2456 `risky-local-variable' property is nil.
2458 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.4
2461 ** If a buffer sets buffer-save-without-query to non-nil,
2462 save-some-buffers will always save that buffer without asking
2466 ** The function symbol-file tells you which file defined
2467 a certain function or variable.
2469 ** Lisp code can now test if a given buffer position is inside a
2470 clickable link with the new function `mouse-on-link-p'. This is the
2471 function used by the new `mouse-1-click-follows-link' functionality.
2474 ** (while-no-input BODY...) runs BODY, but only so long as no input
2475 arrives. If the user types or clicks anything, BODY stops as if a
2476 quit had occurred. while-no-input returns the value of BODY, if BODY
2477 finishes. It returns nil if BODY was aborted.
2480 ** `set-auto-mode' now gives the interpreter magic line (if present)
2481 precedence over the file name. Likewise an <?xml or <!DOCTYPE declaration
2482 will give the buffer XML or SGML mode, based on the new var
2486 ** New function `looking-back' checks whether a regular expression matches
2487 the text before point. Specifying the LIMIT argument bounds how far
2488 back the match can start; this is a way to keep it from taking too long.
2491 ** New functions `make-progress-reporter', `progress-reporter-update',
2492 `progress-reporter-force-update' and `progress-reporter-done' provide
2493 a simple and efficient way for a command to present progress messages
2497 ** To manipulate the File menu using easy-menu, you must specify the
2498 proper name "file". In previous Emacs versions, you had to specify
2499 "files", even though the menu item itself was changed to say "File"
2500 several versions ago.
2503 ** read-from-minibuffer now accepts an additional argument KEEP-ALL
2504 saying to put all inputs in the history list, even empty ones.
2507 ** The new variable search-spaces-regexp controls how to search
2508 for spaces in a regular expression. If it is non-nil, it should be a
2509 regular expression, and any series of spaces stands for that regular
2510 expression. If it is nil, spaces stand for themselves.
2512 Spaces inside of constructs such as [..] and *, +, ? are never
2513 replaced with search-spaces-regexp.
2516 ** list-buffers-noselect now takes an additional argument, BUFFER-LIST.
2517 If it is non-nil, it specifies which buffers to list.
2520 ** set-buffer-file-coding-system now takes an additional argument,
2521 NOMODIFY. If it is non-nil, it means don't mark the buffer modified.
2524 ** The new function syntax-after returns the syntax code
2525 of the character after a specified buffer position, taking account
2526 of text properties as well as the character code.
2529 ** The new primitive `get-internal-run-time' returns the processor
2530 run time used by Emacs since start-up.
2533 ** The new function `called-interactively-p' does what many people
2534 have mistakenly believed `interactive-p' did: it returns t if the
2535 calling function was called through `call-interactively'. This should
2536 only be used when you cannot add a new "interactive" argument to the
2540 ** The new function `assoc-string' replaces `assoc-ignore-case' and
2541 `assoc-ignore-representation', which are still available, but have
2542 been declared obsolete.
2545 ** An interactive specification may now use the code letter 'U' to get
2546 the up-event that was discarded in case the last key sequence read for a
2547 previous 'k' or 'K' argument was a down-event; otherwise nil is used.
2549 ** Function `translate-region' accepts also a char-table as TABLE
2553 ** Major mode functions now run the new normal hook
2554 `after-change-major-mode-hook', at their very end, after the mode hooks.
2557 ** `auto-save-file-format' has been renamed to
2558 `buffer-auto-save-file-format' and made into a permanent local.
2561 ** Both the variable and the function `disabled-command-hook' have
2562 been renamed to `disabled-command-function'. The variable
2563 `disabled-command-hook' has been kept as an obsolete alias.
2565 ** Function `compute-motion' now calculates the usable window
2566 width if the WIDTH argument is nil. If the TOPOS argument is nil,
2567 the usable window height and width is used.
2570 ** `visited-file-modtime' and `calendar-time-from-absolute' now return
2571 a list of two integers, instead of a cons.
2573 ** If a command sets transient-mark-mode to `only', that
2574 enables Transient Mark mode for the following command only.
2575 During that following command, the value of transient-mark-mode
2576 is `identity'. If it is still `identity' at the end of the command,
2580 ** Cleaner way to enter key sequences.
2582 You can enter a constant key sequence in a more natural format, the
2583 same one used for saving keyboard macros, using the macro `kbd'. For
2586 (kbd "C-x C-f") => "\^x\^f"
2588 ** The sentinel is now called when a network process is deleted with
2589 delete-process. The status message passed to the sentinel for a
2590 deleted network process is "deleted". The message passed to the
2591 sentinel when the connection is closed by the remote peer has been
2592 changed to "connection broken by remote peer".
2594 ** If the buffer's undo list for the current command gets longer than
2595 undo-outer-limit, garbage collection empties it. This is to prevent
2596 it from using up the available memory and choking Emacs.
2599 ** New function quail-find-key returns a list of keys to type in the
2600 current input method to input a character.
2603 ** New functions posn-at-point and posn-at-x-y return
2604 click-event-style position information for a given visible buffer
2605 position or for a given window pixel coordinate.
2607 ** skip-chars-forward and skip-chars-backward now handle
2608 character classes such as [:alpha:], along with individual characters
2611 ** Function pos-visible-in-window-p now returns the pixel coordinates
2612 and partial visiblity state of the corresponding row, if the PARTIALLY
2615 ** The function `eql' is now available without requiring the CL package.
2618 ** The new primitive `set-file-times' sets a file's access and
2619 modification times. Magic file name handlers can handle this
2623 ** The display space :width and :align-to text properties are now
2624 supported on text terminals.
2627 ** Support for displaying image slices
2629 *** New display property (slice X Y WIDTH HEIGHT) may be used with
2630 an image property to display only a specific slice of the image.
2632 *** Function insert-image has new optional fourth arg to
2633 specify image slice (X Y WIDTH HEIGHT).
2635 *** New function insert-sliced-image inserts a given image as a
2636 specified number of evenly sized slices (rows x columns).
2639 ** New line-height and line-spacing properties for newline characters
2641 A newline may now have line-height and line-spacing text or overlay
2642 properties that control the height of the corresponding display row.
2644 If the line-height property value is t, the newline does not
2645 contribute to the height of the display row; instead the height of the
2646 newline glyph is reduced. Also, a line-spacing property on this
2647 newline is ignored. This can be used to tile small images or image
2648 slices without adding blank areas between the images.
2650 If the line-height property value is a positive integer, the value
2651 specifies the minimum line height in pixels. If necessary, the line
2652 height it increased by increasing the line's ascent.
2654 If the line-height property value is a float, the minimum line height
2655 is calculated by multiplying the default frame line height by the
2658 If the line-height property value is a cons (FACE . RATIO), the
2659 minimum line height is calculated as RATIO * height of named FACE.
2660 RATIO is int or float. If FACE is t, it specifies the current face.
2662 If the line-height property value is a cons (nil . RATIO), the line
2663 height is calculated as RATIO * actual height of the line's contents.
2665 If the line-height value is a cons (HEIGHT . TOTAL), HEIGHT specifies
2666 the line height as described above, while TOTAL is any of the forms
2667 described above and specifies the total height of the line, causing a
2668 varying number of pixels to be inserted after the line to make it line
2669 exactly that many pixels high.
2671 If the line-spacing property value is an positive integer, the value
2672 is used as additional pixels to insert after the display line; this
2673 overrides the default frame line-spacing and any buffer local value of
2674 the line-spacing variable.
2676 If the line-spacing property may be a float or cons, the line spacing
2677 is calculated as specified above for the line-height property.
2679 ** The buffer local line-spacing variable may now have a float value,
2680 which is used as a height relative to the default frame line height.
2683 ** Enhancements to stretch display properties
2685 The display property stretch specification form `(space PROPS)', where
2686 PROPS is a property list now allows pixel based width and height
2687 specifications, as well as enhanced horizontal text alignment.
2689 The value of these properties can now be a (primitive) expression
2690 which is evaluated during redisplay. The following expressions
2693 EXPR ::= NUM | (NUM) | UNIT | ELEM | POS | IMAGE | FORM
2694 NUM ::= INTEGER | FLOAT | SYMBOL
2695 UNIT ::= in | mm | cm | width | height
2696 ELEM ::= left-fringe | right-fringe | left-margin | right-margin
2698 POS ::= left | center | right
2699 FORM ::= (NUM . EXPR) | (OP EXPR ...)
2702 The form `NUM' specifies a fractional width or height of the default
2703 frame font size. The form `(NUM)' specifies an absolute number of
2704 pixels. If a symbol is specified, its buffer-local variable binding
2705 is used. The `in', `mm', and `cm' units specifies the number of
2706 pixels per inch, milli-meter, and centi-meter, resp. The `width' and
2707 `height' units correspond to the width and height of the current face
2708 font. An image specification corresponds to the width or height of
2711 The `left-fringe', `right-fringe', `left-margin', `right-margin',
2712 `scroll-bar', and `text' elements specify to the width of the
2713 corresponding area of the window.
2715 The `left', `center', and `right' positions can be used with :align-to
2716 to specify a position relative to the left edge, center, or right edge
2717 of the text area. One of the above window elements (except `text')
2718 can also be used with :align-to to specify that the position is
2719 relative to the left edge of the given area. Once the base offset for
2720 a relative position has been set (by the first occurrence of one of
2721 these symbols), further occurences of these symbols are interpreted as
2722 the width of the area.
2724 For example, to align to the center of the left-margin, use
2725 :align-to (+ left-margin (0.5 . left-margin))
2727 If no specific base offset is set for alignment, it is always relative
2728 to the left edge of the text area. For example, :align-to 0 in a
2729 header-line aligns with the first text column in the text area.
2731 The value of the form `(NUM . EXPR)' is the value of NUM multiplied by
2732 the value of the expression EXPR. For example, (2 . in) specifies a
2733 width of 2 inches, while (0.5 . IMAGE) specifies half the width (or
2734 height) of the specified image.
2736 The form `(+ EXPR ...)' adds up the value of the expressions.
2737 The form `(- EXPR ...)' negates or subtracts the value of the expressions.
2740 ** Normally, the cursor is displayed at the end of any overlay and
2741 text property string that may be present at the current window
2742 position. The cursor may now be placed on any character of such
2743 strings by giving that character a non-nil `cursor' text property.
2745 ** New macro with-local-quit temporarily sets inhibit-quit to nil for use
2746 around potentially blocking or long-running code in timers
2747 and post-command-hooks.
2749 ** The first face specification element in a defface can specify
2750 `default' instead of frame classification. Then its attributes act as
2751 defaults that apply to all the subsequent cases (and may be overridden
2755 ** New face attribute `min-colors' can be used to tailor the face color
2756 to the number of colors supported by a display, and define the
2757 foreground and background colors accordingly so that they look best on
2758 a terminal that supports at least this many colors. This is now the
2759 preferred method for defining default faces in a way that makes a good
2760 use of the capabilities of the display.
2763 ** Customizable fringe bitmaps
2765 *** New function 'define-fringe-bitmap' can now be used to create new
2766 fringe bitmaps, as well as change the built-in fringe bitmaps.
2768 To change a built-in bitmap, do (require 'fringe) and use the symbol
2769 identifing the bitmap such as `left-truncation or `continued-line'.
2771 *** New function 'destroy-fringe-bitmap' may be used to destroy a
2772 previously created bitmap, or restore a built-in bitmap.
2774 *** New function 'set-fringe-bitmap-face' can now be used to set a
2775 specific face to be used for a specific fringe bitmap. Normally,
2776 this should be a face derived from the `fringe' face, specifying
2777 the foreground color as the desired color of the bitmap.
2779 *** There are new display properties, left-fringe and right-fringe,
2780 that can be used to show a specific bitmap in the left or right fringe
2781 bitmap of the display line.
2783 Format is 'display '(left-fringe BITMAP [FACE]), where BITMAP is a
2784 symbol identifying a fringe bitmap, either built-in or defined with
2785 `define-fringe-bitmap', and FACE is an optional face name to be used
2786 for displaying the bitmap.
2788 *** New function `fringe-bitmaps-at-pos' returns the current fringe
2789 bitmaps in the display line at a given buffer position.
2791 ** Multiple overlay arrows can now be defined and managed via the new
2792 variable `overlay-arrow-variable-list'. It contains a list of
2793 varibles which contain overlay arrow position markers, including
2794 the original `overlay-arrow-position' variable.
2796 Each variable on this list may have individual `overlay-arrow-string'
2797 and `overlay-arrow-bitmap' properties that specify an overlay arrow
2798 string (for non-window terminals) or fringe bitmap (for window
2799 systems) to display at the corresponding overlay arrow position.
2800 If either property is not set, the default `overlay-arrow-string' or
2801 'overlay-arrow-fringe-bitmap' will be used.
2804 ** New function `line-number-at-pos' returns line number of current
2805 line in current buffer, or if optional buffer position is given, line
2806 number of corresponding line in current buffer.
2809 ** The default value of `sentence-end' is now defined using the new
2810 variable `sentence-end-without-space' which contains such characters
2811 that end a sentence without following spaces.
2814 ** The function `sentence-end' should be used to obtain the value of
2815 the variable `sentence-end'. If the variable `sentence-end' is nil,
2816 then this function returns the regexp constructed from the variables
2817 `sentence-end-without-period', `sentence-end-double-space' and
2818 `sentence-end-without-space'.
2821 ** The flags, width, and precision options for %-specifications in function
2822 `format' are now documented. Some flags that were accepted but not
2823 implemented (such as "*") are no longer accepted.
2825 ** New function `macroexpand-all' expands all macros in a form.
2826 It is similar to the Common-Lisp function of the same name.
2827 One difference is that it guarantees to return the original argument
2828 if no expansion is done, which may be tested using `eq'.
2831 ** New function `delete-dups' destructively removes `equal' duplicates
2832 from a list. Of several `equal' occurrences of an element in the list,
2833 the first one is kept.
2836 ** `declare' is now a macro. This change was made mostly for
2837 documentation purposes and should have no real effect on Lisp code.
2839 ** The new hook `before-save-hook' is invoked by `basic-save-buffer'
2840 before saving buffers. This allows packages to perform various final
2841 tasks, for example; it can be used by the copyright package to make
2842 sure saved files have the current year in any copyright headers.
2845 ** The function `insert-for-yank' now supports strings where the
2846 `yank-handler' property does not span the first character of the
2847 string. The old behavior is available if you call
2848 `insert-for-yank-1' instead.
2850 ** New function `get-char-property-and-overlay' accepts the same
2851 arguments as `get-char-property' and returns a cons whose car is the
2852 return value of `get-char-property' called with those arguments and
2853 whose cdr is the overlay in which the property was found, or nil if
2854 it was found as a text property or not found at all.
2858 ** The mouse pointer shape in void text areas (i.e. after the end of a
2859 line or below the last line in the buffer) of the text window is now
2860 controlled by the new variable `void-text-area-pointer'. The default
2861 is to use the `arrow' (non-text) pointer. Other choices are `text'
2862 (or nil), `hand', `vdrag', `hdrag', `modeline', and `hourglass'.
2865 ** The mouse pointer shape over an image can now be controlled by the
2866 :pointer image property.
2869 ** The mouse pointer shape over ordinary text or images may now be
2870 controlled/overriden via the `pointer' text property.
2873 ** Images may now have an associated image map via the :map property.
2875 An image map is an alist where each element has the format (AREA ID PLIST).
2876 An AREA is specified as either a rectangle, a circle, or a polygon:
2877 A rectangle is a cons (rect . ((x0 . y0) . (x1 . y1))) specifying the
2878 pixel coordinates of the upper left and bottom right corners.
2879 A circle is a cons (circle . ((x0 . y0) . r)) specifying the center
2880 and the radius of the circle; r may be a float or integer.
2881 A polygon is a cons (poly . [x0 y0 x1 y1 ...]) where each pair in the
2882 vector describes one corner in the polygon.
2884 When the mouse pointer is above a hot-spot area of an image, the
2885 PLIST of that hot-spot is consulted; if it contains a `help-echo'
2886 property it defines a tool-tip for the hot-spot, and if it contains
2887 a `pointer' property, it defines the shape of the mouse cursor when
2888 it is over the hot-spot. See the variable 'void-area-text-pointer'
2889 for possible pointer shapes.
2891 When you click the mouse when the mouse pointer is over a hot-spot,
2892 an event is composed by combining the ID of the hot-spot with the
2893 mouse event, e.g. [area4 mouse-1] if the hot-spot's ID is `area4'.
2895 ** Mouse event enhancements:
2897 *** Mouse clicks on fringes now generates left-fringe or right-fringes
2898 events, rather than a text area click event.
2900 *** Mouse clicks in the left and right marginal areas now includes a
2901 sensible buffer position corresponding to the first character in the
2902 corresponding text row.
2904 *** Function `mouse-set-point' now works for events outside text area.
2907 *** Mouse events now includes buffer position for all event types.
2910 *** `posn-point' now returns buffer position for non-text area events.
2913 *** New function `posn-area' returns window area clicked on (nil means
2917 *** Mouse events include actual glyph column and row for all event types.
2920 *** New function `posn-actual-col-row' returns actual glyph coordinates.
2923 *** Mouse events may now include image object in addition to string object.
2926 *** Mouse events include relative x and y pixel coordinates relative to
2927 the top left corner of the object (image or character) clicked on.
2930 *** Mouse events include the pixel width and height of the object
2931 (image or character) clicked on.
2934 *** New functions 'posn-object', 'posn-object-x-y', and
2935 'posn-object-width-height' return the image or string object of a mouse
2936 click, the x and y pixel coordinates relative to the top left corner
2937 of that object, and the total width and height of that object.
2939 ** New function `force-window-update' can initiate a full redisplay of
2940 one or all windows. Normally, this is not needed as changes in window
2941 contents are detected automatically. However, certain implicit
2942 changes to mode lines, header lines, or display properties may require
2943 forcing an explicit window update.
2945 ** New function `redirect-debugging-output' can be used to redirect
2946 debugging output on the stderr file handle to a file.
2949 ** `split-string' now includes null substrings in the returned list if
2950 the optional argument SEPARATORS is non-nil and there are matches for
2951 SEPARATORS at the beginning or end of the string. If SEPARATORS is
2952 nil, or if the new optional third argument OMIT-NULLS is non-nil, all
2953 empty matches are omitted from the returned list.
2956 ** `makehash' is now obsolete. Use `make-hash-table' instead.
2959 ** If optional third argument APPEND to `add-to-list' is non-nil, a
2960 new element gets added at the end of the list instead of at the
2961 beginning. This change actually occurred in Emacs-21.1, but was not
2964 ** Major modes can define `eldoc-print-current-symbol-info-function'
2965 locally to provide Eldoc functionality by some method appropriate to
2969 ** New coding system property `mime-text-unsuitable' indicates that
2970 the coding system's `mime-charset' is not suitable for MIME text
2974 ** The argument to forward-word, backward-word, forward-to-indentation
2975 and backward-to-indentation is now optional, and defaults to 1.
2978 ** (char-displayable-p CHAR) returns non-nil if Emacs ought to be able
2979 to display CHAR. More precisely, if the selected frame's fontset has
2980 a font to display the character set that CHAR belongs to.
2982 Fontsets can specify a font on a per-character basis; when the fontset
2983 does that, this value may not be accurate.
2986 ** The new function `window-inside-edges' returns the edges of the
2987 actual text portion of the window, not including the scroll bar or
2988 divider line, the fringes, the display margins, the header line and
2992 ** The new functions `window-pixel-edges' and `window-inside-pixel-edges'
2993 return window edges in units of pixels, rather than columns and lines.
2996 ** The kill-buffer-hook is now permanent-local.
2999 ** `select-window' takes an optional second argument `norecord', like
3003 ** The new macro `with-selected-window' temporarily switches the
3004 selected window without impacting the order of buffer-list.
3007 ** The `keymap' property now also works at the ends of overlays and
3008 text-properties, according to their stickiness. This also means that it
3009 works with empty overlays. The same hold for the `local-map' property.
3012 ** (map-keymap FUNCTION KEYMAP) applies the function to each binding
3016 ** VC changes for backends:
3017 *** (vc-switches BACKEND OPERATION) is a new function for use by backends.
3018 *** The new `find-version' backend function replaces the `destfile'
3019 parameter of the `checkout' backend function.
3020 Old code still works thanks to a default `find-version' behavior that
3021 uses the old `destfile' parameter.
3024 ** The new macro dynamic-completion-table supports using functions
3025 as a dynamic completion table.
3027 (dynamic-completion-table FUN)
3029 FUN is called with one argument, the string for which completion is required,
3030 and it should return an alist containing all the intended possible
3031 completions. This alist may be a full list of possible completions so that FUN
3032 can ignore the value of its argument. If completion is performed in the
3033 minibuffer, FUN will be called in the buffer from which the minibuffer was
3034 entered. dynamic-completion-table then computes the completion.
3037 ** The new macro lazy-completion-table initializes a variable
3038 as a lazy completion table.
3040 (lazy-completion-table VAR FUN &rest ARGS)
3042 If the completion table VAR is used for the first time (e.g., by passing VAR
3043 as an argument to `try-completion'), the function FUN is called with arguments
3044 ARGS. FUN must return the completion table that will be stored in VAR. If
3045 completion is requested in the minibuffer, FUN will be called in the buffer
3046 from which the minibuffer was entered. The return value of
3047 `lazy-completion-table' must be used to initialize the value of VAR.
3050 ** `minor-mode-list' now holds a list of minor mode commands.
3053 ** The new function `modify-all-frames-parameters' modifies parameters
3054 for all (existing and future) frames.
3057 ** `sit-for' can now be called with args (SECONDS &optional NODISP).
3060 ** New standard font-lock face `font-lock-preprocessor-face'.
3063 ** The macro `with-syntax-table' does not copy the table any more.
3066 ** The variable `face-font-rescale-alist' specifies how much larger
3067 (or smaller) font we should use. For instance, if the value is
3068 '((SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN . 1.3)) and a face requests a font of 10
3069 point, we actually use a font of 13 point if the font matches
3070 SOME-FONTNAME-PATTERN.
3073 ** The function `number-sequence' returns a list of equally-separated
3074 numbers. For instance, (number-sequence 4 9) returns (4 5 6 7 8 9).
