1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
13 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
14 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
16 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
17 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
21 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if they these are available.
23 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
24 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
26 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
27 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
32 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
33 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
35 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
36 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
37 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
38 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
39 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
40 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
42 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
43 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
44 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
45 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
47 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
48 a version-dependent component.
50 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
51 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
52 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
53 character is still bound as before.
55 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
58 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
59 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to executable-chmod.
61 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
62 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
63 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
64 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
65 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
66 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
67 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
69 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
70 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
71 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
72 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
73 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
74 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
75 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
76 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
77 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
79 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
80 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
82 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
83 point in a pop-up window.
85 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
86 displays all characters in that character set.
88 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
89 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
91 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
94 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
96 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
97 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
99 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
100 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
101 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
102 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
104 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
105 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
106 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
107 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
109 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
110 on the display using several methods
112 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
113 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
114 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
116 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
117 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
119 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
121 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
122 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
124 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
125 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
126 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
127 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
129 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
130 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
131 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
133 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
134 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
136 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
137 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
140 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
141 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
144 ** New X resources recognized
146 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
147 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
148 is useful for debugging X problems.
152 emacs.synchronous: true
154 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
155 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
156 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
157 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
158 visual class names are
167 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
168 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
171 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
172 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
173 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
178 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
180 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
181 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
182 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
183 resource values are `true' or `on'.
187 emacs.privateColormap: true
189 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
190 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
191 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
193 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
194 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
195 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
198 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
200 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
201 all frames except the selected one.
203 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
204 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
206 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
207 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
208 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
209 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
211 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
212 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
214 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
215 read mail from the menu etc.
217 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
218 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
220 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
222 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
226 -------------------------
233 ** Changes in Outline mode.
235 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
236 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
237 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
239 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
240 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
242 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
243 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
244 several other special buffers.
246 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
247 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
250 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
251 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
253 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
254 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
255 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
257 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
258 is running in batch mode. For example,
260 (message "%s" (read t))
262 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
265 ** Faces and frame parameters.
267 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
268 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
269 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
270 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
271 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
272 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
273 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
275 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
276 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
277 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
278 `default' face and vice versa.
282 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
283 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
284 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
286 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
288 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
289 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
290 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
291 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
293 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
294 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
295 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
297 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
300 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
302 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
303 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
304 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
305 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
308 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
310 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
311 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
312 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
313 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
316 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
317 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
318 under Lisp changes, below.
320 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
322 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
323 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
326 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
327 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
328 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
329 customizing face `fringe'.
331 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
332 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
336 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
337 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
339 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
341 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
342 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
343 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
344 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
345 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
348 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
349 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
350 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
351 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
352 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
353 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
355 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
356 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
357 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
358 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
359 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
360 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
362 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
363 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
364 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
365 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
366 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
368 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
370 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
371 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
372 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
374 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
376 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
377 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
378 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
379 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
380 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
385 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
386 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
390 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
391 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
392 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
395 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
397 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
398 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
399 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
402 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
403 have to do anything to activate it.
405 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
407 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
408 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
409 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
410 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
412 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
414 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
416 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
418 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
421 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
424 ** Hscrolling in C code.
426 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
427 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
432 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
433 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
435 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
437 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
438 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
439 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
440 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
441 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
443 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
445 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
448 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
449 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
451 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
453 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
454 toggles the read-only status.
456 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
458 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
460 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
461 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
464 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
466 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
467 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
468 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
469 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
470 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
471 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
476 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
477 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
478 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
480 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
481 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
482 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
483 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
484 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
485 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
487 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
489 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
491 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
492 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
493 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
495 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
496 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
498 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
499 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
500 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
502 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
504 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
505 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
506 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
507 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
509 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
510 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
511 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
512 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
514 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
515 notably at the end of lines.
517 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
518 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
520 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
522 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
523 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
524 after each match to get the replacement text.
526 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
527 you edit the replacement string.
529 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
530 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
531 lisp-complete-symbol.