3075 By default, the separation is 1, but you can specify a different separation
3076 as the third argument. (number-sequence 1.5 6 2) returns (1.5 3.5 5.5).
3079 ** `file-chase-links' now takes an optional second argument LIMIT which
3080 specifies the maximum number of links to chase through. If after that
3081 many iterations the file name obtained is still a symbolic link,
3082 `file-chase-links' returns it anyway.
3085 ** `set-fontset-font', `fontset-info', `fontset-font' now operate on
3086 the default fontset if the argument NAME is nil..
3089 ** The escape sequence \s is now interpreted as a SPACE character,
3090 unless it is followed by a `-' in a character constant (e.g. ?\s-A),
3091 in which case it is still interpreted as the super modifier.
3092 In strings, \s is always interpreted as a space.
3095 ** New function `set-process-filter-multibyte' sets the multibyteness
3096 of a string given to a process's filter.
3099 ** New function `process-filter-multibyte-p' returns t if
3100 a string given to a process's filter is multibyte.
3103 ** A filter function of a process is called with a multibyte string if
3104 the filter's multibyteness is t. That multibyteness is decided by the
3105 value of `default-enable-multibyte-characters' when the process is
3106 created and can be changed later by `set-process-filter-multibyte'.
3109 ** If a process's coding system is raw-text or no-conversion and its
3110 buffer is multibyte, the output of the process is at first converted
3111 to multibyte by `string-to-multibyte' then inserted in the buffer.
3112 Previously, it was converted to multibyte by `string-as-multibyte',
3113 which was not compatible with the behaviour of file reading.
3116 ** New function `string-to-multibyte' converts a unibyte string to a
3117 multibyte string with the same individual character codes.
3120 ** New variables `gc-elapsed' and `gcs-done' provide extra information
3121 on garbage collection.
3124 ** New function `decode-coding-inserted-region' decodes a region as if
3125 it is read from a file without decoding.
3128 ** New function `locale-info' accesses locale information.
3131 ** `save-selected-window' now saves and restores the selected window
3132 of every frame. This way, it restores everything that can be changed
3133 by calling `select-window'.
3136 ** `easy-menu-define' now allows you to use nil for the symbol name
3137 if you don't need to give the menu a name. If you install the menu
3138 into other keymaps right away (MAPS is non-nil), it usually doesn't
3139 need to have a name.
3141 ** Byte compiler changes:
3144 *** `(featurep 'xemacs)' is treated by the compiler as nil. This
3145 helps to avoid noisy compiler warnings in code meant to run under both
3146 Emacs and XEmacs and may sometimes make the result significantly more
3147 efficient. Since byte code from recent versions of XEmacs won't
3148 generally run in Emacs and vice versa, this optimization doesn't lose
3152 *** You can avoid warnings for possibly-undefined symbols with a
3153 simple convention that the compiler understands. (This is mostly
3154 useful in code meant to be portable to different Emacs versions.)
3155 Write forms like the following, or code that macroexpands into such
3158 (if (fboundp 'foo) <then> <else>)
3159 (if (boundp 'foo) <then> <else)
3161 In the first case, using `foo' as a function inside the <then> form
3162 won't produce a warning if it's not defined as a function, and in the
3163 second case, using `foo' as a variable won't produce a warning if it's
3164 unbound. The test must be in exactly one of the above forms (after
3165 macro expansion), but such tests may be nested. Note that `when' and
3166 `unless' expand to `if', but `cond' doesn't.
3169 *** The new macro `with-no-warnings' suppresses all compiler warnings
3170 inside its body. In terms of execution, it is equivalent to `progn'.
3173 ** The new translation table `translation-table-for-input'
3174 is used for customizing self-insertion. The character to
3175 be inserted is translated through it.
3178 ** `load-history' can now have elements of the form (t . FUNNAME),
3179 which means FUNNAME was previously defined as an autoload (before the
3180 current file redefined it).
3183 ** `load-history' now records (defun . FUNNAME) when a function is
3184 defined. For a variable, it records just the variable name.
3187 ** New Lisp library testcover.el works with edebug to help you determine
3188 whether you've tested all your Lisp code. Function testcover-start
3189 instruments all functions in a given file. Then test your code. Function
3190 testcover-mark-all adds overlay "splotches" to the Lisp file's buffer to
3191 show where coverage is lacking. Command testcover-next-mark (bind it to
3192 a key!) will move point forward to the next spot that has a splotch.
3194 *** Normally, a red splotch indicates the form was never completely evaluated;
3195 a brown splotch means it always evaluated to the same value. The red
3196 splotches are skipped for forms that can't possibly complete their evaluation,
3197 such as `error'. The brown splotches are skipped for forms that are expected
3198 to always evaluate to the same value, such as (setq x 14).
3200 *** For difficult cases, you can add do-nothing macros to your code to help
3201 out the test coverage tool. The macro `noreturn' suppresses a red splotch.
3202 It is an error if the argument to `noreturn' does return. The macro 1value
3203 suppresses a brown splotch for its argument. This macro is a no-op except
3204 during test-coverage -- then it signals an error if the argument actually
3205 returns differing values.
3208 ** New function unsafep returns nil if the given Lisp form can't possibly
3209 do anything dangerous; otherwise it returns a reason why the form might be
3210 unsafe (calls dangerous function, alters global variable, etc).
3213 ** The new variable `print-continuous-numbering', when non-nil, says
3214 that successive calls to print functions should use the same
3215 numberings for circular structure references. This is only relevant
3216 when `print-circle' is non-nil.
3218 When you bind `print-continuous-numbering' to t, you should
3219 also bind `print-number-table' to nil.
3222 ** When using non-toolkit scroll bars with the default width,
3223 the scroll-bar-width frame parameter value is nil.
3226 ** The new function copy-abbrev-table returns a new abbrev table that
3227 is a copy of a given abbrev table.
3230 ** The option --script FILE runs Emacs in batch mode and loads FILE.
3231 It is useful for writing Emacs Lisp shell script files, because they
3232 can start with this line:
3234 #!/usr/bin/emacs --script
3236 ** The option --directory DIR now modifies `load-path' immediately.
3237 Directories are added to the front of `load-path' in the order they
3238 appear on the command line. For example, with this command line:
3240 emacs -batch -L .. -L /tmp --eval "(require 'foo)"
3242 Emacs looks for library `foo' in the parent directory, then in /tmp, then
3243 in the other directories in `load-path'. (-L is short for --directory.)
3246 ** A function's docstring can now hold the function's usage info on
3247 its last line. It should match the regexp "\n\n(fn.*)\\'".
3250 ** New CCL functions `lookup-character' and `lookup-integer' access
3251 hash tables defined by the Lisp function `define-translation-hash-table'.
3254 ** The new function `minibufferp' returns non-nil if its optional buffer
3255 argument is a minibuffer. If the argument is omitted it defaults to
3259 ** There is a new Warnings facility; see the functions `warn'
3260 and `display-warning'.
3263 ** The functions all-completions and try-completion now accept lists
3264 of strings as well as hash-tables additionally to alists, obarrays
3265 and functions. Furthermore, the function `test-completion' is now
3269 ** When pure storage overflows while dumping, Emacs now prints how
3270 much pure storage it will approximately need.
3273 ** The new variable `auto-coding-functions' lets you specify functions
3274 to examine a file being visited and deduce the proper coding system
3275 for it. (If the coding system is detected incorrectly for a specific
3276 file, you can put a `coding:' tags to override it.)
3279 ** The new function `merge-coding-systems' fills in unspecified aspects
3280 of one coding system from another coding system.
3283 ** The variable `safe-local-eval-forms' specifies a list of forms that
3284 are ok to evaluate when they appear in an `eval' local variables
3285 specification. Normally Emacs asks for confirmation before evaluating
3286 such a form, but if the form appears in this list, no confirmation is
3290 ** If a function has a non-nil `safe-local-eval-function' property,
3291 that means it is ok to evaluate some calls to that function when it
3292 appears in an `eval' local variables specification. If the property
3293 is t, then any form calling that function with constant arguments is
3294 ok. If the property is a function or list of functions, they are called
3295 with the form as argument, and if any returns t, the form is ok to call.
3297 If the form is not "ok to call", that means Emacs asks for
3298 confirmation as before.
3301 ** Controlling the default left and right fringe widths.
3303 The default left and right fringe widths for all windows of a frame
3304 can now be controlled by setting the `left-fringe' and `right-fringe'
3305 frame parameters to an integer value specifying the width in pixels.
3306 Setting the width to 0 effectively removes the corresponding fringe.
3308 The actual default fringe widths for the frame may deviate from the
3309 specified widths, since the combined fringe widths must match an
3310 integral number of columns. The extra width is distributed evenly
3311 between the left and right fringe. For force a specific fringe width,
3312 specify the width as a negative integer (if both widths are negative,
3313 only the left fringe gets the specified width).
3315 Setting the width to nil (the default), restores the default fringe
3316 width which is the minimum number of pixels necessary to display any
3317 of the currently defined fringe bitmaps. The width of the built-in
3318 fringe bitmaps is 8 pixels.
3321 ** Per-window fringes settings
3323 Windows can now have their own individual fringe widths and position
3326 To control the fringe widths of a window, either set the buffer-local
3327 variables `left-fringe-width', `right-fringe-width', or call
3328 `set-window-fringes'.
3330 To control the fringe position in a window, that is, whether fringes
3331 are positioned between the display margins and the window's text area,
3332 or at the edges of the window, either set the buffer-local variable
3333 `fringes-outside-margins' or call `set-window-fringes'.
3335 The function `window-fringes' can be used to obtain the current
3336 settings. To make `left-fringe-width', `right-fringe-width', and
3337 `fringes-outside-margins' take effect, you must set them before
3338 displaying the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force
3339 an update of the display margins.
3342 ** Per-window vertical scroll-bar settings
3344 Windows can now have their own individual scroll-bar settings
3345 controlling the width and position of scroll-bars.
3347 To control the scroll-bar of a window, either set the buffer-local
3348 variables `scroll-bar-mode' and `scroll-bar-width', or call
3349 `set-window-scroll-bars'. The function `window-scroll-bars' can be
3350 used to obtain the current settings. To make `scroll-bar-mode' and
3351 `scroll-bar-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3352 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3353 of the display margins.
3356 ** The function `set-window-buffer' now has an optional third argument
3357 KEEP-MARGINS which will preserve the window's current margin, fringe,
3358 and scroll-bar settings if non-nil.
3361 ** Renamed hooks to better follow the naming convention:
3362 find-file-hooks to find-file-hook,
3363 find-file-not-found-hooks to find-file-not-found-functions,
3364 write-file-hooks to write-file-functions,
3365 write-contents-hooks to write-contents-functions,
3366 x-lost-selection-hooks to x-lost-selection-functions,
3367 x-sent-selection-hooks to x-sent-selection-functions.
3368 Marked local-write-file-hooks as obsolete (use the LOCAL arg of `add-hook').
3371 ** The new variable `delete-frame-functions' replaces `delete-frame-hook'.
3372 It was renamed to follow the naming conventions for abnormal hooks. The old
3373 name remains available as an alias, but has been marked obsolete.
3376 ** The `read-file-name' function now takes an additional argument which
3377 specifies a predicate which the file name read must satify. The
3378 new variable `read-file-name-predicate' contains the predicate argument
3379 while reading the file name from the minibuffer; the predicate in this
3380 variable is used by read-file-name-internal to filter the completion list.
3383 ** The new variable `read-file-name-function' can be used by lisp code
3384 to override the internal read-file-name function.
3387 ** The new variable `read-file-name-completion-ignore-case' specifies
3388 whether completion ignores case when reading a file name with the
3389 `read-file-name' function.
3392 ** The new function `read-directory-name' can be used instead of
3393 `read-file-name' to read a directory name; when used, completion
3394 will only show directories.
3397 ** The new function `file-remote-p' tests a file name and returns
3398 non-nil if it specifies a remote file (one that Emacs accesses using
3399 its own special methods and not directly through the file system).
3400 The value in that case is an identifier for the remote file system.
3403 ** When a Lisp file uses CL functions at run-time, compiling the file
3404 now issues warnings about these calls, unless the file performs
3405 (require 'cl) when loaded.
3408 ** The `defmacro' form may contain declarations specifying how to
3409 indent the macro in Lisp mode and how to debug it with Edebug. The
3410 syntax of defmacro has been extended to
3412 (defmacro NAME LAMBDA-LIST [DOC-STRING] [DECLARATION ...] ...)
3414 DECLARATION is a list `(declare DECLARATION-SPECIFIER ...)'. The
3415 declaration specifiers supported are:
3418 Set NAME's `lisp-indent-function' property to INDENT.
3421 Set NAME's `edebug-form-spec' property to DEBUG. (This is
3422 equivalent to writing a `def-edebug-spec' for the macro.
3425 ** Interactive commands can be remapped through keymaps.
3427 This is an alternative to using defadvice or substitute-key-definition
3428 to modify the behavior of a key binding using the normal keymap
3429 binding and lookup functionality.
3431 When a key sequence is bound to a command, and that command is
3432 remapped to another command, that command is run instead of the
3436 Suppose that minor mode my-mode has defined the commands
3437 my-kill-line and my-kill-word, and it wants C-k (and any other key
3438 bound to kill-line) to run the command my-kill-line instead of
3439 kill-line, and likewise it wants to run my-kill-word instead of
3442 Instead of rebinding C-k and the other keys in the minor mode map,
3443 command remapping allows you to directly map kill-line into
3444 my-kill-line and kill-word into my-kill-word through the minor mode
3445 map using define-key:
3447 (define-key my-mode-map [remap kill-line] 'my-kill-line)
3448 (define-key my-mode-map [remap kill-word] 'my-kill-word)
3450 Now, when my-mode is enabled, and the user enters C-k or M-d,
3451 the commands my-kill-line and my-kill-word are run.
3453 Notice that only one level of remapping is supported. In the above
3454 example, this means that if my-kill-line is remapped to other-kill,
3455 then C-k still runs my-kill-line.
3457 The following changes have been made to provide command remapping:
3459 - Command remappings are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3460 `remap', i.e. `(define-key MAP [remap CMD] DEF)' remaps command CMD
3461 to definition DEF in keymap MAP. The definition is not limited to
3462 another command; it can be anything accepted for a normal binding.
3464 - The new function `command-remapping' returns the binding for a
3465 remapped command in the current keymaps, or nil if not remapped.
3467 - key-binding now remaps interactive commands unless the optional
3468 third argument NO-REMAP is non-nil.
3470 - where-is-internal now returns nil for a remapped command (e.g.
3471 kill-line if my-mode is enabled), and the actual key binding for
3472 the command it is remapped to (e.g. C-k for my-kill-line).
3473 It also has a new optional fifth argument, NO-REMAP, which inhibits
3474 remapping if non-nil (e.g. it returns C-k for kill-line and
3475 <kill-line> for my-kill-line).
3477 - The new variable `this-original-command' contains the original
3478 command before remapping. It is equal to `this-command' when the
3479 command was not remapped.
3482 ** New variable emulation-mode-map-alists.
3484 Lisp packages using many minor mode keymaps can now maintain their own
3485 keymap alist separate from minor-mode-map-alist by adding their keymap
3489 ** Atomic change groups.
3491 To perform some changes in the current buffer "atomically" so that
3492 they either all succeed or are all undone, use `atomic-change-group'
3493 around the code that makes changes. For instance:
3495 (atomic-change-group
3497 (delete-region x y))
3499 If an error (or other nonlocal exit) occurs inside the body of
3500 `atomic-change-group', it unmakes all the changes in that buffer that
3501 were during the execution of the body. The change group has no effect
3502 on any other buffers--any such changes remain.
3504 If you need something more sophisticated, you can directly call the
3505 lower-level functions that `atomic-change-group' uses. Here is how.
3507 To set up a change group for one buffer, call `prepare-change-group'.
3508 Specify the buffer as argument; it defaults to the current buffer.
3509 This function returns a "handle" for the change group. You must save
3510 the handle to activate the change group and then finish it.
3512 Before you change the buffer again, you must activate the change
3513 group. Pass the handle to `activate-change-group' afterward to
3516 After you make the changes, you must finish the change group. You can
3517 either accept the changes or cancel them all. Call
3518 `accept-change-group' to accept the changes in the group as final;
3519 call `cancel-change-group' to undo them all.
3521 You should use `unwind-protect' to make sure the group is always
3522 finished. The call to `activate-change-group' should be inside the
3523 `unwind-protect', in case the user types C-g just after it runs.
3524 (This is one reason why `prepare-change-group' and
3525 `activate-change-group' are separate functions.) Once you finish the
3526 group, don't use the handle again--don't try to finish the same group
3529 To make a multibuffer change group, call `prepare-change-group' once
3530 for each buffer you want to cover, then use `nconc' to combine the
3531 returned values, like this:
3533 (nconc (prepare-change-group buffer-1)
3534 (prepare-change-group buffer-2))
3536 You can then activate the multibuffer change group with a single call
3537 to `activate-change-group', and finish it with a single call to
3538 `accept-change-group' or `cancel-change-group'.
3540 Nested use of several change groups for the same buffer works as you
3541 would expect. Non-nested use of change groups for the same buffer
3542 will lead to undesirable results, so don't let it happen; the first
3543 change group you start for any given buffer should be the last one
3547 ** New variable char-property-alias-alist.
3549 This variable allows you to create alternative names for text
3550 properties. It works at the same level as `default-text-properties',
3551 although it applies to overlays as well. This variable was introduced
3552 to implement the `font-lock-face' property.
3555 ** New special text property `font-lock-face'.
3557 This property acts like the `face' property, but it is controlled by
3558 M-x font-lock-mode. It is not, strictly speaking, a builtin text
3559 property. Instead, it is implemented inside font-core.el, using the
3560 new variable `char-property-alias-alist'.
3563 ** New function remove-list-of-text-properties.
3565 The new function `remove-list-of-text-properties' is almost the same
3566 as `remove-text-properties'. The only difference is that it takes
3567 a list of property names as argument rather than a property list.
3570 ** New function insert-for-yank.
3572 This function normally works like `insert' but removes the text
3573 properties in the `yank-excluded-properties' list. However, if the
3574 inserted text has a `yank-handler' text property on the first
3575 character of the string, the insertion of the text may be modified in
3576 a number of ways. See the description of `yank-handler' below.
3579 ** New function insert-buffer-substring-as-yank.
3581 This function works like `insert-buffer-substring', but removes the
3582 text properties in the `yank-excluded-properties' list.
3585 ** New function insert-buffer-substring-no-properties.
3587 This function is like insert-buffer-substring, but removes all
3588 text properties from the inserted substring.
3591 ** New `yank-handler' text property may be used to control how
3592 previously killed text on the kill-ring is reinserted.
3594 The value of the yank-handler property must be a list with one to four
3595 elements with the following format:
3596 (FUNCTION PARAM NOEXCLUDE UNDO).
3598 The `insert-for-yank' function looks for a yank-handler property on
3599 the first character on its string argument (typically the first
3600 element on the kill-ring). If a yank-handler property is found,
3601 the normal behaviour of `insert-for-yank' is modified in various ways:
3603 When FUNCTION is present and non-nil, it is called instead of `insert'
3604 to insert the string. FUNCTION takes one argument--the object to insert.
3605 If PARAM is present and non-nil, it replaces STRING as the object
3606 passed to FUNCTION (or `insert'); for example, if FUNCTION is
3607 `yank-rectangle', PARAM should be a list of strings to insert as a
3609 If NOEXCLUDE is present and non-nil, the normal removal of the
3610 yank-excluded-properties is not performed; instead FUNCTION is
3611 responsible for removing those properties. This may be necessary
3612 if FUNCTION adjusts point before or after inserting the object.
3613 If UNDO is present and non-nil, it is a function that will be called
3614 by `yank-pop' to undo the insertion of the current object. It is
3615 called with two arguments, the start and end of the current region.
3616 FUNCTION may set `yank-undo-function' to override the UNDO value.
3618 *** The functions kill-new, kill-append, and kill-region now have an
3619 optional argument to specify the yank-handler text property to put on
3622 *** The function yank-pop will now use a non-nil value of the variable
3623 `yank-undo-function' (instead of delete-region) to undo the previous
3624 yank or yank-pop command (or a call to insert-for-yank). The function
3625 insert-for-yank automatically sets that variable according to the UNDO
3626 element of the string argument's yank-handler text property if present.
3629 ** New function display-supports-face-attributes-p may be used to test
3630 whether a given set of face attributes is actually displayable.
3632 A new predicate `supports' has also been added to the `defface' face
3633 specification language, which can be used to do this test for faces
3634 defined with defface.
3636 ** The function face-differs-from-default-p now truly checks whether the
3637 given face displays differently from the default face or not (previously
3638 it did only a very cursory check).
3641 ** face-attribute, face-foreground, face-background, and face-stipple now
3642 accept a new optional argument, INHERIT, which controls how face
3643 inheritance is used when determining the value of a face attribute.
3646 ** New functions face-attribute-relative-p and merge-face-attribute
3647 help with handling relative face attributes.
3649 ** The priority of faces in an :inherit attribute face-list is reversed.
3650 If a face contains an :inherit attribute with a list of faces, earlier
3651 faces in the list override later faces in the list; in previous releases
3652 of Emacs, the order was the opposite. This change was made so that
3653 :inherit face-lists operate identically to face-lists in text `face'
3657 ** Enhancements to process support
3659 *** Function list-processes now has an optional argument; if non-nil,
3660 only the processes whose query-on-exit flag is set are listed.
3662 *** New set-process-query-on-exit-flag and process-query-on-exit-flag
3663 functions. The existing process-kill-without-query function is still
3664 supported, but new code should use the new functions.
3666 *** Function signal-process now accepts a process object or process
3667 name in addition to a process id to identify the signalled process.
3669 *** Processes now have an associated property list where programs can
3670 maintain process state and other per-process related information.
3672 The new functions process-get and process-put are used to access, add,
3673 and modify elements on this property list.
3675 The new low-level functions process-plist and set-process-plist are
3676 used to access and replace the entire property list of a process.
3678 *** Function accept-process-output now has an optional fourth arg
3679 `just-this-one'. If non-nil, only output from the specified process
3680 is handled, suspending output from other processes. If value is an
3681 integer, also inhibit running timers. This feature is generally not
3682 recommended, but may be necessary for specific applications, such as
3685 *** Adaptive read buffering of subprocess output.
3687 On some systems, when emacs reads the output from a subprocess, the
3688 output data is read in very small blocks, potentially resulting in
3689 very poor performance. This behaviour can be remedied to some extent
3690 by setting the new variable process-adaptive-read-buffering to a
3691 non-nil value (the default), as it will automatically delay reading
3692 from such processes, to allowing them to produce more output before
3693 emacs tries to read it.
3696 ** Enhanced networking support.
3698 *** There is a new `make-network-process' function which supports
3699 opening of stream and datagram connections to a server, as well as
3700 create a stream or datagram server inside emacs.
3702 - A server is started using :server t arg.
3703 - Datagram connection is selected using :type 'datagram arg.
3704 - A server can open on a random port using :service t arg.
3705 - Local sockets are supported using :family 'local arg.
3706 - Non-blocking connect is supported using :nowait t arg.
3707 - The process' property list may be initialized using :plist PLIST arg;
3708 a copy of the server process' property list is automatically inherited
3709 by new client processes created to handle incoming connections.
3711 To test for the availability of a given feature, use featurep like this:
3712 (featurep 'make-network-process '(:type datagram))
3714 *** Original open-network-stream is now emulated using make-network-process.
3716 *** New function open-network-stream-nowait.
3718 This function initiates a non-blocking connect and returns immediately
3719 without waiting for the connection to be established. It takes the
3720 filter and sentinel functions as arguments; when the non-blocking
3721 connect completes, the sentinel is called with a status string
3722 matching "open" or "failed".
3724 *** New function open-network-stream-server.
3726 This function creates a network server process for a TCP service.
3727 When a client connects to the specified service, a new subprocess
3728 is created to handle the new connection, and the sentinel function
3729 is called for the new process.
3731 *** New functions process-datagram-address and set-process-datagram-address.
3733 These functions are used with datagram-based network processes to get
3734 and set the current address of the remote partner.
3736 *** New function format-network-address.
3738 This function reformats the lisp representation of a network address
3739 to a printable string. For example, an IP address A.B.C.D and port
3740 number P is represented as a five element vector [A B C D P], and the
3741 printable string returned for this vector is "A.B.C.D:P". See the doc
3742 string for other formatting options.
3744 *** By default, the function process-contact still returns (HOST SERVICE)
3745 for a network process. Using the new optional KEY arg, the complete list
3746 of network process properties or a specific property can be selected.
3748 Using :local and :remote as the KEY, the address of the local or
3749 remote end-point is returned. An Inet address is represented as a 5
3750 element vector, where the first 4 elements contain the IP address and
3751 the fifth is the port number.
3753 *** Network processes can now be stopped and restarted with
3754 `stop-process' and `continue-process'. For a server process, no
3755 connections are accepted in the stopped state. For a client process,
3756 no input is received in the stopped state.
3758 *** New function network-interface-list.
3760 This function returns a list of network interface names and their
3761 current network addresses.
3763 *** New function network-interface-info.
3765 This function returns the network address, hardware address, current
3766 status, and other information about a specific network interface.
3769 ** New function copy-tree.
3772 ** New function substring-no-properties.
3775 ** New function minibuffer-selected-window.
3778 ** New function `call-process-shell-command'.
3780 ** New function `process-file'.
3782 This is similar to `call-process', but obeys file handlers. The file
3783 handler is chosen based on default-directory.
3786 ** The dummy function keys made by easymenu
3787 are now always lower case. If you specify the
3788 menu item name "Ada", for instance, it uses `ada'
3789 as the "key" bound by that key binding.
3791 This is relevant only if Lisp code looks for
3792 the bindings that were made with easymenu.
3795 ** The function `commandp' takes an additional optional
3796 argument. If it is non-nil, then `commandp' checks
3797 for a function that could be called with `call-interactively',
3798 and does not return t for keyboard macros.
3801 ** master-mode.el implements a minor mode for scrolling a slave
3802 buffer without leaving your current buffer, the master buffer.
3804 It can be used by sql.el, for example: the SQL buffer is the master
3805 and its SQLi buffer is the slave. This allows you to scroll the SQLi
3806 buffer containing the output from the SQL buffer containing the
3809 This is how to use sql.el and master.el together: the variable
3810 sql-buffer contains the slave buffer. It is a local variable in the
3813 (add-hook 'sql-mode-hook
3814 (function (lambda ()
3816 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
3817 (add-hook 'sql-set-sqli-hook
3818 (function (lambda ()
3819 (master-set-slave sql-buffer))))
3822 ** File local variables.
3824 A file local variables list cannot specify a string with text
3825 properties--any specified text properties are discarded.
3828 ** New function window-body-height.
3830 This is like window-height but does not count the mode line
3834 ** New function format-mode-line.
3836 This returns the mode-line or header-line of the selected (or a
3837 specified) window as a string with or without text properties.
3840 ** New function safe-plist-get.
3842 This function is like plist-get, but never signals an error for
3843 a malformed property list.
3846 ** New functions `lax-plist-get' and `lax-plist-put'.
3848 These functions are like `plist-get' and `plist-put' except that they
3849 compare the property name using `equal' rather than `eq'.
3852 ** New function `tool-bar-local-item-from-menu'
3854 The `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' must not be used (as previously
3855 recommended) for making entries in the tool bar for local keymaps.
3856 Instead, use the function `tool-bar-local-item-from-menu', which lets
3857 you specify the map to use as an argument.
3860 ** The function `atan' now accepts an optional second argument.
3862 When called with 2 arguments, as in `(atan Y X)', `atan' returns the
3863 angle in radians between the vector [X, Y] and the X axis. (This is
3864 equivalent to the standard C library function `atan2'.)
3867 ** You can now make a window as short as one line.
3869 A window that is just one line tall does not display either a mode
3870 line or a header line, even if the variables `mode-line-format' and
3871 `header-line-format' call for them. A window that is two lines tall
3872 cannot display both a mode line and a header line at once; if the
3873 variables call for both, only the mode line actually appears.
3876 ** The new frame parameter `tty-color-mode' specifies the mode to use
3877 for color support on character terminal frames. Its value can be a
3878 number of colors to support, or a symbol. See the Emacs Lisp
3879 Reference manual for more detailed documentation.
3882 ** The new mode-line construct `(:propertize ELT PROPS...)' can be
3883 used to add text properties to mode-line elements.
3886 ** The new `%i' and `%I' constructs for `mode-line-format' can be used
3887 to display the size of the accessible part of the buffer on the mode
3891 ** Indentation of simple and extended loop forms has been added to the
3892 cl-indent package. The new user options
3893 `lisp-loop-keyword-indentation', `lisp-loop-forms-indentation', and
3894 `lisp-simple-loop-indentation' can be used to customize the
3895 indentation of keywords and forms in loop forms.
3898 ** Indentation of backquoted forms has been made customizable in the
3899 cl-indent package. See the new user option `lisp-backquote-indentation'.
3902 ** Already true in Emacs 21.1, but not emphasized clearly enough:
3904 Multibyte buffers can now faithfully record all 256 character codes
3905 from 0 to 255. As a result, most of the past reasons to use unibyte
3906 buffers no longer exist. We only know of three reasons to use them
3909 1. If you prefer to use unibyte text all of the time.
3911 2. For reading files into temporary buffers, when you want to avoid
3912 the time it takes to convert the format.
3914 3. For binary files where format conversion would be pointless and
3918 ** If text has a `keymap' property, that keymap takes precedence
3919 over minor mode keymaps.
3922 ** A hex escape in a string forces the string to be multibyte.
3923 An octal escape makes it unibyte.
3926 ** At the end of a command, point moves out from within invisible
3927 text, in the same way it moves out from within text covered by an
3928 image or composition property.
3930 This makes it generally unnecessary to mark invisible text as intangible.
3931 This is particularly good because the intangible property often has
3932 unexpected side-effects since the property applies to everything
3933 (including `goto-char', ...) whereas this new code is only run after
3934 post-command-hook and thus does not care about intermediate states.
3937 ** field-beginning and field-end now accept an additional optional
3941 ** define-abbrev now accepts an optional argument SYSTEM-FLAG. If
3942 non-nil, this marks the abbrev as a "system" abbrev, which means that
3943 it won't be stored in the user's abbrevs file if he saves the abbrevs.
3944 Major modes that predefine some abbrevs should always specify this
3948 ** Support for Mocklisp has been removed.
3951 ** The function insert-string is now obsolete.
3954 ** The precedence of file-name-handlers has been changed.
3955 Instead of blindly choosing the first handler that matches,
3956 find-file-name-handler now gives precedence to a file-name handler
3957 that matches near the end of the file name. More specifically, the
3958 handler whose (match-beginning 0) is the largest is chosen.
3959 In case of ties, the old "first matched" rule applies.
3962 ** Dense keymaps now handle inheritance correctly.
3963 Previously a dense keymap would hide all of the simple-char key
3964 bindings of the parent keymap.
3967 ** jit-lock obeys a new text-property `jit-lock-defer-multiline'.
3968 If a piece of text with that property gets contextually refontified
3969 (see jit-lock-defer-contextually), then all of that text will
3970 be refontified. This is useful when the syntax of a textual element
3971 depends on text several lines further down (and when font-lock-multiline
3972 is not appropriate to solve that problem). For example in Perl:
3980 Adding/removing the last `e' changes the `bar' from being a piece of
3981 text to being a piece of code, so you'd put a jit-lock-defer-multiline
3982 property over the second half of the command to force (deferred)
3983 refontification of `bar' whenever the `e' is added/removed.
3986 ** describe-vector now takes a second argument `describer' which is
3987 called to print the entries' values. It defaults to `princ'.
3989 ** defcustom and other custom declarations now use a default group
3990 (the last prior group defined in the same file) when no :group was given.
3993 ** emacsserver now runs pre-command-hook and post-command-hook when
3994 it receives a request from emacsclient.
3997 ** The variable `recursive-load-depth-limit' has been deleted.
3998 Emacs now signals an error if the same file is loaded with more
3999 than 3 levels of nesting.
4002 ** If a major mode function has a non-nil `no-clone-indirect'
4003 property, `clone-indirect-buffer' signals an error if you use
4007 ** In `replace-match', the replacement text no longer inherits
4008 properties from surrounding text.
4011 ** The list returned by `(match-data t)' now has the buffer as a final
4012 element, if the last match was on a buffer. `set-match-data'
4013 accepts such a list for restoring the match state.
4016 ** New function `buffer-local-value'.
4018 This function returns the buffer-local binding of VARIABLE (a symbol)
4019 in buffer BUFFER. If VARIABLE does not have a buffer-local binding in
4020 buffer BUFFER, it returns the default value of VARIABLE instead.
4023 ** New function `text-clone-create'. Text clones are chunks of text
4024 that are kept identical by transparently propagating changes from one
4028 ** font-lock can manage arbitrary text-properties beside `face'.
4029 *** the FACENAME returned in font-lock-keywords can be a list
4030 of the form (face FACE PROP1 VAL1 PROP2 VAL2 ...) so you can set
4031 other properties than `face'.
4032 *** font-lock-extra-managed-props can be set to make sure those extra
4033 properties are automatically cleaned up by font-lock.
4036 ** The special treatment of faces whose names are of the form `fg:COLOR'
4037 or `bg:COLOR' has been removed. Lisp programs should use the
4038 `defface' facility for defining faces with specific colors, or use
4039 the feature of specifying the face attributes :foreground and :background
4040 directly in the `face' property instead of using a named face.
4043 ** The new function `run-mode-hooks' and the new macro `delay-mode-hooks'
4044 are used by define-derived-mode to make sure the mode hook for the
4045 parent mode is run at the end of the child mode.
4048 ** define-minor-mode now accepts arbitrary additional keyword arguments
4049 and simply passes them to defcustom, if applicable.
4052 ** define-derived-mode by default creates a new empty abbrev table.
4053 It does not copy abbrevs from the parent mode's abbrev table.
4056 ** `provide' and `featurep' now accept an optional second argument
4057 to test/provide subfeatures. Also `provide' now checks `after-load-alist'
4058 and runs any code associated with the provided feature.
4061 ** Functions `file-name-sans-extension' and `file-name-extension' now
4062 ignore the leading dots in file names, so that file names such as
4063 `.emacs' are treated as extensionless.
4066 ** Functions `user-uid' and `user-real-uid' now return floats if the
4067 user UID doesn't fit in a Lisp integer. Function `user-full-name'
4068 accepts a float as UID parameter.
4071 ** `define-key-after' now accepts keys longer than 1.
4074 ** The local variable `no-byte-compile' in elisp files is now obeyed.
4077 ** The Emacs Lisp byte-compiler now displays the actual line and
4078 character position of errors, where possible. Additionally, the form
4079 of its warning and error messages have been brought more in line with
4080 the output of other GNU tools.
4083 ** New functions `keymap-prompt' and `current-active-maps'.
4086 ** New function `describe-buffer-bindings'.
4089 ** New vars `exec-suffixes' and `load-suffixes' used when
4090 searching for an executable resp. an elisp file.
4093 ** Variable aliases have been implemented:
4095 *** defvaralias ALIAS-VAR BASE-VAR [DOCSTRING]
4097 This function defines the symbol ALIAS-VAR as a variable alias for
4098 symbol BASE-VAR. This means that retrieving the value of ALIAS-VAR
4099 returns the value of BASE-VAR, and changing the value of ALIAS-VAR
4100 changes the value of BASE-VAR.
4102 DOCSTRING, if present, is the documentation for ALIAS-VAR; else it has
4103 the same documentation as BASE-VAR.
4105 *** indirect-variable VARIABLE
4107 This function returns the variable at the end of the chain of aliases
4108 of VARIABLE. If VARIABLE is not a symbol, or if VARIABLE is not
4109 defined as an alias, the function returns VARIABLE.
4111 It might be noteworthy that variables aliases work for all kinds of
4112 variables, including buffer-local and frame-local variables.
4115 ** Functions from `post-gc-hook' are run at the end of garbage
4116 collection. The hook is run with GC inhibited, so use it with care.
4119 ** If the second argument to `copy-file' is the name of a directory,
4120 the file is copied to that directory instead of signaling an error.
4123 ** The variables most-positive-fixnum and most-negative-fixnum
4124 hold the largest and smallest possible integer values.
4127 ** On MS Windows, locale-coding-system is used to interact with the OS.
4128 The Windows specific variable w32-system-coding-system, which was
4129 formerly used for that purpose is now an alias for locale-coding-system.
4131 ** Functions y-or-n-p, read-char, read-key-sequence and the like, that
4132 display a prompt but don't use the minibuffer, now display the prompt
4133 using the text properties (esp. the face) of the prompt string.
4135 ** New function x-send-client-message sends a client message when
4138 ** Arguments for remove-overlays are now optional, so that you can remove
4139 all overlays in the buffer by just calling (remove-overlay).
4143 *** The new package gdb-ui.el provides an enhanced graphical interface to
4144 GDB. You can interact with GDB through the GUD buffer in the usual way, but
4145 there are also further buffers which control the execution and describe the
4146 state of your program. It separates the input/output of your program from
4147 that of GDB and watches expressions in the speedbar. It also uses features of
4148 Emacs 21 such as the display margin for breakpoints, and the toolbar.
4150 Use M-x gdba to start GDB-UI.
4152 *** The new package syntax.el provides an efficient way to find the
4153 current syntactic context (as returned by parse-partial-sexp).
4155 *** The new package bindat.el provides functions to unpack and pack
4156 binary data structures, such as network packets, to and from Lisp
4159 *** The TCL package tcl-mode.el was replaced by tcl.el.
4160 This was actually done in Emacs-21.1, and was not documented.
4162 *** The new package button.el implements simple and fast `clickable buttons'
4163 in emacs buffers. `buttons' are much lighter-weight than the `widgets'
4164 implemented by widget.el, and can be used by lisp code that doesn't
4165 require the full power of widgets. Emacs uses buttons for such things
4166 as help and apropos buffers.
4169 * Installation changes in Emacs 21.3
4171 ** Support for GNU/Linux on little-endian MIPS and on IBM S390 has
4175 * Changes in Emacs 21.3
4177 ** The obsolete C mode (c-mode.el) has been removed to avoid problems
4180 ** UTF-16 coding systems are available, encoding the same characters
4183 ** There is a new language environment for UTF-8 (set up automatically
4186 ** Translation tables are available between equivalent characters in
4187 different Emacs charsets -- for instance `e with acute' coming from the
4188 Latin-1 and Latin-2 charsets. User options `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode'
4189 and `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' respectively turn on translation
4190 between ISO 8859 character sets (`unification') on encoding
4191 (e.g. writing a file) and decoding (e.g. reading a file). Note that
4192 `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' is useful and safe, but
4193 `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode' can cause text to change when you read
4194 it and write it out again without edits, so it is not generally advisable.
4195 By default `unify-8859-on-encoding-mode' is turned on.
4197 ** In Emacs running on the X window system, the default value of
4198 `selection-coding-system' is now `compound-text-with-extensions'.
4200 If you want the old behavior, set selection-coding-system to
4201 compound-text, which may be significantly more efficient. Using
4202 compound-text-with-extensions seems to be necessary only for decoding
4203 text from applications under XFree86 4.2, whose behaviour is actually
4204 contrary to the compound text specification.
4207 * Installation changes in Emacs 21.2
4209 ** Support for BSD/OS 5.0 has been added.
4211 ** Support for AIX 5.1 was added.
4214 * Changes in Emacs 21.2
4216 ** Emacs now supports compound-text extended segments in X selections.
4218 X applications can use `extended segments' to encode characters in
4219 compound text that belong to character sets which are not part of the
4220 list of approved standard encodings for X, e.g. Big5. To paste
4221 selections with such characters into Emacs, use the new coding system
4222 compound-text-with-extensions as the value of selection-coding-system.
4224 ** The default values of `tooltip-delay' and `tooltip-hide-delay'
4227 ** On terminals whose erase-char is ^H (Backspace), Emacs
4228 now uses normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.
4230 ** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
4231 initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
4232 instead of using default-major-mode.
4234 ** The new option `Info-scroll-prefer-subnodes' causes Info to behave
4235 like the stand-alone Info reader (from the GNU Texinfo package) as far
4236 as motion between nodes and their subnodes is concerned. If it is t
4237 (the default), Emacs behaves as before when you type SPC in a menu: it
4238 visits the subnode pointed to by the first menu entry. If this option
4239 is nil, SPC scrolls to the end of the current node, and only then goes
4240 to the first menu item, like the stand-alone reader does.
4242 This change was already in Emacs 21.1, but wasn't advertised in the
4246 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 21.2
4248 ** The meanings of scroll-up-aggressively and scroll-down-aggressively
4249 have been interchanged, so that the former now controls scrolling up,
4250 and the latter now controls scrolling down.
4252 ** The variable `compilation-parse-errors-filename-function' can
4253 be used to transform filenames found in compilation output.
4256 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
4258 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and
4259 fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra
4260 charsets in this release.
4262 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
4264 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
4266 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
4267 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
4270 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
4271 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
4272 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to
4273 build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any
4274 necessary changes to unexec.
4276 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
4277 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
4279 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
4280 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
4282 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
4283 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
4285 ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement
4286 all of the new display features described below. The port currently
4287 lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the
4288 "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the
4289 description of aspects specific to the Mac.
4291 ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the
4292 new display features described below.
4295 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
4297 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
4299 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
4300 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
4301 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
4302 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
4305 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
4307 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
4308 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
4309 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
4310 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
4313 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
4314 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
4315 under Lisp changes, below.
4317 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
4319 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
4320 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
4321 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
4322 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
4323 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
4324 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
4327 The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now
4328 supported on character terminals.
4330 Emacs automatically remaps all X-style color specifications to one of
4331 the colors supported by the terminal. This means you could have the
4332 same color customizations that work both on a windowed display and on
4333 a TTY or when Emacs is invoked with the -nw option.
4335 ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X.
4339 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
4340 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
4341 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
4342 You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes' to enable
4345 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
4347 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
4348 longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it
4349 is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum
4350 minibuffer window size by setting the following variables:
4352 - User option: max-mini-window-height
4354 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
4355 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
4356 specifies a number of lines.
4360 - User option: resize-mini-windows
4362 How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always
4363 resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows
4364 grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk
4367 Default is `grow-only'.
4371 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see
4372 <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will need version 0.92.26, or later.
4374 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
4376 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
4377 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
4380 ** File selection dialog on MS-Windows is supported.
4382 When a file is visited by clicking File->Open, the MS-Windows version
4383 now pops up a standard file selection dialog where you can select a
4384 file to visit. File->Save As also pops up that dialog.
4386 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
4388 Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for
4389 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when
4390 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
4391 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
4392 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
4395 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
4396 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
4397 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
4398 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
4399 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
4400 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
4402 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
4403 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
4404 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
4405 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
4406 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
4407 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
4409 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
4410 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
4411 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
4412 imake configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
4413 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
4415 ** Tool bar support.
4417 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
4418 of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level
4419 changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is
4420 displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved
4421 if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome
4424 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
4425 for specific modes (with copyright assignments).
4429 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
4430 mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can
4431 turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
4433 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
4434 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
4435 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
4436 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
4438 ** Automatic Hscrolling
4440 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
4441 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
4444 If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or
4445 scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound
4446 for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll
4447 the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more
4448 to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc.
4450 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
4451 of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is
4452 solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option
4453 `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the
4454 cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if
4455 non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown.
4457 ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display
4458 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
4459 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
4460 customizing face `fringe'.
4462 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default.
4463 You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'.
4464 In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D
4465 appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line
4466 occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of
4467 the window to be partially obscured.)
4469 The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older
4470 versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, is now deprecated.
4471 However, setting it to nil will cause the `mode-line' face to be
4472 ignored, and mode-lines to be drawn using the default text face.
4474 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
4476 Different parts of the mode line have been made mouse-sensitive on all
4477 systems which support the mouse. Moving the mouse to a
4478 mouse-sensitive part in the mode line changes the appearance of the
4479 mouse pointer to an arrow, and help about available mouse actions is
4480 displayed either in the echo area, or in the tooltip window if you
4483 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
4485 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line goes to the next buffer.
4487 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name goes to the previous buffer.
4489 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
4490 `*') toggles the status.
4492 - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu.