533 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
535 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
536 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
537 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
538 window size by setting the following variable:
540 - User option: max-mini-window-height
542 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
543 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
544 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
548 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
550 ** Changes to hideshow.el
552 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
553 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
555 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
557 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
558 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
559 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
560 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
561 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
562 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
564 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
565 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
566 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
567 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
569 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
571 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
572 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
573 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
574 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
575 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
577 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
578 something like this in your .emacs.
580 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
582 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
584 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
586 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
587 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
588 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
590 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
591 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
593 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
594 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
596 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
597 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
598 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
601 ** Changes in Font Lock
603 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
604 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
607 ** Comint (subshell) changes
609 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
610 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
611 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
612 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
613 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
614 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
615 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
616 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
618 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
619 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
621 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
622 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
623 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
625 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
626 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
627 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
629 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
630 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
631 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
632 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
634 ** Changes to Rmail mode
636 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
637 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
638 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
639 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
640 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
643 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
644 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
645 regexp matching your mail addresses.
647 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
648 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
649 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
650 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
651 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
653 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
656 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
657 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
660 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
661 in which folder to put messages automatically.
663 ** Changes to TeX mode
665 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
668 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
670 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
671 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
672 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
673 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
674 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
675 can be edited from that buffer.
677 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
678 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
679 `A' to use all marked entries).
681 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
682 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
684 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
685 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
686 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
689 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
690 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
691 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
692 in column 1 are always made leaves.
694 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
695 has the following new features:
697 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
698 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
699 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
700 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
702 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
703 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
704 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
705 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
706 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
709 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
714 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
715 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
716 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
718 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
719 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
720 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
721 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
725 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
726 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
727 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
729 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
730 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
733 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
734 between custom options. Example:
736 (defcustom default-input-method nil
737 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
738 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
739 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
741 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
742 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
744 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
745 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
746 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
748 ** New features in evaluation commands
750 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
751 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
752 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
753 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
754 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
756 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
757 code when called with a prefix argument.
761 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
762 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
763 spell-checks the current buffer.
767 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
768 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
769 is, delete only empty directories.
771 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
772 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
773 copy directories recursively.
775 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
776 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
777 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
779 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
780 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
783 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
784 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
785 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
786 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
787 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
789 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
792 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
793 use the -f option when sending mail.
797 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
798 current user setups (although it's believed that these
799 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
800 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
801 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
802 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
805 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
806 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
807 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
808 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
809 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
812 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
813 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
814 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
815 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
816 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
817 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
819 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
820 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
821 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
822 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
823 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
824 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
825 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
826 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
828 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
829 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
830 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
831 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
834 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
835 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
836 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
837 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
838 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
839 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
840 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
841 function documentation for more info.
843 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
844 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
845 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
846 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
847 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
848 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
849 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
850 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
852 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
854 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
855 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
857 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
858 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
859 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
860 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
861 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
864 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
865 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
866 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
869 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
870 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
871 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
872 chapter about this in the manual.
874 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
875 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
876 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
877 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
878 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
880 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
881 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
882 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
884 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
885 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
887 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
888 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
889 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
892 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
893 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
894 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
895 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
898 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
899 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
900 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
903 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
904 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
905 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
906 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
909 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
910 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
911 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
912 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
915 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
916 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
917 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
919 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
921 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
922 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
923 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
924 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
926 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
927 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
928 the column specified by comment-column.
930 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
931 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
932 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
933 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
934 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
935 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
937 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
938 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
941 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
943 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
944 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
945 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
946 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
949 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
951 ** Makefile mode changes
953 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
955 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
956 Fontlock mode is active.
960 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
961 so that searches can be resumed.
963 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
964 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
965 that started the search.
967 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
968 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
970 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
972 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
973 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
974 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
975 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
976 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
977 `secondary-selection'.
979 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
980 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
981 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
982 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
983 usual snappy response.
985 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
986 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
987 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
988 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
990 ** Changes in sort.el
992 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
993 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
994 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
997 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
999 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1000 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1001 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1003 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1004 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1006 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1007 output ^M at the end of lines.