4494 ** Hourglass pointer
4496 Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can
4497 turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
4501 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
4502 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
4503 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
4506 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
4508 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
4509 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
4510 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
4513 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
4514 have to do anything to activate it.
4516 ** The default binding of the Delete key has changed.
4518 The new user-option `normal-erase-is-backspace' can be set to
4519 determine the effect of the Delete and Backspace function keys.
4521 On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen
4522 according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace
4523 key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the
4524 option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to
4525 delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward. On
4526 keyboards which either have only one key (usually labeled DEL), or two
4527 keys DEL and BS which produce the same effect, the option's value is
4528 set to nil, and these keys delete backward.
4530 If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes
4531 a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the
4532 Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via
4533 `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on
4534 the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting on a text-only
4535 terminal if you don't have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys.
4537 Programmatically, you can call function normal-erase-is-backspace-mode
4538 to toggle the behavior of the Delete and Backspace keys.
4540 ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been
4541 changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a
4544 ** The <home> and <end> keys now move to the beginning or end of the
4545 current line, respectively. C-<home> and C-<end> move to the
4546 beginning and end of the buffer.
4548 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
4549 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
4552 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
4553 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
4555 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
4556 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
4559 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs's byte
4560 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
4563 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
4565 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
4566 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
4567 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
4569 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
4570 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
4571 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
4573 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
4576 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
4578 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
4579 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
4580 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
4581 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
4582 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
4585 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
4586 all frames except the selected one.
4588 ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to
4589 let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting.
4591 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs
4592 header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window),
4593 so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled.
4594 This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option
4595 `Info-use-header-line'.
4597 ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card
4598 have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex',
4599 `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included.
4601 ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available.
4603 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
4604 `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in
4607 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
4608 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
4609 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
4610 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
4612 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable through Customize.
4614 You can no longer use `M-x customize-variable' to customize `load-path'
4615 because it now contains a version-dependent component. You can still
4616 use `add-to-list' and `setq' to customize this variable in your
4617 `~/.emacs' init file or to modify it from any Lisp program in general.
4619 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
4620 point in a pop-up window.
4622 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
4623 under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or
4624 customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'.
4626 The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
4627 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
4629 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
4630 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
4631 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
4632 You can customize `auto-save-list-file-prefix' to change this location.
4634 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
4636 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
4637 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
4639 ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the
4640 trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add
4641 this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'.
4643 ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will
4644 be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is
4647 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
4648 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
4649 file that is already visited under a different name.
4651 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
4652 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
4654 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
4655 and displays information about that.
4657 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
4658 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
4660 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
4661 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
4662 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
4663 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
4664 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
4665 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
4667 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
4668 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
4670 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
4671 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
4672 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
4673 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
4674 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
4675 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
4676 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
4678 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
4679 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
4681 ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding
4682 system for keyboard input.
4684 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
4685 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
4686 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
4687 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
4688 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
4689 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
4690 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
4691 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
4692 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
4694 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
4695 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
4697 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
4698 displays all characters in that character set.
4700 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
4701 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
4703 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
4704 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
4705 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
4707 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
4708 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
4709 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
4710 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have
4711 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts.
4712 There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only)
4715 ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'.
4716 These new environments mainly select appropriate translations
4719 ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for
4720 function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs
4721 Lisp Coding Convention".
4723 new command old-binding
4724 --- ------- -----------
4725 f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5
4726 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5
4727 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5
4729 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged
4730 S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged
4731 C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged
4733 S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3
4734 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6
4735 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7
4736 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8
4737 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged
4738 C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2
4740 ** There are new Leim input methods.
4741 New input methods "turkish-postfix", "turkish-alt-postfix",
4742 "greek-mizuochi", "TeX", and "greek-babel" are now part of the Leim
4745 ** The rule of input method "slovak" is slightly changed. Now the
4746 rules for translating "q" and "Q" to "`" (backquote) are deleted, thus
4747 typing them inserts "q" and "Q" respectively. Rules for translating
4748 "=q", "+q", "=Q", and "+Q" to "`" are also deleted. Now, to input
4749 "`", you must type "=q".
4751 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
4752 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
4753 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
4754 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
4755 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
4758 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
4759 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
4760 defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region
4761 commenting with the variable `comment-style'.
4763 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
4764 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
4765 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
4766 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
4768 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
4769 on the display using several methods
4771 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
4772 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
4773 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
4775 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
4776 equivalent to specifying the frame parameter.
4778 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
4780 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
4781 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
4783 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
4784 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
4785 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
4786 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
4788 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
4789 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
4790 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
4792 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
4793 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
4795 ** New X resources recognized
4797 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
4798 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
4799 is useful for debugging X problems.
4803 emacs.synchronous: true
4805 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
4806 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
4807 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
4808 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
4809 visual class names are
4818 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
4819 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
4822 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
4823 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
4824 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
4829 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
4831 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
4832 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
4833 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
4834 resource values are `true' or `on'.
4838 emacs.privateColormap: true
4840 ** Faces and frame parameters.
4842 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
4843 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
4844 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
4845 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
4846 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
4847 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
4848 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
4850 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
4851 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
4852 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
4853 `default' face and vice versa.
4857 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
4859 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
4861 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
4862 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
4863 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
4864 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
4866 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
4867 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
4868 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
4870 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
4873 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
4875 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
4876 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
4877 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
4878 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
4880 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
4882 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
4884 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
4886 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
4889 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
4892 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
4894 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
4895 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
4896 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
4898 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
4899 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi and Less).
4901 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
4902 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
4903 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
4905 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
4907 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
4908 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a
4909 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
4910 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
4912 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
4913 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a
4914 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
4915 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
4917 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
4918 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
4919 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
4922 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
4924 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
4925 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
4926 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
4928 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
4929 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
4930 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
4931 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
4932 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
4933 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
4935 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
4937 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
4938 notably at the end of lines.
4940 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
4941 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
4943 ** The function `replace-rectangle' is an alias for `string-rectangle'.
4945 ** The new command M-x string-insert-rectangle is like `string-rectangle',
4946 but inserts text instead of replacing it.
4948 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
4949 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
4950 after each match to get the replacement text.
4952 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
4953 you edit the replacement string.
4955 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB'
4956 (if you load the library `mailabbrev'), lets you complete mail aliases
4957 in the text, analogous to lisp-complete-symbol.
4959 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
4961 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
4962 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
4964 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
4965 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
4966 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
4967 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
4970 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
4971 read mail from the menu etc.
4973 ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows.
4974 This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on
4975 MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made
4976 before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now.
4978 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
4979 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
4981 ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces the MS-DOS version
4982 of Emacs to behave as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons.
4983 This comes handy with mice that don't report their number of buttons
4984 correctly. One example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons,
4985 but clicks on the middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version
4988 ** Customize changes
4990 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
4991 `State' menu to add comments, or give a prefix argument to
4992 M-x customize-set-variable or M-x customize-set-value. Note that
4993 customization comments will cause the customizations to fail in
4994 earlier versions of Emacs.
4996 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
4997 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
5000 *** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
5001 does not allow you to save customizations in your `~/.emacs' init
5002 file. This is because saving customizations from such a session would
5003 wipe out all the other customizationss you might have on your init
5006 ** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
5007 does not save disabled and enabled commands for future sessions, to
5008 avoid overwriting existing customizations of this kind that are
5009 already in your init file.
5011 ** New features in evaluation commands
5013 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
5014 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
5015 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the new
5016 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
5017 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
5019 The default values for the first two of these variables are 12 and 4
5020 respectively, which means that `eval-expression' now prints at most
5021 the first 12 members of a list and at most 4 nesting levels deep (if
5022 the list is longer or deeper than that, an ellipsis `...' is
5025 <RET> or <mouse-2> on the printed text toggles between an abbreviated
5026 printed representation and an unabbreviated one.
5028 The default value of eval-expression-debug-on-error is t, so any error
5029 during evaluation produces a backtrace.
5031 *** The function `eval-defun' (C-M-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
5032 code when called with a prefix argument.
5036 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
5037 current user setups (although it's believed that these
5038 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
5039 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
5040 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
5041 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
5044 *** The hardcoded switch to "java" style in Java mode is gone.
5045 CC Mode used to automatically set the style to "java" when Java mode
5046 is entered. This has now been removed since it caused too much
5049 However, to keep backward compatibility to a certain extent, the
5050 default value for c-default-style now specifies the "java" style for
5051 java-mode, but "gnu" for all other modes (as before). So you won't
5052 notice the change if you haven't touched that variable.
5054 *** New cleanups, space-before-funcall and compact-empty-funcall.
5055 Two new cleanups have been added to c-cleanup-list:
5057 space-before-funcall causes a space to be inserted before the opening
5058 parenthesis of a function call, which gives the style "foo (bar)".
5060 compact-empty-funcall causes any space before a function call opening
5061 parenthesis to be removed if there are no arguments to the function.
5062 It's typically useful together with space-before-funcall to get the
5063 style "foo (bar)" and "foo()".
5065 *** Some keywords now automatically trigger reindentation.
5066 Keywords like "else", "while", "catch" and "finally" have been made
5067 "electric" to make them reindent automatically when they continue an
5068 earlier statement. An example:
5070 for (i = 0; i < 17; i++)
5072 res += a[i]->offset;
5075 Here, the "else" should be indented like the preceding "if", since it
5076 continues that statement. CC Mode will automatically reindent it after
5077 the "else" has been typed in full, since it's not until then it's
5078 possible to decide whether it's a new statement or a continuation of
5081 CC Mode uses Abbrev mode to achieve this, which is therefore turned on
5084 *** M-a and M-e now moves by sentence in multiline strings.
5085 Previously these two keys only moved by sentence in comments, which
5086 meant that sentence movement didn't work in strings containing
5087 documentation or other natural language text.
5089 The reason it's only activated in multiline strings (i.e. strings that
5090 contain a newline, even when escaped by a '\') is to avoid stopping in
5091 the short strings that often reside inside statements. Multiline
5092 strings almost always contain text in a natural language, as opposed
5093 to other strings that typically contain format specifications,
5094 commands, etc. Also, it's not that bothersome that M-a and M-e misses
5095 sentences in single line strings, since they're short anyway.
5097 *** Support for autodoc comments in Pike mode.
5098 Autodoc comments for Pike are used to extract documentation from the
5099 source, like Javadoc in Java. Pike mode now recognize this markup in
5100 comment prefixes and paragraph starts.
5102 *** The comment prefix regexps on c-comment-prefix may be mode specific.
5103 When c-comment-prefix is an association list, it specifies the comment
5104 line prefix on a per-mode basis, like c-default-style does. This
5105 change came about to support the special autodoc comment prefix in
5108 *** Better handling of syntactic errors.
5109 The recovery after unbalanced parens earlier in the buffer has been
5110 improved; CC Mode now reports them by dinging and giving a message
5111 stating the offending line, but still recovers and indent the
5112 following lines in a sane way (most of the time). An "else" with no
5113 matching "if" is handled similarly. If an error is discovered while
5114 indenting a region, the whole region is still indented and the error
5115 is reported afterwards.
5117 *** Lineup functions may now return absolute columns.
5118 A lineup function can give an absolute column to indent the line to by
5119 returning a vector with the desired column as the first element.
5121 *** More robust and warning-free byte compilation.
5122 Although this is strictly not a user visible change (well, depending
5123 on the view of a user), it's still worth mentioning that CC Mode now
5124 can be compiled in the standard ways without causing trouble. Some
5125 code have also been moved between the subpackages to enhance the
5126 modularity somewhat. Thanks to Martin Buchholz for doing the
5129 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
5130 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
5131 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
5132 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
5133 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
5136 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
5137 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
5138 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
5139 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
5140 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
5141 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
5143 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
5144 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
5145 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
5146 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
5147 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
5148 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
5149 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
5150 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
5152 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
5153 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
5154 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
5155 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
5158 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
5159 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
5160 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
5161 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
5162 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
5163 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
5164 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
5165 function documentation for more info.
5167 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
5168 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
5169 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
5170 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
5171 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
5172 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
5173 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
5174 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
5176 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
5178 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
5179 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
5181 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
5182 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
5183 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
5184 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
5185 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
5188 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
5189 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
5190 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
5193 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
5194 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
5195 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
5196 chapter about this in the manual.
5198 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
5199 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
5200 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
5201 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
5202 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
5204 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
5205 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
5206 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
5208 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
5209 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
5211 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
5212 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
5213 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
5216 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
5217 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
5218 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
5219 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
5222 **** The variables `c-hanging-comment-starter-p' and
5223 `c-hanging-comment-ender-p', which controlled how comment starters and
5224 enders were filled, are not used anymore. The new version of the
5225 function `c-fill-paragraph' keeps the comment starters and enders as
5226 they were before the filling.
5228 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
5229 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
5230 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
5233 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
5234 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
5235 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
5236 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
5239 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
5240 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
5241 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
5242 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
5243 Thanks to Eric Eide.
5245 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
5246 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
5247 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
5249 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
5251 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
5252 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
5253 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
5254 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
5256 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
5257 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
5258 the column specified by comment-column.
5260 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
5261 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
5262 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
5263 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
5264 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
5265 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
5267 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
5268 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
5271 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
5273 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
5274 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
5275 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
5276 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
5279 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
5283 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
5284 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
5285 is, delete only empty directories.
5287 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
5288 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
5289 copy directories recursively.
5291 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
5292 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
5293 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
5295 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
5296 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
5299 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `y') shows
5300 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
5301 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
5302 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
5303 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
5305 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
5308 *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use
5309 of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename,
5310 which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single
5311 source file, not when operating on multiple marked files.
5315 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
5316 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
5317 internationalization and mail-fetching.
5319 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
5320 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
5322 If you used procmail like in
5324 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
5325 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
5326 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
5327 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
5329 this now has changed to
5332 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
5335 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
5336 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
5338 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
5339 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
5340 Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no
5341 longer work; remove them and use the native facilities.
5343 The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to
5344 use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was
5345 installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier.
5347 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
5348 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There
5349 are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is
5350 now just a compatibility layer.
5352 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
5355 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
5356 called to position point.
5358 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
5359 summary buffers and NOV files.
5361 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
5362 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
5364 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
5365 subtly different manner.
5367 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
5368 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
5369 ever-changing layouts.
5371 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
5373 *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support.
5375 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
5377 *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
5381 -------------------------
5385 C-c C-c q @quotation
5387 C-c C-o @<block> ... @end <block>
5390 *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context.
5392 ** Changes in Outline mode.
5394 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
5395 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
5396 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
5398 ** Changes to Emacs Server
5400 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
5401 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
5402 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
5403 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
5404 buffers to kill, as before.
5406 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
5407 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
5410 ** Both emacsclient and Emacs itself now accept command line options
5411 of the form +LINE:COLUMN in addition to +LINE.
5413 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
5415 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
5416 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
5417 use. Default is 1000.
5419 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
5420 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
5422 ** Changes to hideshow.el
5424 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
5426 A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings),
5427 and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp
5428 serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate.
5429 See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'.
5431 *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active,
5432 hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can
5433 be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of
5436 *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a
5437 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of
5438 the normal block-hiding function.
5440 *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed.
5442 *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions,
5443 roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix
5444 for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation
5445 for `hs-minor-mode'.
5447 *** The variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' has been removed, and
5448 hideshow.el now always behaves as if this variable were set to t.
5450 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
5452 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
5453 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
5454 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
5456 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
5459 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
5462 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
5463 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
5464 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
5465 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
5466 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized.
5467 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
5469 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting.
5471 ** Changes to cmuscheme
5473 *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed
5474 `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el.
5476 ** Changes in Font Lock
5478 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
5479 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode.
5481 *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should
5482 set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults.
5484 *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose
5485 the face used for each string/comment.
5487 *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'.
5488 Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code".
5490 ** Changes to Shell mode
5492 *** The `shell' command now accepts an optional argument to specify the buffer
5493 to use, which defaults to "*shell*". When used interactively, a
5494 non-default buffer may be specified by giving the `shell' command a
5495 prefix argument (causing it to prompt for the buffer name).
5497 ** Comint (subshell) changes
5499 These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which
5500 include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc.
5502 *** Comint now by default interprets some carriage-control characters.
5503 Comint now removes CRs from CR LF sequences, and treats single CRs and
5504 BSs in the output in a way similar to a terminal (by deleting to the
5505 beginning of the line, or deleting the previous character,
5506 respectively). This is achieved by adding `comint-carriage-motion' to
5507 the `comint-output-filter-functions' hook by default.
5509 *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp'
5510 to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which
5511 parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the
5512 user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use
5513 this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line,
5514 respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this
5515 feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option
5516 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'.
5518 *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
5519 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
5521 *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
5522 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
5523 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
5525 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
5526 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
5527 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
5529 *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts,
5530 and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features,
5531 see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
5533 *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s')
5534 saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix
5535 argument, it appends to the file.
5537 *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output'
5538 (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for
5541 *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input
5544 *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for
5545 identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp
5546 strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#".
5548 ** Changes to Rmail mode
5550 *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
5551 set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when
5552 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
5553 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
5554 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
5557 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
5558 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
5559 regexp matching your mail addresses.
5561 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
5562 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
5563 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
5564 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
5565 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
5567 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
5570 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
5571 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
5574 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
5575 in which folder to put messages automatically.
5577 *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message
5578 with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly
5579 due to missing or malformed "charset=" header.
5581 ** The new user-option `mail-envelope-from' can be used to specify
5582 an envelope-from address different from user-mail-address.
5584 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
5585 use the -f option when sending mail.
5587 ** The Rmail command `o' (`rmail-output-to-rmail-file') now writes the
5588 current message in the internal `emacs-mule' encoding, rather than in
5589 the encoding taken from the variable `buffer-file-coding-system'.
5590 This allows to save messages whose characters cannot be safely encoded
5591 by the buffer's coding system, and makes sure the message will be
5592 displayed correctly when you later visit the target Rmail file.
5594 If you want your Rmail files be encoded in a specific coding system
5595 other than `emacs-mule', you can customize the variable
5596 `rmail-file-coding-system' to set its value to that coding system.
5598 ** Changes to TeX mode
5600 *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
5603 *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm.
5605 *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs.
5607 *** Added support for outline-minor-mode.
5609 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5611 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
5612 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
5613 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
5614 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
5615 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
5616 can be edited from that buffer.
5618 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
5619 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
5620 `A' to use all marked entries).
5622 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
5623 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
5625 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
5626 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
5627 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
5630 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
5631 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
5632 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
5633 in column 1 are always made leaves.
5635 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
5636 has the following new features:
5638 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
5639 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
5640 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
5641 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
5643 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
5644 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
5645 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
5646 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
5647 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
5650 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
5655 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
5656 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
5657 spell-checks the current buffer.
5659 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
5662 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
5663 correction is made and re-checked.
5665 *** Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definitions have been added.
5667 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
5670 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
5673 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
5676 *** Spell checking now works in the MS-DOS version of Emacs.
5678 ** Makefile mode changes
5680 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
5682 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
5683 Fontlock mode is active.
5687 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
5688 so that searches can be resumed.
5690 *** In Isearch mode, C-M-s and C-M-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
5691 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
5692 that started the search.
5694 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
5695 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
5697 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
5699 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
5700 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
5701 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
5702 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
5703 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
5704 `secondary-selection'.
5706 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
5707 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
5708 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
5709 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
5710 usual snappy response.
5712 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
5713 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
5714 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
5715 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
5719 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
5720 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
5721 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
5722 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
5723 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
5724 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify
5725 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
5726 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
5727 file is registered in that backend.
5729 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
5730 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
5731 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
5732 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
5733 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
5734 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
5736 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
5737 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
5738 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
5739 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
5740 where it doesn't make sense.)
5742 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
5743 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
5744 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
5748 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
5749 checks are always done now.
5751 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
5754 `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'.
5755 `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'.
5756 `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'.
5758 The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the
5759 first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the
5760 current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into
5761 the working file (``merge news'').
5763 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
5764 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work
5767 *** Multiple Backends
5769 VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is
5770 useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS
5771 repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally
5772 commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your
5775 To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example)
5776 should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote''
5777 backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of
5778 `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.)
5780 You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing
5781 C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as
5782 a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend
5783 if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the
5784 current revision number from the more remote backend.
5786 If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to
5787 another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change
5788 any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to
5789 pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally.
5791 After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your
5792 changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the
5793 local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry
5794 buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file.
5798 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
5799 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
5800 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
5801 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
5802 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
5803 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
5804 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
5806 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of
5807 repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and
5808 revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without
5809 any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version
5810 backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version
5811 number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~
5812 (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter
5813 of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other,
5814 the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted
5815 automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS,
5816 since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file
5819 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
5820 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
5821 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
5822 commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the
5823 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
5824 entire directory tree.
5826 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
5827 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
5828 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
5829 "watched" by other developers.)
5831 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
5832 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give
5833 an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update',
5834 starting at the given directory.
5836 *** Lisp Changes in VC
5838 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
5839 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
5840 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
5841 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
5842 a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which
5843 provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top
5844 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
5845 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol
5846 `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
5848 ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT
5849 SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more
5850 terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs.
5851 See etc/edt-user.doc for more information.
5853 ** New modes and packages
5855 *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode'
5856 automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when
5857 the default is not applicable.
5859 *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines,
5860 rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The
5861 shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \.
5865 - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is
5866 drawn, like this: | \ /
5870 - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the
5871 result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If
5872 your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a
5873 pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will
5874 then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line
5877 - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight)
5878 poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >.
5880 - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by
5883 - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular
5884 regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be
5885 turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in
5886 artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa.
5888 - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can
5889 also do without the mouse.
5891 - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to
5892 reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares
5893 and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your
5894 ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio,
5895 the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round.
5897 - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented:
5899 lines straight-lines
5901 poly-lines straight poly-lines
5903 text (see-thru) text (overwrite)
5904 spray-can setting size for spraying
5905 vaporize line vaporize lines
5906 erase characters erase rectangles
5908 Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or
5909 diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in
5910 the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while
5913 It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines
5914 (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are
5915 straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired
5916 by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>.
5918 - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this
5921 *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell
5922 implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it.
5923 It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp
5924 functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports
5925 history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It
5926 will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of
5927 the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been
5928 rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell,
5929 all within the scope of your Emacs process.
5931 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
5932 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
5933 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
5934 on certain projects.
5936 *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches
5937 of interactively entered regexps. For example,
5939 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
5941 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
5942 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
5943 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
5944 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
5945 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
5946 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
5947 corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches
5948 to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match.
5950 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
5953 *** The new package tildify.el allows to add hard spaces or other text
5954 fragments in accordance with the current major mode.
5956 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
5957 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
5959 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
5960 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
5961 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
5962 `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only
5963 comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary.
5965 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
5966 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
5967 separate Texinfo file.
5969 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
5970 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
5971 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
5972 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
5973 enter check-in log messages.
5975 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
5976 without invoking external programs.
5978 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
5979 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
5980 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
5981 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
5982 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
5984 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
5985 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
5987 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
5988 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
5990 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
5991 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
5992 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
5993 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
5994 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
5997 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
5998 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
5999 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
6000 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
6002 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
6003 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
6004 actually modifying content of a buffer.
6006 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
6009 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
6011 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
6013 ; comment (until end of line)
6017 $A default non-terminal
6018 $"C" default terminal
6019 $?C? default special
6020 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
6021 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
6022 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
6023 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
6024 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
6025 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
6026 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
6027 C+ one or more occurrences of C
6028 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
6029 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
6030 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
6031 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
6032 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
6033 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
6034 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
6036 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
6038 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
6039 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
6040 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
6041 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
6042 equal signs of assignments.
6044 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
6045 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
6047 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
6048 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
6049 buffer menu with this package. See the Custom group `bs'.
6051 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
6053 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
6054 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
6055 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
6056 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
6057 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
6058 which answers different needs.
6060 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
6061 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
6062 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
6063 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
6064 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
6067 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
6068 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
6070 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
6072 *** hl-line.el provides `hl-line-mode', a minor mode to highlight the
6073 current line in the current buffer. It also provides
6074 `global-hl-line-mode' to provide the same behavior in all buffers.
6076 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
6078 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and
6079 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
6080 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
6081 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
6082 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
6083 and background colors.
6085 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
6088 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
6091 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
6093 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
6095 *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus
6096 whitespace in a file.
6098 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
6099 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
6100 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
6101 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
6102 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
6103 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
6104 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
6106 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
6108 Here is an example of columns:
6111 dog pineapple car EXTRA
6112 porcupine strawberry airplane
6114 Doing the following settings:
6116 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
6117 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
6118 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
6119 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
6122 Selecting the lines above and typing:
6124 M-x delimit-columns-region
6128 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
6129 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
6130 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
6132 delim-col has the following options:
6134 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
6137 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
6138 between each column.
6140 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
6143 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
6146 delim-col has the following commands:
6148 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
6149 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
6151 *** Recentf mode maintains a menu for visiting files that were
6152 operated on recently. User option recentf-menu-filter specifies a
6153 menu filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the
6154 recent file list can be displayed:
6156 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
6157 - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending.
6158 - showing paths relative to the current default-directory
6160 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
6161 dynamically change the menu appearance.
6163 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
6166 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
6167 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
6168 specific to Message mode.
6170 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
6171 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
6172 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
6174 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
6175 interface to access directory servers using different directory
6176 protocols. It has a separate manual.
6178 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
6179 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
6181 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
6183 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
6184 minibuffer with completion.
6186 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
6187 with the diary features.
6189 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
6190 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
6192 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
6195 *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion
6196 facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main
6197 difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning
6198 they can be profiled, debugged, etc.
6200 *** antlr-mode is a new major mode for editing ANTLR grammar files.
6201 It is automatically turned on for files whose names have the extension
6204 ** Changes in sort.el
6206 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
6207 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
6208 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
6211 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
6213 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
6214 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
6215 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
6217 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
6218 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
6220 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
6221 output ^M at the end of lines.
6223 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
6224 mode `iswitchb-mode'.
6226 ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore.
6227 If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with
6230 ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom
6233 ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the
6234 behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values
6237 `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space;
6238 `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces;
6239 `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines;
6240 nil -- just delete one character.
6242 Default value is `untabify'.
6244 [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.]
6246 ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face
6247 symbol, not double-quoted.
6249 ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future
6250 version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline,
6251 profile, rnews, rnewspost, and sc. Their implementations have been
6252 moved to lisp/obsolete.
6254 ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el.
6255 To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the
6256 `auto-compression-mode' command.
6258 ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for
6259 `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME, and
6260 `browse-url-kde' can be chosen for invoking the KDE browser.
6262 ** The user-option `browse-url-new-window-p' has been renamed to
6263 `browse-url-new-window-flag'.
6265 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
6266 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
6268 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
6269 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
6271 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
6272 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
6273 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
6274 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
6275 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
6276 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
6278 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
6279 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
6281 ** Hexl mode allows to insert non-ASCII characters.
6283 The non-ASCII characters are encoded using the same encoding as the
6284 file you are visiting in Hexl mode.
6286 ** Shell script mode changes.
6288 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
6289 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and
6290 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
6294 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
6296 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
6297 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
6298 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
6299 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
6300 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
6302 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
6303 declarations when given the --declarations option.
6305 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
6306 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
6308 *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags
6309 automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or
6310 `template' keywords.
6312 *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in
6313 C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels.
6315 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
6318 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
6320 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
6322 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
6325 *** In makefiles, tags the targets.
6327 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
6328 variables are tagged.
6330 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
6332 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
6335 ** Changes in etags.el
6337 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
6338 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
6339 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
6341 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
6342 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
6344 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
6345 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
6346 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
6347 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
6349 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
6351 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
6352 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
6354 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
6356 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
6357 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
6358 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
6360 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
6361 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
6363 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
6364 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
6366 *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself.
6367 If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c
6368 /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c",
6369 "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name,
6370 point will go to the beginning of the file.
6372 *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if
6373 auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search
6374 (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files.
6376 *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point
6377 in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is
6378 found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring.
6380 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
6381 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
6382 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
6384 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
6386 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
6388 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
6389 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
6390 expression from that list, are not checked.
6392 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
6393 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
6394 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
6395 the buffer, just like for the local files.
6397 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
6399 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
6400 displays local abbrevs, only.
6402 ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping
6403 paragraphs filled as you modify them.
6405 ** The variable `double-click-fuzz' specifies how much the mouse
6406 may be moved between clicks that are recognized as a pair. Its value
6407 is measured in pixels.
6409 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
6410 to be visited as images.
6412 ** Two new user-options `grep-command' and `grep-find-command'
6413 were added to compile.el.
6415 ** Withdrawn packages
6417 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
6418 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
6420 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
6422 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
6425 * Incompatible Lisp changes
6427 There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and
6428 may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference.
6429 See the sections below for details.
6431 ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom
6432 `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties.
6433 Use `copy-sequence' to copy the string, then use `set-text-properties'
6434 to remove the properties of the copy.
6436 ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code
6437 which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability)
6438 may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from
6439 these properties are active.
6441 ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search
6442 ranges may affect some code.
6444 ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
6445 buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
6446 make a difference to some code.
6448 ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which
6449 operates on the minibuffer.
6451 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
6452 cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce
6453 different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters
6454 (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results).
6455 Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate
6456 character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading
6457 multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE
6458 encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program
6459 reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte
6460 sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as
6461 a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in
6462 the buffer as multibyte characters.
6464 Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal
6465 MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only
6466 appropriate for reading truly binary files.
6468 ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and
6469 `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use
6470 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead.
6472 ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as
6473 long promised. So does any code that uses derivatives of `concat',
6474 such as `mapconcat'.
6476 ** The function base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte
6479 ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of
6480 extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new
6481 dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than
6482 one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard
6483 charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes
6484 the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule
6485 encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will
6486 probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21.
6488 ** The variable `directory-sep-char' is slated for removal.
6489 Not really a change (yet), but a projected one that you should be
6490 aware of: The variable `directory-sep-char' is deprecated, and should
6491 not be used. It was always ignored on GNU/Linux and Unix systems and
6492 on MS-DOS, but the MS-Windows port tried to support it by adapting the
6493 behavior of certain primitives to the value of this variable. It
6494 turned out that such support cannot be reliable, so it was decided to
6495 remove this variable in the near future. Lisp programs are well
6496 advised not to set it to anything but '/', because any different value
6497 will not have any effect when support for this variable is removed.
6500 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
6501 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
6503 ** Function assq-delete-all replaces function assoc-delete-all.
6505 ** The new function animate-string, from lisp/play/animate.el
6506 allows the animated display of strings.
6508 ** The new function `interactive-form' can be used to obtain the
6509 interactive form of a function.
6511 ** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
6512 between custom options. Example:
6514 (defcustom default-input-method nil
6515 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
6516 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
6517 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
6519 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
6520 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
6522 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
6523 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
6524 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
6526 ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of
6527 function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no
6528 args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated
6529 (signal or normal termination).
6531 ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements
6532 from a list are now available without requiring the CL package.
6534 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
6535 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
6537 ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies
6538 alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font.
6540 ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum".
6542 ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually
6543 deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame
6546 ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg.
6548 ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed.
6549 If a range in a regular expression or the arg of
6550 skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends
6551 with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is
6552 C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's
6555 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
6556 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
6559 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
6560 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
6562 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
6563 with the more general `:mask' property.
6565 ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's.
6567 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
6570 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
6571 is running in batch mode. For example,
6573 (message "%s" (read t))
6575 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
6578 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
6579 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
6581 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
6582 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
6585 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
6588 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
6590 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
6591 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
6593 - Function: remq ELT LIST
6595 Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The
6596 comparison is done with `eq'.
6598 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
6600 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
6601 has been changed: WEAK can now have new values `key-or-value' and
6602 `key-and-value', in addition to `nil', `key', `value', and `t'.
6604 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
6605 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
6606 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
6608 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
6609 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
6611 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
6612 function was declared obsolete.
6614 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
6615 retained as an alias).
6617 ** Easy-menu's :filter now takes the unconverted form of the menu and
6618 the result is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
6620 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
6622 - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF
6624 Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or
6625 omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use
6626 the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window,
6627 even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the
6628 minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t
6629 means never include the minibuffer window.
6631 ** There's a new function `get-window-with-predicate' defined as follows
6633 - Function: get-window-with-predicate PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
6635 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
6637 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
6638 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
6639 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
6640 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
6643 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
6644 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
6645 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
6646 minibuffer even if it is active.
6648 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
6649 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
6650 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
6651 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
6652 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
6653 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
6655 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
6656 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
6657 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
6658 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
6659 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
6660 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
6661 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
6663 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
6664 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
6665 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
6667 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
6668 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
6669 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
6670 Default value is nil.
6672 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
6675 ** The new user option `line-number-display-limit-width' controls
6676 the maximum width of lines in a buffer for which Emacs displays line
6677 numbers in the mode line. The default is 200.
6679 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
6680 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
6681 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
6683 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument
6684 list of a primitive.
6686 ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps.
6688 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
6689 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
6690 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
6691 than replacing the local map.
6693 ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and
6694 `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been
6695 removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions'
6698 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
6700 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments,
6701 as promised long ago.
6703 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
6705 ** The new variable auto-coding-regexp-alist specifies coding systems
6706 for reading specific files, analogous to auto-coding-alist, but
6707 patterns are checked against file contents instead of file names.
6710 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
6712 ** The new package rx.el provides an alternative sexp notation for
6713 regular expressions.
6715 - Function: rx-to-string SEXP
6717 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
6721 Translate SEXP into a regular expression in string notation.
6723 The following are valid subforms of regular expressions in sexp
6727 matches string STRING literally.
6730 matches character CHAR literally.
6733 matches any character except a newline.
6736 matches any character
6739 matches any character in SET. SET may be a character or string.
6740 Ranges of characters can be specified as `A-Z' in strings.
6746 matches any character not in SET
6749 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a line
6750 in the text being matched
6753 is similar to `line-start' but matches only at the end of a line
6756 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
6757 string being matched against.
6760 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
6761 string being matched against.
6764 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the
6765 buffer being matched against.
6768 matches the empty string, but only at the end of the
6769 buffer being matched against.
6772 matches the empty string, but only at point.
6775 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
6779 matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word.
6782 matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a
6785 `(not word-boundary)'
6786 matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a
6790 matches 0 through 9.
6793 matches ASCII control characters.
6796 matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
6799 matches space and tab only.
6802 matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
6806 matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
6810 matches letters and digits. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
6811 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
6814 matches letters. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
6815 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
6818 matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
6821 matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
6824 matches anything lower-case.
6827 matches anything upper-case.
6830 matches punctuation. (But at present, for multibyte characters,
6831 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
6834 matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
6837 matches anything that has word syntax.
6840 matches a character with syntax SYNTAX. SYNTAX must be one
6841 of the following symbols.
6843 `whitespace' (\\s- in string notation)
6844 `punctuation' (\\s.)
6847 `open-parenthesis' (\\s()
6848 `close-parenthesis' (\\s))
6849 `expression-prefix' (\\s')
6850 `string-quote' (\\s\")
6851 `paired-delimiter' (\\s$)
6853 `character-quote' (\\s/)
6854 `comment-start' (\\s<)
6855 `comment-end' (\\s>)
6857 `(not (syntax SYNTAX))'
6858 matches a character that has not syntax SYNTAX.
6860 `(category CATEGORY)'
6861 matches a character with category CATEGORY. CATEGORY must be
6862 either a character to use for C, or one of the following symbols.
6864 `consonant' (\\c0 in string notation)
6866 `upper-diacritical-mark' (\\c2)
6867 `lower-diacritical-mark' (\\c3)
6871 `vowel-modifying-diacritical-mark' (\\c7)
6873 `semivowel-lower' (\\c9)
6874 `not-at-end-of-line' (\\c<)
6875 `not-at-beginning-of-line' (\\c>)
6876 `alpha-numeric-two-byte' (\\cA)
6877 `chinse-two-byte' (\\cC)
6878 `greek-two-byte' (\\cG)
6879 `japanese-hiragana-two-byte' (\\cH)
6880 `indian-two-byte' (\\cI)
6881 `japanese-katakana-two-byte' (\\cK)
6882 `korean-hangul-two-byte' (\\cN)
6883 `cyrillic-two-byte' (\\cY)
6892 `japanese-katakana' (\\ck)
6896 `japanese-roman' (\\cr)
6903 `(not (category CATEGORY))'
6904 matches a character that has not category CATEGORY.
6906 `(and SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
6907 matches what SEXP1 matches, followed by what SEXP2 matches, etc.
6909 `(submatch SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
6910 like `and', but makes the match accessible with `match-end',
6911 `match-beginning', and `match-string'.
6913 `(group SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
6914 another name for `submatch'.
6916 `(or SEXP1 SEXP2 ...)'
6917 matches anything that matches SEXP1 or SEXP2, etc. If all
6918 args are strings, use `regexp-opt' to optimize the resulting
6921 `(minimal-match SEXP)'
6922 produce a non-greedy regexp for SEXP. Normally, regexps matching
6923 zero or more occurrences of something are \"greedy\" in that they
6924 match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can
6925 still match. A non-greedy regexp matches as little as possible.
6927 `(maximal-match SEXP)'
6928 produce a greedy regexp for SEXP. This is the default.
6930 `(zero-or-more SEXP)'
6931 matches zero or more occurrences of what SEXP matches.
6934 like `zero-or-more'.
6937 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
6940 like `zero-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
6942 `(one-or-more SEXP)'
6943 matches one or more occurrences of A.
6949 like `one-or-more', but always produces a greedy regexp.
6952 like `one-or-more', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
6954 `(zero-or-one SEXP)'
6955 matches zero or one occurrences of A.
6961 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a greedy regexp.
6964 like `zero-or-one', but always produces a non-greedy regexp.
6967 matches N occurrences of what SEXP matches.
6970 matches N to M occurrences of what SEXP matches.
6973 evaluate FORM and insert result. If result is a string,
6977 include REGEXP in string notation in the result.
6979 *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default.
6981 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
6982 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
6983 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
6984 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
6986 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
6987 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
6988 when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a
6989 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
6991 *** The functions `set-buffer-multibyte', `string-as-multibyte' and
6992 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer or a string
6993 if it contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
6995 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
6996 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
6997 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
6998 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
6999 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
7000 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
7001 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
7004 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
7006 A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for
7007 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
7008 character set as previously.
7010 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
7011 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
7012 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
7014 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
7015 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
7016 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
7017 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
7019 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
7020 name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font.
7022 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
7023 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
7026 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
7027 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
7029 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
7030 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
7031 buffers and strings.
7033 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
7034 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
7035 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
7036 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
7037 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
7038 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
7039 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
7042 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
7043 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
7044 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
7046 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
7047 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
7048 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
7049 may differ between buffer and string text.
7051 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
7052 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
7054 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
7055 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
7056 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
7057 `composition' from STRING.
7059 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
7060 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
7062 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
7065 ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on
7066 the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text.
7068 ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff',
7069 `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been
7070 introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF,
7071 U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively.
7073 Note that the character sets are not yet unified in Emacs, so
7074 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
7075 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
7076 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
7077 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
7078 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system.
7080 ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added.
7081 It provides limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For
7082 details, please see the documentation string of this coding system.
7084 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
7085 `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese
7086 standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
7088 ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15'
7089 have been introduced.
7091 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
7092 have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
7093 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of
7094 eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the
7095 emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the
7096 buffer/string internal representation. Note that to search for
7097 eight-bit-graphic characters in a multibyte buffer, the search string
7098 must be multibyte, otherwise such characters will be converted to
7099 their multibyte equivalent.
7101 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
7102 that offset in the file before writing.
7104 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
7105 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
7107 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
7108 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
7109 from which the command was issued.
7111 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
7112 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
7113 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
7114 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
7117 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
7118 to `window-buffer-height'.
7120 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
7122 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
7123 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
7124 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
7126 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
7129 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument
7130 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
7132 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
7133 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
7134 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
7136 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
7137 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
7138 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
7139 is currently displayed in some window.
7141 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
7142 argument function's results.
7144 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
7145 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails. Also,
7146 `base64-decode-string' now always returns a unibyte string (in Emacs
7147 20, it returned a multibyte string when the result was a valid multibyte
7150 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
7151 header in the list of headers passed to it.
7153 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
7154 ignores differences in case and text representation.
7156 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
7157 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
7160 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
7161 nil don't display a cursor
7162 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
7163 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
7164 others display a box cursor.
7166 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
7167 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
7168 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
7169 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
7171 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
7172 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
7173 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
7174 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
7178 (string-to-syntax "()")
7181 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
7184 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
7185 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
7192 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
7197 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
7202 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
7209 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
7210 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
7213 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
7214 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
7215 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
7216 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
7218 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
7220 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
7221 for a regexp in a string.
7223 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
7224 `mouse-position-function'.
7226 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
7227 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
7229 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
7230 Keywords are now always considered constants.
7232 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
7235 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
7236 returned by function `recent-keys'.
7238 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
7239 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
7240 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding C-M-a
7241 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
7244 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
7245 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
7247 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
7248 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
7249 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
7250 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
7253 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
7254 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
7255 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
7256 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
7258 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
7259 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
7260 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
7262 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
7263 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
7266 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
7268 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
7269 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
7270 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
7273 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
7274 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
7275 Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the
7276 corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet).
7277 Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\').
7279 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
7280 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
7282 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
7283 instead of being optional.
7285 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
7286 modify read-only text.
7288 ** New functions and variables for locales.
7290 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
7291 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
7292 time functions like strftime. The new variables
7293 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
7294 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
7296 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
7297 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
7298 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
7299 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
7300 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
7301 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
7302 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
7304 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
7305 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
7306 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
7309 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
7310 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
7312 ** New function `propertize'
7314 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
7315 strings with text properties.
7317 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
7319 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
7320 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
7321 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
7322 specified value of that property. Example:
7324 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
7326 ** push and pop macros.
7328 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
7329 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
7330 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
7332 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
7333 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
7334 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
7336 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
7338 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
7339 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
7341 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
7342 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
7343 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
7344 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
7346 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
7347 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
7348 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
7349 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
7351 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as
7352 [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character
7353 class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period
7356 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
7357 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
7358 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
7359 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
7360 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
7362 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
7364 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
7365 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
7366 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
7367 [:alpha:] matches letters.
7368 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
7369 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
7370 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
7371 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
7372 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
7373 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
7374 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
7375 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
7376 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
7377 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
7378 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
7380 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
7382 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
7384 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
7386 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
7387 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
7391 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
7392 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
7393 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
7397 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
7398 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
7400 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
7402 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
7403 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
7404 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
7405 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
7406 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
7408 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
7410 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
7411 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
7412 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
7416 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
7417 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
7418 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
7419 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
7420 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
7422 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
7424 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
7426 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
7428 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
7430 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
7432 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
7435 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
7437 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
7439 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
7441 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
7443 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
7445 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
7447 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
7449 Returns the size of TABLE.
7451 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
7453 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
7455 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
7457 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
7459 - Function: clrhash TABLE
7463 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
7465 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
7468 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
7470 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
7471 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
7473 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
7475 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
7477 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
7479 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
7480 arguments KEY and VALUE.
7482 - Function: sxhash OBJ
7484 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
7486 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
7488 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
7489 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
7490 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
7491 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
7492 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
7494 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
7496 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
7497 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
7498 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
7500 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
7501 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
7503 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
7504 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
7506 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
7507 (sxhash (upcase a)))
7509 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
7510 'case-fold-string-hash))
7512 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
7514 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
7516 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
7517 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
7518 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
7520 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
7522 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
7523 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
7525 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
7526 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
7527 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
7528 is too short to reach that column.
7530 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
7531 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
7532 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
7533 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
7535 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
7536 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
7537 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
7539 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
7540 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
7542 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
7543 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
7545 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
7546 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
7547 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
7548 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
7549 temporary-file-directory instead.
7551 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
7552 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
7553 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
7554 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
7556 ** assq-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
7557 elements of an alist which have a car `eq' to a particular value.
7559 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
7561 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
7562 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
7563 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
7565 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
7567 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
7568 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
7569 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
7570 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
7571 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
7572 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
7574 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
7575 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
7576 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
7577 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
7579 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
7581 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
7582 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
7583 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
7586 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
7587 string where arguments appear in the result string.
7591 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
7593 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
7594 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
7597 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
7599 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
7601 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
7602 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
7605 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
7607 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
7608 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
7613 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
7614 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
7616 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
7617 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
7618 to enable sound support.
7620 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
7621 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
7622 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
7623 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
7624 sound to play, before playing the sound.
7626 The following sound properties are supported:
7630 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
7631 searched relative to `data-directory'.
7635 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
7636 may be present, but not both.
7640 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
7641 0..1. This property is optional.
7645 DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the
7646 sound. The default device is system-dependent.
7648 Other properties are ignored.
7650 An alternative interface is called as
7651 (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE).
7653 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
7655 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
7658 ** Changes to garbage collection
7660 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
7661 of live and free strings.
7663 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
7664 strings that have been consed so far.
7667 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
7670 ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes
7673 ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional
7674 argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is
7675 returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil.
7677 ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
7679 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
7681 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
7684 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
7686 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
7688 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
7689 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
7690 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
7691 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
7692 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
7694 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
7697 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
7699 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
7700 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
7701 or omitted means use the selected frame.
7703 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
7704 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
7706 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
7709 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
7713 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
7715 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
7716 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
7718 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
7719 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
7720 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
7721 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
7722 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
7723 just display it black instead.
7725 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
7728 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
7732 ** New face implementation.
7734 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
7735 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
7739 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
7741 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
7743 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
7744 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
7746 3. Font height in 1/10pt
7748 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
7750 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
7752 6. Foreground color.
7754 7. Background color.
7756 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
7758 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
7760 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
7762 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
7764 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
7767 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
7768 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
7770 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
7771 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
7772 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
7773 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
7774 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face
7775 attributes mentioned above.
7777 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
7778 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
7781 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
7782 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
7787 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
7788 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
7789 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
7790 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
7791 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
7792 results in a fully-specified face.
7794 *** Face realization.
7796 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
7797 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
7798 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
7799 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
7800 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
7801 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
7803 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
7804 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
7805 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
7806 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
7808 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
7809 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
7810 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
7811 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
7812 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
7814 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
7815 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
7816 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
7817 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
7818 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
7821 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
7822 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
7823 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
7824 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
7826 **** Clearing face caches.
7828 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
7829 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
7834 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
7835 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
7836 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
7838 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
7839 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
7840 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
7841 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
7842 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
7844 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
7845 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
7846 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
7848 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
7850 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
7851 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
7852 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
7853 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
7854 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
7855 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
7856 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
7858 Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify
7859 alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face
7862 Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify
7863 all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a
7866 Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are
7869 Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts.
7874 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
7875 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
7878 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
7879 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
7880 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
7881 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
7882 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
7885 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
7887 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
7889 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
7891 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
7893 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
7894 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
7895 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
7897 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
7898 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
7899 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
7900 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
7901 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
7902 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
7903 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
7904 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
7905 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
7906 of the face font sort order.
7908 - Function: x-font-family-list
7910 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
7911 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
7912 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
7913 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
7915 - Variable: font-list-limit
7917 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
7918 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
7919 matching font. The default is currently 100.
7921 *** Setting face attributes.
7923 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
7924 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
7925 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
7928 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
7929 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
7931 The following attributes are recognized:
7935 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
7936 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
7937 and `?' are allowed.
7941 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
7942 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
7943 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
7944 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
7948 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
7949 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
7950 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
7951 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
7955 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
7956 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
7957 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
7961 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
7962 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
7965 `:foreground', `:background'
7967 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
7971 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
7972 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
7973 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
7978 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
7979 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
7980 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
7985 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
7986 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
7987 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
7988 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
7992 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
7993 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
7994 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
7995 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
7996 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
7997 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
7998 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
7999 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
8000 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
8001 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
8002 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
8003 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
8004 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
8005 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
8006 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
8007 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
8012 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
8013 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
8017 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
8018 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
8019 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
8020 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
8021 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
8022 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
8024 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
8025 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
8029 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
8030 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
8031 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
8034 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
8035 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
8036 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
8038 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
8043 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
8044 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
8045 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
8047 *** Face attributes and X resources
8049 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
8052 Face attribute X resource class
8053 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
8054 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
8055 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
8056 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
8057 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
8058 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
8059 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
8060 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
8061 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
8062 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
8063 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
8064 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
8065 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
8066 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
8067 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
8068 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
8069 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
8070 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
8071 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
8072 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
8074 *** Text property `face'.
8076 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
8077 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
8078 specification can be
8080 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
8082 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
8083 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
8084 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
8085 for face attribute names.
8087 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
8088 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
8089 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
8091 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
8093 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
8094 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
8095 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
8096 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
8097 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
8098 used to clear the mapping table.
8100 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
8102 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
8103 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
8104 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
8105 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
8106 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
8107 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
8108 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
8109 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
8110 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
8111 modify their color-related behavior.
8113 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
8116 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
8118 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
8119 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
8120 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
8121 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
8122 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
8123 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
8124 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
8125 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
8126 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
8128 The new function `display-images-p' returns non-nil if a particular
8129 display can display image files.
8131 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
8133 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
8134 To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize
8135 the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the
8136 `Inviolable' option.
8138 The function `minibuffer-prompt-end' returns the current position of the
8139 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
8140 Otherwise, it returns `(point-min)'.
8142 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
8144 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
8145 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
8146 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
8148 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
8149 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
8150 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
8151 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
8152 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
8153 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
8154 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
8157 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
8158 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
8159 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
8161 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
8163 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
8165 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
8167 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
8168 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
8169 constrained position if that is different.
8171 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
8172 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
8173 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
8174 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
8175 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
8176 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
8177 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
8178 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
8179 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
8181 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
8182 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
8183 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
8184 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
8185 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
8187 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
8188 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
8190 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
8192 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
8194 Delete the field surrounding POS.
8195 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
8196 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
8198 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
8200 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
8201 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
8202 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
8203 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
8204 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
8206 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
8208 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
8209 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
8210 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
8211 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
8212 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
8214 - Function: field-string &optional POS
8216 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
8217 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
8218 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
8220 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
8222 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
8223 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
8224 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
8228 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
8229 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
8230 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
8231 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
8233 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
8234 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
8235 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
8236 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
8239 IMAGE is an image specification.
8241 *** Image specifications
8243 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
8244 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
8245 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
8246 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
8247 described below are ignored.
8249 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
8253 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
8254 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
8255 to use for its ascent.
8257 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
8258 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
8260 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
8261 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
8262 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
8263 overlays that apply to the image.
8267 MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put
8268 as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the
8269 horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0.
8273 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
8278 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
8280 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
8281 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
8283 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
8284 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
8285 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
8286 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
8287 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
8288 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
8289 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
8290 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
8293 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
8295 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
8297 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
8298 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
8299 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
8300 of the factors' absolute values.
8302 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
8308 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
8314 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
8319 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
8320 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
8321 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
8322 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
8323 image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is
8324 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
8325 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
8328 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
8329 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
8334 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
8335 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
8336 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
8337 may be present in the image specification.
8341 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
8342 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
8343 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
8344 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
8346 *** Supported image types
8348 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
8350 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
8351 properties supported are:
8355 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
8356 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground color.
8360 BG must be a string specifying the image background color, or nil
8361 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
8363 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
8364 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
8365 instead of a `:file' property.
8369 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
8373 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
8379 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
8380 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
8382 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
8384 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
8387 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
8388 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
8391 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
8393 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
8394 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
8395 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
8396 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
8398 Additional image properties supported are:
8400 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
8402 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
8403 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
8406 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
8407 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
8409 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
8410 to display compressed images.
8412 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
8414 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
8415 mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for
8420 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
8421 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground color.
8425 BG must be a string specifying the image background color, or nil
8426 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
8428 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
8430 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
8431 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
8434 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
8436 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
8437 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
8440 **** GIF, image type `gif'
8442 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
8443 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
8445 Additional image properties supported are:
8449 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
8450 multi-image GIF file. If INDEX is too large, the image displays
8453 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
8454 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
8455 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
8458 (defun show-anim (file max)
8459 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
8460 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
8462 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
8465 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
8468 (goto-char (point-min))
8469 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
8470 (insert-image img "x"))
8471 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
8473 **** PNG, image type `png'
8475 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
8476 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
8479 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
8481 Additional image properties supported are:
8485 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
8486 integer. This is a required property.
8490 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
8491 must be a integer. This is an required property.
8495 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
8496 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
8497 files. This is an required property.
8499 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
8504 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
8505 which are supported in the current configuration.
8507 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
8508 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
8509 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
8510 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
8511 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
8513 *** Simplified image API, image.el
8515 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
8516 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
8517 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
8518 define an image based on available image types. The functions
8519 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
8524 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
8527 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
8528 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
8529 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
8530 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
8531 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
8532 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
8533 of the display margins.
8535 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
8536 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
8537 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
8538 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
8543 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
8544 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
8545 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
8546 that have a `help-echo' property.
8548 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
8549 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
8550 the window in which the help was found.
8552 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
8553 `help-echo' text property was found.
8555 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
8556 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
8558 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
8559 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
8562 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
8563 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
8565 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
8566 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
8567 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
8568 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
8569 used as help string.
8571 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
8572 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
8573 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
8575 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
8577 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
8578 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
8580 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
8581 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
8582 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
8583 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
8586 (global-set-key [A-down]
8589 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
8590 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
8591 (global-set-key [A-up]
8594 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
8595 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
8597 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
8599 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
8600 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
8601 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
8602 is called with one argument, POS.
8604 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
8605 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
8606 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
8607 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
8608 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
8610 ** Tool bar support.
8612 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
8613 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
8614 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
8615 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
8616 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
8617 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
8619 *** Tool bar item definitions
8621 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
8622 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
8623 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
8625 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
8626 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
8627 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
8628 property (see below).
8630 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
8631 binding are currently ignored.
8633 The following properties are recognized:
8637 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
8642 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
8646 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
8647 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
8648 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
8650 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
8652 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
8653 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
8657 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
8658 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
8659 meaning of each of the four elements:
8661 Index Use when item is
8662 ----------------------------------------
8663 0 enabled and selected
8664 1 enabled and deselected
8665 2 disabled and selected
8666 3 disabled and deselected
8668 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
8669 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
8671 `:help HELP-STRING'.
8673 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
8674 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
8676 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
8677 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
8678 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
8681 The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar
8682 dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set
8683 buffer-locally to override the global map.
8685 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
8687 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
8688 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
8689 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
8691 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
8692 raised when the mouse moves over them.
8694 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
8695 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
8696 pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and
8697 vertical margins . Default is 1.
8699 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
8700 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
8702 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
8704 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
8707 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
8708 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
8709 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
8711 is the original tool bar item definition, then
8713 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
8715 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
8718 ** Mode line changes.
8720 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
8722 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
8723 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
8724 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
8726 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
8727 a `local-map' text property.
8729 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
8730 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
8732 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
8733 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
8734 `local-map' property.
8736 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
8737 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
8740 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
8741 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
8743 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
8744 variable mode-line-format to nil.
8746 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
8748 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
8749 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
8750 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
8751 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
8754 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
8757 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
8758 position in the header-line.
8760 ** Text property `display'
8762 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
8763 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
8764 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
8765 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
8766 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
8768 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
8770 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
8771 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
8773 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
8774 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
8775 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
8776 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
8777 simpler form STRING as property value.
8779 *** Variable width and height spaces
8781 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
8782 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
8783 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
8784 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
8785 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
8786 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
8787 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
8789 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
8790 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
8791 properties described below.
8793 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
8794 characters having the `display' property.
8798 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
8799 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
8801 - :relative-width FACTOR
8803 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
8804 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
8805 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
8806 width of that character by FACTOR.
8810 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
8811 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
8813 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
8817 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
8820 - :relative-height FACTOR
8822 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
8823 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
8827 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
8828 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
8829 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
8832 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
8836 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
8837 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
8838 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
8839 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
8840 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
8841 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
8842 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
8843 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
8844 as display specification.
8846 *** Other display properties
8848 - (space-width FACTOR)
8850 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
8851 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
8856 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
8858 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
8859 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
8860 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
8861 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
8862 a font is available counts as a step.
8864 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
8865 as tall as the frame's default font.
8867 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
8868 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
8870 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
8871 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
8875 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
8876 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
8877 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
8878 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
8879 `height' subproperty.
8881 *** Conditional display properties
8883 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
8884 has the form `(when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC applies
8885 only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated. During the
8886 evaluation, `object' is bound to the string or buffer having the
8887 conditional display property; `position' and `buffer-position' are
8888 bound to the position within `object' and the buffer position where
8889 the display property was found, respectively. Both positions can be
8890 different when object is a string.
8892 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
8895 ** New menu separator types.
8897 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
8898 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
8899 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
8900 to specify other menu separator types.
8902 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
8904 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
8907 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
8909 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
8911 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
8913 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
8915 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
8917 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
8919 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
8921 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
8923 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
8925 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form
8926 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
8928 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
8930 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
8932 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
8934 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
8936 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
8938 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
8940 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
8942 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
8944 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
8946 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
8948 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
8950 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
8952 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
8954 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
8956 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
8957 the corresponding single-line separators.
8959 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
8961 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
8962 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
8963 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
8964 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
8965 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
8966 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
8967 default foreground is black.
8969 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
8970 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
8971 `ScrollBarBackground').
8973 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
8974 settings for scroll bar colors.
8976 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
8977 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
8979 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
8980 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
8981 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
8982 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
8983 the original window start.
8985 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
8986 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
8987 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
8989 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
8991 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
8992 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
8993 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
8994 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
8996 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
8997 fixed-width and fixed-height.
8999 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
9001 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
9002 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
9003 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
9004 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
9005 temporarily to nil, for example
9007 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
9008 (enlarge-window 10))
9010 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
9011 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
9013 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
9014 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
9015 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
9016 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
9017 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
9018 support a vertical-bar cursor).
9022 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
9024 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
9027 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
9029 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
9031 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
9032 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
9033 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
9034 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
9035 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
9037 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
9041 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
9043 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
9047 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
9049 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
9050 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
9052 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
9054 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
9056 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
9057 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
9058 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
9060 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
9061 is the one that is used.
9063 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
9064 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
9065 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
9066 separate from the command's regular output.
9067 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
9068 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
9069 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
9072 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
9073 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
9074 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
9075 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
9077 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
9078 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
9079 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
9080 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
9082 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
9083 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
9084 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
9085 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
9087 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
9088 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
9089 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
9090 they never ignore case.
9092 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
9093 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
9094 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
9095 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
9096 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
9097 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
9098 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
9100 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
9101 the same format that was used in the file before.
9103 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
9104 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
9106 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
9107 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
9108 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
9110 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
9111 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
9112 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
9113 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
9114 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
9115 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
9116 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
9118 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
9119 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
9120 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
9121 format. You can now customize these variables.
9123 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
9124 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
9125 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
9126 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
9128 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
9129 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
9130 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
9132 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
9133 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
9134 doesn't have any effect.
9136 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
9139 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
9140 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
9141 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
9143 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
9144 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
9145 `auto-show-mode' command.
9147 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
9148 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
9149 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
9150 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
9151 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
9153 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
9154 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
9156 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
9157 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
9158 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
9160 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
9161 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
9162 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
9163 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
9165 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
9167 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
9168 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
9169 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
9170 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
9171 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
9173 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
9174 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
9176 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
9177 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
9178 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
9179 `?' on other systems.
9181 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
9182 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
9185 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
9186 current codepage when it starts.
9190 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
9191 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
9192 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
9193 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
9194 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
9195 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
9199 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
9200 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
9202 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
9203 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
9204 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
9205 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
9206 buffer-file-coding-system.
9208 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
9209 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
9212 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
9213 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
9214 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
9215 list of possible coding systems.
9219 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
9220 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
9221 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
9222 docstring for details.
9224 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
9225 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
9226 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
9227 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
9228 lineup functions use this feature currently.
9230 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
9231 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
9233 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
9234 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
9236 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
9237 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
9238 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
9239 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
9242 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
9243 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
9245 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
9246 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
9247 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
9248 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
9250 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
9251 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
9252 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
9253 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
9254 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
9256 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
9258 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
9260 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
9261 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
9263 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
9265 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
9266 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
9267 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
9268 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
9269 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
9273 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
9274 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
9275 Gnus manual for the full story.
9277 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
9278 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
9279 group, which is created automatically.
9281 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
9284 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
9286 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
9287 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
9289 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
9292 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
9294 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
9295 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
9297 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
9299 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
9300 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
9302 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
9303 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
9305 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
9306 control over simplification.
9308 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
9310 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
9313 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
9315 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
9317 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
9318 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
9319 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
9321 *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
9322 `a' forces normal posting method.
9324 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
9327 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
9330 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
9331 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
9333 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
9336 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
9338 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
9340 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
9341 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
9343 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
9344 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
9346 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
9348 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
9351 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
9352 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
9354 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
9355 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
9357 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
9359 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
9361 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
9363 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
9365 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
9366 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
9367 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
9369 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
9370 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
9371 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
9372 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
9373 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
9375 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
9376 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
9377 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
9378 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
9380 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
9381 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
9382 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
9385 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
9387 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
9388 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
9390 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
9391 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
9392 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
9393 removed from the label.
9395 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
9396 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
9398 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
9399 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
9401 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
9402 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
9405 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
9407 ** New/deleted modes and packages
9409 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
9410 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
9412 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
9413 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
9414 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
9416 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
9417 changes with a special face.
9419 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
9420 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
9421 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
9423 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
9425 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
9426 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
9427 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
9428 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
9429 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
9431 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
9432 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
9433 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
9435 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
9436 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
9437 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
9438 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
9439 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
9440 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
9441 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
9442 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
9443 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
9445 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
9446 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
9447 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
9448 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
9449 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
9452 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
9453 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
9454 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
9455 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
9456 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
9457 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
9459 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
9460 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
9461 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
9462 was not documented clearly before.
9464 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
9465 This includes Tetris and Snake.
9467 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
9469 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
9470 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
9471 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
9472 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
9474 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
9475 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
9476 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
9478 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
9480 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
9481 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
9483 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
9484 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
9487 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
9488 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
9489 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
9490 file names and attributes are returned.
9492 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
9493 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
9494 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes.
9495 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
9498 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
9499 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
9501 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
9503 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
9504 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
9505 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
9508 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
9509 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
9512 The new function process-running-child-p
9513 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
9514 terminal to its own child process.
9516 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
9517 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
9518 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
9519 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
9521 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
9522 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
9524 ** easymenu.el now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
9525 :included is an alias for :visible.
9527 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
9528 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
9529 to move or copy menu entries.
9531 ** Multibyte editing changes
9533 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
9534 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
9535 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
9536 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
9537 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
9538 (setq char (sref str idx)
9539 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
9540 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
9542 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
9543 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
9544 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
9546 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
9547 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
9548 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
9550 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited
9552 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
9553 across the boundary.
9555 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
9556 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
9557 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
9558 contains 8-bit characters.
9559 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
9560 contains invalid characters.
9562 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
9563 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
9564 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
9565 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
9568 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
9569 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
9570 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
9571 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
9573 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
9574 compose Thai characters in a string.
9576 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
9577 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
9578 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
9579 menus should always use the third argument.
9581 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
9582 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
9583 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
9584 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
9586 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
9587 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
9588 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
9589 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
9591 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
9592 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
9593 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
9596 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
9598 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
9599 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
9600 requested feature cannot be loaded.
9602 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
9603 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
9604 means to clear out that attribute.
9606 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
9607 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
9609 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
9610 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
9611 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
9612 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
9614 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
9615 the gap of the current buffer.
9617 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
9618 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
9621 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
9622 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
9623 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
9624 it back in after any modifications have been made.
9626 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
9628 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
9629 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
9630 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
9631 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
9632 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
9634 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
9635 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
9636 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
9637 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
9638 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
9640 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
9641 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
9642 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
9644 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
9645 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
9646 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
9647 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
9648 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
9651 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
9652 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
9653 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
9654 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
9656 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
9658 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
9659 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
9660 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
9661 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
9663 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
9664 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
9665 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
9666 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
9667 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
9668 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
9669 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
9672 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
9675 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
9676 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
9677 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
9678 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
9679 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
9681 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
9682 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
9683 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
9684 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
9686 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
9687 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
9688 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
9689 something that most users not do.
9691 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
9692 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
9693 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
9696 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
9699 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
9700 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
9701 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
9702 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
9705 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
9706 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
9707 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
9708 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
9709 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
9712 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
9713 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
9714 to be confused by TeX commands.
9716 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
9717 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
9718 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
9719 of various alternative replacements and actions.
9721 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
9722 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
9723 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
9724 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
9725 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
9727 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
9728 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
9730 ** Changes in input method usage.
9732 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
9733 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
9736 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
9738 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
9739 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
9741 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
9742 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
9744 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
9746 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
9748 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
9749 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
9751 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
9752 given in the following case:
9753 o When you are using a complex input method.
9754 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
9756 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
9757 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
9758 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
9759 setting it to t is helpful.
9761 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
9763 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
9765 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
9766 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
9767 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
9768 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
9771 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
9772 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
9773 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
9776 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
9778 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
9780 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
9781 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
9783 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
9784 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
9785 its owner and group.
9787 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
9788 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
9790 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
9791 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
9793 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
9794 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
9795 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
9796 by the left edge of the rectangle.
9798 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
9799 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
9800 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
9801 for writing keyboard macros.
9803 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
9804 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
9805 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
9806 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
9807 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
9810 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
9812 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
9813 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
9816 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
9817 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
9818 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
9819 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
9821 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
9822 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
9823 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
9825 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
9826 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
9827 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
9828 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
9830 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
9831 failure if the command produces no output.
9833 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
9834 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
9837 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
9838 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
9839 function and variable names.
9841 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
9842 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
9843 file-coding-system-alist.
9845 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
9846 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
9847 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
9848 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
9849 according to the current fontset.
9851 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
9853 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
9854 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
9855 nonascii-insert-offset.
9857 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
9858 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
9859 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
9860 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
9862 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
9863 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
9865 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
9866 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
9868 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
9869 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
9872 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
9873 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
9875 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
9876 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
9877 all variables that have documentation.
9879 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
9880 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
9881 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
9882 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
9883 it should show; the default is 20.
9885 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
9886 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
9889 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
9890 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
9891 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
9892 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
9893 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
9894 Newly added options are included as well.
9896 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
9897 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
9898 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
9900 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
9903 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
9904 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
9906 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
9907 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
9910 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
9911 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
9914 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
9915 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
9916 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
9917 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
9920 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
9922 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
9923 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
9924 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
9926 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
9927 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
9928 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
9933 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
9934 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
9936 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
9937 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
9939 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
9940 read and post multi-lingual articles.
9942 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
9943 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
9944 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
9945 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
9946 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
9947 made invisible again.
9949 ** Mail reading and sending changes
9951 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
9952 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
9953 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
9956 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
9957 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
9958 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
9959 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
9960 rmail-default-body-file.
9962 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
9963 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
9964 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
9966 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
9967 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
9968 is evaluated to insert the signature.
9970 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
9971 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
9972 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
9973 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
9974 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
9975 especially interested in trying feedmail.
9977 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
9978 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
9979 provided by feedmail are:
9981 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
9982 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
9983 there is also a queue for draft messages
9985 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
9986 be prompted for confirmation
9988 **** does smart filling of address headers
9990 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
9991 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
9992 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
9994 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
9995 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
9996 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
9997 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
10001 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
10002 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
10004 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
10005 run Dired on the directory name at point.
10007 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
10008 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
10009 for a specified regexp.
10013 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
10016 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
10017 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
10020 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
10021 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
10022 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
10023 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
10025 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
10026 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
10027 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
10028 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
10029 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
10031 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
10032 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
10033 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
10034 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
10035 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
10037 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
10038 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
10039 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
10040 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
10042 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
10043 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
10044 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
10046 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
10047 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
10048 session to resolve them.
10050 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
10051 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
10052 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
10055 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
10056 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
10057 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
10058 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
10059 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
10060 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
10063 ** Changes in Font Lock
10065 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
10066 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
10067 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
10068 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
10069 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
10071 ** Frame name display changes
10073 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
10074 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
10075 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
10076 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
10078 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
10079 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
10082 ** Comint (subshell) changes
10084 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
10085 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
10086 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
10088 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
10090 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
10091 that is, the line after the last line you got.
10092 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
10094 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
10095 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
10096 the following line.
10098 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
10099 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
10100 previously sent input.
10102 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
10103 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
10104 as the search string.
10106 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
10107 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
10111 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
10112 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
10113 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
10116 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
10117 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
10118 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
10119 style is still the default however.
10121 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
10123 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
10124 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
10125 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
10127 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
10128 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
10130 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
10131 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
10133 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
10134 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
10136 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
10137 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
10139 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
10140 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
10141 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
10142 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
10144 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
10146 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
10147 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
10148 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
10150 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
10151 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
10152 expanding dynamically.
10154 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
10155 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
10157 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
10158 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
10159 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
10160 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
10162 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
10164 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
10166 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
10167 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
10168 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
10169 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
10170 against the first word in the title.
10172 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
10173 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
10174 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
10175 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
10176 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
10177 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
10179 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
10180 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
10181 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
10182 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
10184 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
10186 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
10187 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
10188 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
10189 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
10190 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
10191 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
10193 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
10194 Editing group once the package is loaded.
10196 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
10197 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
10198 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior.
10200 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
10201 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
10205 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
10206 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
10207 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
10209 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
10210 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
10211 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
10212 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
10215 o URLs are automatically skipped
10216 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
10218 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
10220 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
10222 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
10223 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
10224 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
10225 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
10227 *** New recursive parser.
10229 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
10230 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
10231 recursive parser scans the individual files.
10233 *** Parsing only part of a document.
10235 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
10236 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
10237 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
10239 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
10241 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
10243 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
10245 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
10247 *** Using multiple selection buffers
10249 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
10250 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
10252 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
10254 *** References to external documents.
10256 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
10257 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
10258 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
10259 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
10260 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
10261 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
10262 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
10264 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
10266 The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
10267 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
10269 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
10270 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
10272 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
10274 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
10275 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
10277 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
10279 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
10280 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
10281 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
10282 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
10283 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
10284 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
10287 *** Support for the varioref package
10289 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
10293 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
10294 and citations are created. These hooks are
10295 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
10296 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
10298 *** Citations outside LaTeX
10300 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
10301 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
10303 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
10305 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
10306 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
10309 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
10311 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
10312 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
10313 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
10314 directories that contain the same file name.
10316 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
10317 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
10318 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
10319 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
10320 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
10321 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
10322 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
10325 ** New modes and packages
10327 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
10328 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
10329 it, but some do not.
10331 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
10334 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
10335 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
10336 around in a buffer.
10338 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
10340 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
10341 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
10342 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
10343 established system of notation similar to Chess.
10345 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
10346 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
10347 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
10349 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
10350 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
10351 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
10352 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
10353 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
10356 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
10357 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
10359 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
10360 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
10361 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
10362 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
10364 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
10366 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
10367 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
10368 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
10369 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
10370 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
10371 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
10372 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
10373 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
10374 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
10375 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
10376 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
10378 Platform-specific modes:
10380 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
10381 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
10382 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
10383 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
10384 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
10385 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
10386 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
10387 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
10388 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
10390 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
10392 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
10393 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
10394 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
10395 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
10397 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
10398 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
10399 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
10401 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
10402 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
10403 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
10404 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
10406 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
10407 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
10408 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
10411 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
10412 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
10413 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
10414 current input method for reading this one event.
10416 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
10417 now control whether to output certain characters as
10418 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
10419 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
10420 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
10421 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
10423 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
10425 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
10426 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
10428 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
10429 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
10430 always increases point by 1.
10432 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
10433 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
10435 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
10437 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
10438 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
10439 default value changed. For example,
10441 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
10446 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
10449 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
10450 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
10451 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
10452 `:version' in the top level group.
10454 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
10456 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
10457 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
10459 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
10460 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
10461 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
10464 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
10465 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
10468 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
10469 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
10470 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
10472 ** Frame-local variables.
10474 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
10475 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
10476 local bindings for that variable.
10478 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
10479 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
10480 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
10483 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
10484 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
10485 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
10486 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
10488 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
10489 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
10490 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
10491 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
10493 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
10494 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
10495 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
10496 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
10497 See the documentation in sregex.el.
10499 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
10500 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
10501 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
10502 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
10504 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
10505 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
10507 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
10508 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
10509 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
10511 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
10512 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
10513 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
10514 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
10516 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
10517 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
10520 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
10521 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
10522 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
10523 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
10524 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
10526 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
10527 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
10528 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
10529 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
10531 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
10532 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
10533 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
10534 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
10535 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
10537 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
10538 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
10539 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
10540 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
10542 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
10543 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
10544 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
10546 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
10547 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
10548 was directed to display this buffer.
10550 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
10551 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
10552 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
10553 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
10554 set-window-configuration.
10556 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
10557 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
10558 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
10559 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
10561 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
10562 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
10563 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
10565 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
10566 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
10567 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
10569 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
10570 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
10572 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
10573 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
10575 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
10576 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
10577 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
10579 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
10580 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
10581 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
10582 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
10586 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
10587 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
10590 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
10591 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
10592 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
10593 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
10594 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
10596 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
10598 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
10599 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
10600 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
10601 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
10604 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
10605 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
10606 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
10607 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
10608 The supported properties include
10610 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
10612 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
10613 item should appear in the menu.
10615 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
10616 which will be REAL-BINDING.
10617 It should return a binding to use instead.
10619 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
10620 binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
10621 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
10622 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
10623 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
10626 This means that the command normally has no
10627 keyboard equivalent.
10628 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
10629 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
10630 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
10631 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
10632 value says whether this button is currently selected.
10634 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
10635 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
10637 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
10641 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
10642 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
10643 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
10644 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
10646 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
10648 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
10649 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
10650 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
10651 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
10652 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
10653 forward, away from the user.
10655 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
10657 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
10658 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
10659 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
10660 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
10661 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
10663 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
10665 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
10666 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
10667 that were dragged and dropped.
10669 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
10671 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
10673 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
10674 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
10675 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
10677 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
10678 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
10679 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
10681 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
10682 in Emacs 19 and before.
10684 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
10685 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
10687 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
10688 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
10689 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
10690 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
10692 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
10693 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
10694 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
10695 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
10696 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
10698 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
10699 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
10700 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
10701 consistent with the new representation.
10703 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
10704 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
10705 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
10706 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
10708 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
10709 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
10710 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
10712 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
10713 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
10714 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
10716 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
10717 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
10718 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
10720 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
10721 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
10723 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
10724 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
10726 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
10727 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
10728 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
10729 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
10731 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
10732 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
10734 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
10735 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
10736 buffer or string being searched.
10738 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
10739 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
10740 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
10741 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
10742 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
10743 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
10744 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
10746 *** Structure of coding system changed.
10748 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
10749 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
10750 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
10751 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
10752 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
10753 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
10754 define-coding-system-alias.
10756 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
10757 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
10758 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
10759 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
10760 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
10761 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
10762 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
10765 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
10766 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
10767 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
10768 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
10770 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
10771 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
10772 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
10773 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
10775 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
10776 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
10777 This function requires a user interaction.
10779 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
10780 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
10781 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
10782 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
10783 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
10784 select-safe-coding-system.
10786 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
10787 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
10788 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
10791 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
10792 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
10793 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
10795 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
10796 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
10797 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
10798 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
10800 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
10801 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
10802 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
10805 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
10806 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
10808 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
10809 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
10810 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
10811 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
10812 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
10813 range of characters.
10815 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
10816 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
10818 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
10819 in the current buffer at position POS.
10821 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
10822 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
10823 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
10824 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
10825 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
10826 binding input-method-function to nil.
10828 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
10829 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
10830 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
10831 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
10832 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
10834 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
10835 subsequent events of a key sequence.
10837 *** You can customize any language environment by using
10838 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
10840 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
10841 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
10842 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
10843 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
10844 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
10846 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
10848 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
10849 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
10850 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
10853 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
10854 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
10856 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
10857 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
10858 in your .emacs file.)
10860 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
10861 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
10863 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
10864 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
10866 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
10867 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
10870 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
10871 delete the character before point, as usual.
10873 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
10874 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
10875 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
10877 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
10878 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
10879 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
10880 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
10881 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
10884 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
10885 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
10886 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
10887 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
10888 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
10890 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
10891 and is an alias for it.
10893 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
10894 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
10896 ** Scrolling changes
10898 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
10899 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
10901 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
10902 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
10905 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
10906 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
10907 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
10908 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
10910 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
10911 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
10912 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
10913 recenters the window.
10915 ** International character set support (MULE)
10917 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
10918 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
10919 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
10920 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
10921 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
10922 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
10924 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
10925 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
10926 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
10927 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
10928 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
10930 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
10931 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
10932 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
10933 language, to make it possible to type them.
10935 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
10936 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
10938 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
10939 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
10941 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
10943 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
10945 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
10946 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
10947 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
10948 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
10949 characters for their work until they want to change.
10953 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
10954 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
10955 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
10956 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
10957 support several input methods.
10959 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
10960 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
10963 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
10964 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
10965 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
10966 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
10967 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
10970 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
10971 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
10972 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
10973 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
10974 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
10976 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
10977 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
10978 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
10979 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
10981 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
10982 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
10983 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
10984 the first guess is wrong.
10986 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
10987 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
10989 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
10990 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
10991 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
10992 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
10994 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
10995 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
10996 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
10997 translate automatically to and from either one.
10999 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
11001 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
11002 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
11003 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
11006 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
11007 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
11008 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
11009 multibyte characters in that buffer.
11011 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
11012 character conversion as well.
11014 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
11016 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
11017 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
11018 requires using many fonts.
11020 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
11021 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
11023 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
11024 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
11025 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
11026 you would use a font.
11028 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
11029 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
11030 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
11032 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
11033 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
11036 *** Defining fontsets.
11038 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
11039 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
11040 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
11042 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
11043 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
11044 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
11045 standard fontset are created automatically.
11047 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
11048 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
11049 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
11050 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
11051 name is `fontset-startup'.
11053 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
11054 The resource value should have this form:
11055 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
11056 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
11057 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
11058 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
11059 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
11060 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
11061 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
11062 CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME
11063 should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
11065 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
11066 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
11067 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
11069 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
11070 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
11071 following resource,
11072 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
11073 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
11074 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
11075 Here is the substitution rule:
11076 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
11077 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
11078 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
11079 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
11080 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
11082 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
11083 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
11084 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
11086 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
11087 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
11088 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
11089 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
11092 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
11093 defaults for a particular choice of language.
11095 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
11096 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
11097 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
11098 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
11099 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
11100 system for new files that you create.
11102 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
11103 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
11104 whole Emacs session.
11106 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
11107 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
11108 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
11110 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
11111 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
11112 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
11113 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
11114 coding systems that Emacs supports.
11116 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
11117 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
11118 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
11119 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
11120 is used for *the immediately following command*.
11122 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
11123 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
11125 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
11126 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
11128 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
11129 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
11131 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
11132 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
11133 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
11134 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
11137 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
11138 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
11139 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
11140 translated into that character code.
11142 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
11143 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
11145 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
11147 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
11148 the coding system for keyboard input.
11150 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
11151 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
11152 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
11154 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
11156 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
11157 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
11158 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
11159 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
11160 designed to work with terminals.
11162 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
11163 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
11164 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
11165 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
11166 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
11167 in the corresponding buffer.
11169 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
11171 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
11172 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
11173 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
11175 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
11176 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
11177 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
11180 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
11181 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
11183 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
11184 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
11185 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
11186 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
11188 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
11189 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
11190 related information.
11192 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
11193 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
11196 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
11197 information about the support for a particular language.
11198 You specify the language as an argument.
11200 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
11201 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
11204 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
11205 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
11206 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
11207 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
11209 A alternativnyj (Russian)
11211 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
11212 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
11213 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
11214 E euc-japan (Japanese)
11215 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
11216 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
11217 K euc-korea (Korean)
11220 S shift_jis (Japanese)
11223 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
11224 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
11225 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
11226 v viqr (Vietnamese)
11229 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
11230 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
11231 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
11232 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
11234 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
11235 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
11237 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
11238 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
11239 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
11240 Rmail files themselves.
11242 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
11243 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
11245 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
11248 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
11249 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
11250 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
11251 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
11252 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
11254 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
11255 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
11256 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
11259 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
11260 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
11261 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
11262 without any conversion.
11264 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
11265 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
11266 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
11267 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
11269 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
11270 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
11272 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
11273 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
11275 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
11276 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
11278 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
11279 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
11280 in the buffer before point.
11282 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
11283 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
11286 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
11287 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
11289 ** File locking works with NFS now.
11291 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
11292 in the same directory as FILENAME.
11294 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
11295 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
11296 can become a bottleneck.
11298 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
11299 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
11300 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
11301 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
11302 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
11303 so useful that the change is worth while.
11305 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
11306 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
11307 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
11308 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
11310 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
11311 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
11314 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
11315 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
11316 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
11318 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
11319 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
11320 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
11322 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
11323 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
11324 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
11326 ** Changes in View mode.
11328 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
11329 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
11331 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
11332 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
11334 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
11337 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
11338 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
11340 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
11341 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
11342 not just the selected window.
11344 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
11345 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
11346 turns View mode on or off.
11348 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
11349 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
11350 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
11352 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
11353 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
11355 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
11356 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
11357 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
11358 which version to compare with.
11360 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
11361 blocks if a match is inside the block.
11363 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
11364 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
11365 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
11366 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
11368 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
11369 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
11370 blocks, all of them or none.
11372 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
11373 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
11374 confirmation first.
11376 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
11377 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
11378 However, the mode will not be changed if
11379 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
11380 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
11381 not suitable for ordinary files, or
11382 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
11384 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
11386 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
11387 these commands do not change the major mode.
11389 ** M-x occur changes.
11391 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
11392 it performs a case-sensitive search.
11394 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
11395 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
11396 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
11398 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
11399 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
11400 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
11401 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
11402 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
11404 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
11405 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
11406 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
11407 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
11409 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
11410 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
11411 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
11413 ** Outline mode changes.
11415 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
11417 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
11419 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
11420 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
11421 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
11422 was already active.
11424 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
11425 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
11426 get confused by it.
11428 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
11429 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
11431 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
11433 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
11434 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
11435 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
11436 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
11438 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
11439 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
11440 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
11442 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
11443 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
11446 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
11447 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
11448 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
11449 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
11451 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
11452 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
11453 can be. The default value is 30.
11455 ** Changes in Mail mode.
11457 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
11458 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
11459 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
11460 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
11461 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
11464 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
11465 compose-mail-other-frame.
11467 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
11468 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
11469 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
11470 buffer that shows the original message.
11472 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
11473 with separator lines around the contents.
11475 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
11476 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
11477 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
11478 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
11480 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
11482 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
11483 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
11484 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
11485 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
11487 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
11488 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
11491 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
11492 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
11495 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
11496 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
11497 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
11498 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
11500 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
11501 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
11502 be taken to be magic.
11504 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
11505 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
11506 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
11508 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
11509 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
11511 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
11512 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
11514 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
11516 new key dired.el binding old key
11517 ------- ---------------- -------
11518 * c dired-change-marks c
11520 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
11521 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
11522 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
11524 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
11525 * ? dired-unmark-all-files C-M-?
11526 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
11527 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
11528 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
11529 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
11533 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
11534 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
11535 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
11536 each time you run it.
11538 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
11539 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
11541 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
11542 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
11543 means to move in the opposite direction.
11545 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
11546 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
11548 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
11549 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
11550 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
11551 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
11556 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
11558 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
11561 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
11562 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
11564 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
11567 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
11569 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
11571 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
11573 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
11574 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
11575 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
11577 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
11579 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
11581 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
11582 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
11584 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
11585 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
11586 used to pick articles.
11588 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
11589 another have been added.
11591 `M-x gnus-change-server'
11593 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
11594 generating lines in buffers.
11596 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
11599 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
11601 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
11603 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
11605 *** Scores can be decayed.
11607 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
11609 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
11610 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
11612 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
11615 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
11617 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
11618 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `C-M-d'.
11620 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
11622 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
11623 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
11625 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
11626 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
11628 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
11631 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
11632 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
11634 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
11636 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
11638 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
11640 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
11642 Use the `Y c' command.
11644 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
11646 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
11648 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
11650 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
11651 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
11653 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
11655 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
11657 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
11658 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
11660 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
11662 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
11663 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
11664 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
11665 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
11668 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
11669 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
11670 particular news group. This can be done by:
11672 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
11674 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
11675 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
11676 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
11677 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
11678 for reading and posting).
11680 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
11681 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
11682 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
11683 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
11686 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
11687 default. Here are some of these default settings:
11689 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
11690 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
11691 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
11692 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
11693 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
11695 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
11696 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
11698 ** CC mode changes.
11700 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
11701 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
11702 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
11703 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
11704 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
11707 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
11708 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
11709 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
11710 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
11711 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
11712 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
11714 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
11715 of the current buffer.
11717 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
11718 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
11719 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
11721 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
11722 style that the Python developers like.
11724 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
11725 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
11726 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
11728 ** VC Changes [new]
11730 *** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
11731 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
11732 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
11734 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
11735 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
11738 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
11739 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
11741 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
11742 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
11743 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
11744 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
11746 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
11747 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
11749 ** Calendar changes.
11751 *** A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or
11752 subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow
11753 you do this for the year of the selected date, or the
11754 following/previous years.
11756 *** There is now support for the Baha'i calendar system. Use `pb' in
11757 the *Calendar* buffer to display the current Baha'i date. The Baha'i
11758 calendar, or "Badi calendar" is a system of 19 months with 19 days
11759 each, and 4 intercalary days (5 during a Gregorian leap year). The
11760 calendar begins May 23, 1844, with each of the months named after a
11761 supposed attribute of God.
11763 ** ps-print changes
11765 There are some new user variables and subgroups for customizing the page
11768 *** Headers & Footers (subgroup)
11770 Some printer systems print a header page and force the first page to
11771 be printed on the back of the header page when using duplex. If your
11772 printer system has this behavior, set variable
11773 `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' to t.
11775 If variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' is non-nil, it prints a
11776 blank page as the very first printed page. So, it behaves as if the
11777 very first character of buffer (or region) were a form feed ^L (\014).
11779 The variable `ps-spool-config' specifies who is responsible for
11780 setting duplex mode and page size. Valid values are:
11782 lpr-switches duplex and page size are configured by `ps-lpr-switches'.
11783 Don't forget to set `ps-lpr-switches' to select duplex
11784 printing for your printer.
11786 setpagedevice duplex and page size are configured by ps-print using the
11787 setpagedevice PostScript operator.
11789 nil duplex and page size are configured by ps-print *not* using
11790 the setpagedevice PostScript operator.
11792 The variable `ps-spool-tumble' specifies how the page images on
11793 opposite sides of a sheet are oriented with respect to each other. If
11794 `ps-spool-tumble' is nil, ps-print produces output suitable for
11795 bindings on the left or right. If `ps-spool-tumble' is non-nil,
11796 ps-print produces output suitable for bindings at the top or bottom.
11797 This variable takes effect only if `ps-spool-duplex' is non-nil.
11798 The default value is nil.
11800 The variable `ps-header-frame-alist' specifies a header frame
11801 properties alist. Valid frame properties are:
11803 fore-color Specify the foreground frame color.
11804 Value should be a float number between 0.0 (black
11805 color) and 1.0 (white color), or a string which is a
11806 color name, or a list of 3 float numbers which
11807 correspond to the Red Green Blue color scale, each
11808 float number between 0.0 (dark color) and 1.0 (bright
11809 color). The default is 0 ("black").
11811 back-color Specify the background frame color (similar to fore-color).
11812 The default is 0.9 ("gray90").
11814 shadow-color Specify the shadow color (similar to fore-color).
11815 The default is 0 ("black").
11817 border-color Specify the border color (similar to fore-color).
11818 The default is 0 ("black").
11820 border-width Specify the border width.
11821 The default is 0.4.
11823 Any other property is ignored.
11825 Don't change this alist directly; instead use Custom, or the
11826 `ps-value', `ps-get', `ps-put' and `ps-del' functions (see there for
11829 Ps-print can also print footers. The footer variables are:
11830 `ps-print-footer', `ps-footer-offset', `ps-print-footer-frame',
11831 `ps-footer-font-family', `ps-footer-font-size', `ps-footer-line-pad',
11832 `ps-footer-lines', `ps-left-footer', `ps-right-footer' and
11833 `ps-footer-frame-alist'. These variables are similar to those
11834 controlling headers.
11836 *** Color management (subgroup)
11838 If `ps-print-color-p' is non-nil, the buffer's text will be printed in
11841 *** Face Management (subgroup)
11843 If you need to print without worrying about face background colors,
11844 set the variable `ps-use-face-background' which specifies if face
11845 background should be used. Valid values are:
11847 t always use face background color.
11848 nil never use face background color.
11849 (face...) list of faces whose background color will be used.
11851 *** N-up printing (subgroup)
11853 The variable `ps-n-up-printing' specifies the number of pages per
11856 The variable `ps-n-up-margin' specifies the margin in points (pt)
11857 between the sheet border and the n-up printing.
11859 If variable `ps-n-up-border-p' is non-nil, a border is drawn around
11862 The variable `ps-n-up-filling' specifies how the page matrix is filled
11863 on each sheet of paper. Following are the valid values for
11864 `ps-n-up-filling' with a filling example using a 3x4 page matrix:
11866 `left-top' 1 2 3 4 `left-bottom' 9 10 11 12
11870 `right-top' 4 3 2 1 `right-bottom' 12 11 10 9
11874 `top-left' 1 4 7 10 `bottom-left' 3 6 9 12
11878 `top-right' 10 7 4 1 `bottom-right' 12 9 6 3
11882 Any other value is treated as `left-top'.
11884 *** Zebra stripes (subgroup)
11886 The variable `ps-zebra-color' controls the zebra stripes grayscale or
11889 The variable `ps-zebra-stripe-follow' specifies how zebra stripes
11890 continue on next page. Visually, valid values are (the character `+'
11891 to the right of each column indicates that a line is printed):
11893 `nil' `follow' `full' `full-follow'
11894 Current Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
11895 1 XXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXX + 1 XXXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11896 2 XXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11897 3 XXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11901 7 XXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXX + 7 XXXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11902 8 XXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11903 9 XXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11906 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
11907 Next Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
11908 12 XXXXX + 12 + 10 XXXXXX + 10 +
11909 13 XXXXX + 13 XXXXXXXX + 11 XXXXXX + 11 +
11910 14 XXXXX + 14 XXXXXXXX + 12 XXXXXX + 12 +
11911 15 + 15 XXXXXXXX + 13 + 13 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11912 16 + 16 + 14 + 14 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11913 17 + 17 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
11914 18 XXXXX + 18 + 16 XXXXXX + 16 +
11915 19 XXXXX + 19 XXXXXXXX + 17 XXXXXX + 17 +
11916 20 XXXXX + 20 XXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXXX + 18 +
11919 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
11921 Any other value is treated as `nil'.
11924 *** Printer management (subgroup)
11926 The variable `ps-printer-name-option' determines the option used by
11927 some utilities to indicate the printer name; it's used only when
11928 `ps-printer-name' is a non-empty string. If you're using the lpr
11929 utility to print, for example, `ps-printer-name-option' should be set
11932 The variable `ps-manual-feed' indicates if the printer requires manual
11933 paper feeding. If it's nil, automatic feeding takes place. If it's
11934 non-nil, manual feeding takes place.
11936 The variable `ps-end-with-control-d' specifies whether C-d (\x04)
11937 should be inserted at end of the generated PostScript. Non-nil means
11940 *** Page settings (subgroup)
11942 If variable `ps-warn-paper-type' is nil, it's *not* treated as an
11943 error if the PostScript printer doesn't have a paper with the size
11944 indicated by `ps-paper-type'; the default paper size will be used
11945 instead. If `ps-warn-paper-type' is non-nil, an error is signaled if
11946 the PostScript printer doesn't support a paper with the size indicated
11947 by `ps-paper-type'. This is used when `ps-spool-config' is set to
11950 The variable `ps-print-upside-down' determines the orientation for
11951 printing pages: nil means `normal' printing, non-nil means
11952 `upside-down' printing (that is, the page is rotated by 180 degrees).
11954 The variable `ps-selected-pages' specifies which pages to print. If
11955 it's nil, all pages are printed. If it's a list, list elements may be
11956 integers specifying a single page to print, or cons cells (FROM . TO)
11957 specifying to print from page FROM to TO. Invalid list elements, that
11958 is integers smaller than one, or elements whose FROM is greater than
11959 its TO, are ignored.
11961 The variable `ps-even-or-odd-pages' specifies how to print even/odd
11962 pages. Valid values are:
11964 nil print all pages.
11966 `even-page' print only even pages.
11968 `odd-page' print only odd pages.
11970 `even-sheet' print only even sheets.
11971 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
11972 `even-page', but for values greater than 1, it'll
11973 print only the even sheet of paper.
11975 `odd-sheet' print only odd sheets.
11976 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
11977 `odd-page'; but for values greater than 1, it'll print
11978 only the odd sheet of paper.
11980 Any other value is treated as nil.
11982 If you set `ps-selected-pages' (see there for documentation), pages
11983 are filtered by `ps-selected-pages', and then by
11984 `ps-even-or-odd-pages'. For example, if we have:
11986 (setq ps-selected-pages '(1 4 (6 . 10) (12 . 16) 20))
11988 and we combine this with `ps-even-or-odd-pages' and
11989 `ps-n-up-printing', we get:
11991 `ps-n-up-printing' = 1:
11992 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
11993 nil 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20
11994 even-page 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
11995 odd-page 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
11996 even-sheet 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
11997 odd-sheet 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
11999 `ps-n-up-printing' = 2:
12000 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
12001 nil 1/4, 6/7, 8/9, 10/12, 13/14, 15/16, 20
12002 even-page 4/6, 8/10, 12/14, 16/20
12003 odd-page 1/7, 9/13, 15
12004 even-sheet 6/7, 10/12, 15/16
12005 odd-sheet 1/4, 8/9, 13/14, 20
12007 *** Miscellany (subgroup)
12009 The variable `ps-error-handler-message' specifies where error handler
12010 messages should be sent.
12012 It is also possible to add a user-defined PostScript prologue code in
12013 front of all generated prologue code by setting the variable
12014 `ps-user-defined-prologue'.
12016 The variable `ps-line-number-font' specifies the font for line numbers.
12018 The variable `ps-line-number-font-size' specifies the font size in
12019 points for line numbers.
12021 The variable `ps-line-number-color' specifies the color for line
12022 numbers. See `ps-zebra-color' for documentation.
12024 The variable `ps-line-number-step' specifies the interval in which
12025 line numbers are printed. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set
12026 to 2, the printing will look like:
12038 integer an integer specifying the interval in which line numbers are
12039 printed. If it's smaller than or equal to zero, 1
12042 `zebra' specifies that only the line number of the first line in a
12043 zebra stripe is to be printed.
12045 Any other value is treated as `zebra'.
12047 The variable `ps-line-number-start' specifies the starting point in
12048 the interval given by `ps-line-number-step'. For example, if
12049 `ps-line-number-step' is set to 3, and `ps-line-number-start' is set to
12050 3, the output will look like:
12064 The variable `ps-postscript-code-directory' specifies the directory
12065 where the PostScript prologue file used by ps-print is found.
12067 The variable `ps-line-spacing' determines the line spacing in points,
12068 for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
12071 The variable `ps-paragraph-spacing' determines the paragraph spacing,
12072 in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
12075 The variable `ps-paragraph-regexp' specifies the paragraph delimiter.
12077 The variable `ps-begin-cut-regexp' and `ps-end-cut-regexp' specify the
12078 start and end of a region to cut out when printing.
12080 ** hideshow changes.
12082 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
12085 *** Support for java-mode added.
12087 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
12088 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
12090 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at
12091 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
12092 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
12094 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
12095 robust and a lot faster.
12097 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
12099 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
12100 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
12101 documentation for more details.
12103 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
12105 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
12106 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
12107 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
12108 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
12109 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
12111 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
12112 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
12113 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
12114 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
12120 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
12121 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
12122 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
12123 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
12124 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
12125 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
12127 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
12129 *** Maximum decoration
12131 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
12132 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
12133 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
12134 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
12135 to get the old behavior.
12139 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
12141 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
12142 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
12144 *** Configurable support
12146 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
12147 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
12148 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
12149 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
12150 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
12151 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
12152 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
12154 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
12155 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
12156 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
12158 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
12160 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
12161 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
12164 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
12166 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
12172 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
12173 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
12174 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
12175 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
12177 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
12179 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
12180 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
12181 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
12183 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
12185 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
12186 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
12187 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
12188 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
12189 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
12190 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
12191 Lock mode behavior and the behavior of Font Lock mode.
12193 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
12194 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
12195 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
12196 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
12197 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
12198 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
12200 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
12202 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
12203 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
12204 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
12205 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
12207 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
12210 ** Ada mode changes.
12212 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
12213 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
12214 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
12215 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
12218 *** There are two new commands:
12219 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
12220 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
12222 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
12223 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
12224 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
12226 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
12227 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
12228 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
12230 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
12231 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
12232 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
12233 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
12235 ** Scheme mode changes.
12237 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
12238 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
12239 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
12240 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
12243 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
12244 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
12245 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
12246 variables as buffer-local variables.
12248 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
12249 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
12251 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
12253 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
12254 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
12255 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
12256 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
12258 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
12259 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
12262 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
12263 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
12264 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
12265 option takes precedence.
12267 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
12268 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
12269 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
12271 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
12272 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
12275 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
12276 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
12278 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
12279 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
12282 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
12283 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
12284 these register values no longer become completely useless.
12285 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
12286 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
12287 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
12289 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
12290 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
12291 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
12292 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
12294 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
12295 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
12296 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
12297 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
12298 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
12300 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
12301 since it applies only to the current frame.
12303 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
12304 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
12305 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
12307 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
12308 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
12309 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
12310 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
12311 instead of just the file you are editing.
12315 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
12316 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
12317 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
12318 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
12319 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
12322 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
12323 knows which kind of label is needed.
12325 C-c ) reftex-reference
12326 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
12327 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
12329 C-c [ reftex-citation
12330 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
12331 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
12333 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
12334 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
12337 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
12338 can quickly jump to every section.
12340 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
12341 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
12342 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
12343 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
12344 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
12346 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
12348 *** Info documentation is now available.
12350 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
12351 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
12353 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
12354 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
12356 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
12357 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
12359 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
12360 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
12361 appropriate functions.
12363 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
12364 entries. They are bound by default to C-M-l and C-M-h.
12366 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
12369 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
12370 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
12372 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
12373 shall be delimited.
12375 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
12376 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
12377 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
12379 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
12380 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
12381 prefixed with `ALT'.
12383 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
12384 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
12385 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
12388 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
12389 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
12390 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
12392 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
12393 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
12395 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
12396 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
12397 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
12399 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
12401 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
12403 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
12404 from alien sources.
12406 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
12407 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
12410 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
12413 *** Added support for imenu.
12415 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
12416 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
12417 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
12418 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
12420 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
12421 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
12423 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
12425 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
12427 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
12428 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
12429 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
12432 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
12433 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
12435 ** browse-url changes
12437 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
12438 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
12439 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
12440 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
12441 customization variables.
12443 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
12445 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
12446 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
12447 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
12449 ** Changes in Ediff
12451 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
12452 pops up the Info file for this command.
12454 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
12455 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
12456 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
12459 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
12460 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
12461 files in the same directory.
12463 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
12464 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
12465 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
12467 ** Changes in Viper
12469 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
12470 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
12472 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
12473 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
12474 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
12475 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
12476 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
12477 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
12478 color when Viper is in insert state.
12479 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
12480 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
12481 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
12485 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
12486 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
12487 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
12488 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
12489 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
12491 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
12493 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
12494 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
12496 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
12497 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
12498 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
12500 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
12501 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
12502 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
12503 methods and protocols.
12505 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
12506 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
12507 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
12510 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
12511 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
12512 at least M times and as many as N times.
12514 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
12515 in files has changed slightly.
12517 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
12518 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
12519 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
12520 with old time-stamp-format values.
12522 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
12523 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
12524 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
12527 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
12528 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
12529 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
12530 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
12531 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
12532 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
12534 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
12535 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
12536 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
12538 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
12539 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
12540 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
12541 recommended now will continue to work then.
12543 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
12546 ** There are some additional major modes:
12548 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
12549 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
12550 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
12552 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
12553 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
12556 ** New Lisp packages include:
12558 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
12560 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
12561 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
12563 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
12565 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
12568 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
12569 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
12572 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
12573 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
12574 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
12575 strings or comments.
12577 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
12578 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
12579 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
12580 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
12583 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
12584 can visit them by short forms of their names.
12586 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
12587 Emacs Lisp function at point.
12589 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
12591 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
12592 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
12594 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
12596 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
12598 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
12600 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
12601 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
12603 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
12604 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
12605 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
12606 original place after inserting the copy.
12608 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
12611 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
12612 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
12613 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
12615 Enable mouse-drag with:
12616 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
12618 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
12620 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
12621 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
12623 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
12624 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
12628 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
12629 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
12630 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
12631 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
12632 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
12633 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
12634 instance) and vice versa.
12636 To use this package load it using
12637 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
12638 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
12639 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
12640 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
12641 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
12642 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
12644 *** Interface to ph.
12646 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
12648 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
12649 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
12652 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
12654 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
12655 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
12656 while the real cursor does not move.
12658 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
12659 for visiting your favorite web sites.
12661 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
12662 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
12666 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
12667 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
12668 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
12669 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
12671 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
12673 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
12675 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
12677 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
12678 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
12679 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
12680 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
12681 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
12683 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
12684 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
12685 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
12686 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
12687 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
12688 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
12690 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
12692 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
12693 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
12694 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
12695 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
12697 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
12698 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
12700 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
12701 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
12704 ** Basic Lisp changes
12706 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
12707 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
12709 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
12710 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
12713 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
12715 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
12717 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
12718 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
12720 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
12721 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
12724 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
12726 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
12728 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
12730 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
12731 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
12732 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
12735 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
12736 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
12737 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
12739 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
12740 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
12741 adding one of these suffixes.
12743 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
12744 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
12745 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
12747 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
12748 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
12750 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
12752 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
12753 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
12755 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
12756 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
12758 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
12760 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
12761 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
12763 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
12764 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
12765 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
12766 works using `save-current-buffer'.
12768 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
12769 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
12772 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
12773 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
12774 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
12777 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
12778 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
12781 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
12783 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
12784 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
12785 Then it returns that string.
12787 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
12789 (with-output-to-string
12790 (princ "The buffer is ")
12791 (princ (buffer-name)))
12793 returns "The buffer is foo".
12795 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
12798 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
12799 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
12800 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
12802 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
12803 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
12805 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
12806 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
12807 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
12808 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
12809 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
12810 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
12812 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
12813 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
12814 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
12817 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
12818 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
12819 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
12820 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
12821 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
12823 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
12824 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
12825 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
12826 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
12828 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
12829 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
12831 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
12833 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
12834 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
12835 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
12836 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
12839 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
12840 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
12843 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
12845 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
12846 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
12847 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
12848 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
12849 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
12851 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
12853 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
12854 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
12855 more than the number of characters.
12857 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
12858 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
12859 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
12860 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
12861 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
12862 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
12864 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
12865 and returns a string containing those characters.
12867 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
12868 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
12869 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
12870 character, sref signals an error.
12872 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
12873 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
12874 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
12876 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
12877 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
12878 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
12880 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
12881 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
12882 to a vector of the characters in it.
12884 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
12885 of a string. You call it as follows:
12887 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
12889 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
12890 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
12891 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
12892 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
12893 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
12895 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
12896 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
12898 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
12899 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
12901 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
12902 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
12903 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
12904 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
12906 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
12908 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
12910 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
12911 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
12912 are not included in the resulting value.
12914 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
12915 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
12916 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
12917 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
12919 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
12920 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
12921 character extends across that column), then the padding character
12922 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
12923 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
12924 column START-COLUMN.
12926 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
12927 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
12928 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
12929 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
12930 changed text, before the change.
12932 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
12933 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
12934 one character set for each script, not for each language.
12936 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
12938 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
12940 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
12941 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
12943 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
12944 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
12945 which identify the character within that character set.
12947 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
12948 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
12949 opposite of split-char.
12951 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
12952 of all the characters between BEG and END.
12954 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
12955 of all the characters in a string.
12957 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
12958 and specifying coding systems.
12960 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
12961 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
12962 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
12963 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
12964 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
12965 as what to do about code conversion.)
12967 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
12968 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
12970 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
12971 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
12972 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
12974 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
12975 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
12976 to match against a file name.
12978 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
12979 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
12980 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
12981 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
12982 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
12983 specifies the coding system for encoding.
12985 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
12986 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
12988 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
12989 the coding system to use for network sockets.
12991 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
12992 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
12993 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
12996 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
12997 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
12998 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
12999 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
13000 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
13001 specifies the coding system for encoding.
13003 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
13004 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
13006 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
13007 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
13008 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
13009 start the subprocess.
13011 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
13012 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
13013 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
13014 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
13015 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
13017 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
13018 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
13021 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
13022 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
13023 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
13024 connection permanently or until overridden.
13026 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
13027 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
13028 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
13029 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
13030 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
13031 system for one operation at a time.
13033 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
13034 files, subprocesses or network connections.
13036 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
13037 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
13038 The value is a cons cell,
13039 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
13040 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
13041 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
13042 input to the subprocess.
13044 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
13045 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
13047 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
13048 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
13049 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
13051 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
13052 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
13053 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
13054 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
13057 Thus, instead of writing
13059 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
13060 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
13062 you would now write this:
13064 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
13065 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
13069 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
13070 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
13071 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
13072 for a description of them.
13074 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
13075 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
13077 (defgroup ispell nil
13078 "Spell checking using Ispell."
13081 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
13082 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
13083 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
13084 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
13085 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
13087 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
13088 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
13089 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
13090 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
13091 first-level subgroups.
13093 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
13095 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
13096 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
13100 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
13101 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
13102 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
13103 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
13104 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
13105 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
13107 ** Text property changes
13109 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
13112 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
13113 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
13114 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
13115 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
13116 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
13118 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
13119 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
13120 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
13121 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
13123 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
13124 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
13125 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
13127 ** Changes in invisibility features
13129 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
13130 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
13131 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
13132 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
13133 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
13134 make the overlay visible.
13136 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
13137 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
13138 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
13139 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
13140 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
13141 t when it should hide it.
13143 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
13145 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
13146 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
13147 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
13148 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
13149 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
13150 Here is an example of how to do this:
13152 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
13153 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
13154 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
13155 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
13158 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
13161 ;; When done with the overlays:
13162 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
13163 ;; Or respectively:
13164 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
13166 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
13168 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
13169 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
13170 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
13171 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
13173 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
13174 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
13175 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
13177 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
13178 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
13180 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
13181 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
13183 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
13184 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
13185 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
13187 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
13188 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
13189 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
13190 determine the syntax type of the character.
13192 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
13193 of the current buffer.
13195 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
13196 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
13197 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
13199 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
13200 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
13201 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
13202 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
13203 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
13205 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
13208 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
13209 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
13210 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
13212 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
13213 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
13214 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
13215 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
13216 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
13218 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
13219 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
13220 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
13222 ** Changes in face features
13224 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
13225 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
13227 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
13228 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
13230 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
13231 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
13233 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
13234 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
13236 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
13237 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
13238 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
13239 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
13242 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
13243 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
13245 ** Changes in file-handling functions
13247 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
13248 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
13249 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
13250 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
13252 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
13255 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
13256 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
13258 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
13259 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
13261 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
13262 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
13264 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
13265 character code conversion as well as other things.
13267 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
13268 (formerly it did not).
13270 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
13271 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
13273 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
13274 instead of constant strings.
13276 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
13277 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
13278 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
13280 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
13281 in the same way as before.
13283 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
13284 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
13285 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
13287 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
13288 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
13289 else, and returns nil.
13291 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
13292 directory cannot be listed.
13294 ** Changes in minibuffer input
13296 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
13297 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
13298 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
13299 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
13302 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
13303 It is available through the history command M-n.
13305 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
13306 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
13307 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
13308 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
13309 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
13311 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
13312 argument in this way.
13314 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
13315 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
13316 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
13318 ** Echo area features
13320 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
13321 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
13322 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
13323 after the echo area is cleared.
13325 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
13326 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
13328 ** Keyboard input features
13330 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
13331 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
13333 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
13334 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
13335 by keyboard macros.
13337 ** Frame-related changes
13339 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
13340 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
13341 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
13343 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
13344 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
13345 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
13347 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
13348 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
13349 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
13350 in the selected frame.
13352 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
13353 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
13354 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
13356 ** X Windows features
13358 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
13359 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
13360 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
13362 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
13363 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
13365 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
13366 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
13367 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
13369 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
13370 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
13372 ** Subprocess features
13374 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
13375 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
13378 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
13379 and returns the output from the command as a string.
13381 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
13382 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
13384 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
13385 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
13387 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
13388 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
13389 goes after the other menu items.
13391 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
13392 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
13393 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
13396 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
13397 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
13399 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
13400 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
13403 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
13404 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
13405 but its hook is still run.
13407 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
13408 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
13410 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
13411 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
13412 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
13414 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
13415 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
13416 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
13419 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
13420 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
13422 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
13423 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
13424 functions like display-time.
13426 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
13427 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
13429 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
13430 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
13431 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
13433 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
13434 if there is an error in compilation.
13436 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
13437 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
13438 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
13439 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
13441 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
13442 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
13443 the *scratch* buffer.
13445 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
13446 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
13447 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
13448 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
13450 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
13451 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
13452 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
13454 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
13455 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
13456 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
13457 and compose-mail-other-frame.
13459 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
13460 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
13461 full name of the specified user will be returned.
13463 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
13464 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
13465 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
13466 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
13467 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
13470 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
13471 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
13472 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
13473 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
13475 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
13476 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
13477 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
13478 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
13480 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
13482 ** imenu.el changes.
13484 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
13485 item from menu created by imenu.
13487 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
13488 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
13489 select one of those items.
13491 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
13493 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
13494 Copyright information:
13496 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
13498 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
13499 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
13500 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
13501 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
13503 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
13504 of this document, or of portions of it,
13505 under the above conditions, provided also that they
13506 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
13510 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
13513 arch-tag: 1aca9dfa-2ac4-4d14-bebf-0007cee12793