1009 ** Shell script mode changes.
1011 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1012 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1013 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1017 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1019 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1020 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1021 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1022 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1023 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1025 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1026 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1028 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1029 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1031 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1034 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1036 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1038 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1041 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1042 variables are tagged.
1044 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1046 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1049 ** Changes in etags.el
1051 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1052 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1053 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1055 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1056 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1058 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1059 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1060 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1061 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1063 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1065 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1066 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1068 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1070 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1071 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1072 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1074 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1075 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1077 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1078 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1080 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1081 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1082 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1084 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1085 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1086 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1087 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1089 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1090 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1091 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1093 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1095 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1097 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1098 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1099 expression from that list, are not checked.
1101 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1102 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1103 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1104 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1106 ** New modes and packages
1108 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1109 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1110 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1111 on certain projects.
1113 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1114 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1116 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1118 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1119 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1120 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1121 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1122 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1123 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1124 corresponding file is read.
1126 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1129 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1130 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1132 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1133 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1134 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1136 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1137 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1138 separate Texinfo file.
1140 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
1141 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1142 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
1143 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
1144 used to enter checkin log messages.
1146 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1147 without invoking external programs.
1149 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1150 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1151 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1152 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1153 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1155 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1156 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1158 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1159 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1161 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1162 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1163 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1164 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1165 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1168 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1169 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1170 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1171 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1173 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1174 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1175 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1177 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1180 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1182 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1184 ; comment (until end of line)
1188 $A default non-terminal
1189 $"C" default terminal
1190 $?C? default special
1191 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1192 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1193 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1194 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1195 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1196 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1197 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1198 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1199 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1200 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1201 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1202 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1203 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1204 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1205 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1207 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1209 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1210 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1211 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1212 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1213 equal signs of assignments.
1215 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1216 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1218 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1219 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1220 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1221 customize the package.
1223 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1225 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1226 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1227 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1228 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1229 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1230 which answers different needs.
1232 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1233 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1234 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1235 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1236 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1239 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1240 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1242 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1244 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1246 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1248 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1251 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1254 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1256 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1258 *** whitespace.el ???
1260 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1261 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1262 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1263 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1264 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1265 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1266 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1268 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1270 Here is an example of columns:
1273 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1274 porcupine strawberry airplane
1276 Doing the following settings:
1278 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1279 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1280 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1281 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1284 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1286 M-x delimit-columns-region
1290 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1291 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1292 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1294 delim-col has the following options:
1296 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1299 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1300 between each column.
1302 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1305 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1308 delim-col has the following commands:
1310 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1311 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1313 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1314 were operated on recently.
1316 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1318 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1319 recentf at Emacs startup.
1321 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1322 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1323 file list can be displayed:
1325 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1326 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1327 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1329 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1330 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1332 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1335 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1336 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1337 specific to Message mode.
1339 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1340 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1341 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1343 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1344 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1345 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1347 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1348 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1350 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1352 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1353 minibuffer with completion.
1355 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1356 with the diary features.
1358 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1359 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1361 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1364 ** Withdrawn packages
1366 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1367 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1369 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1371 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1374 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1375 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1377 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1378 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1381 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1384 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1386 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1387 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1389 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1391 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1392 comparison is done with `eq'.
1394 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1396 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1399 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1400 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1401 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1403 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1404 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1406 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1407 function was declared obsolete.
1409 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1410 retained as an alias).
1412 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1413 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1414 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1416 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1418 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1420 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1421 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1423 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1425 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1427 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1429 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1430 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1431 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1432 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1435 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1436 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1437 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1438 minibuffer even if it is active.
1440 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1441 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1442 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1443 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1444 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1445 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1447 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1448 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1449 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1450 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1451 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1452 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1453 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1455 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1456 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1457 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1459 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1460 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1461 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1462 Default value is nil.
1464 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1467 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1468 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1469 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1471 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1474 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1475 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1476 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1477 than replacing the local map.
1479 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1480 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1482 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1484 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1487 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1489 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1491 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1492 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1493 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1494 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1496 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1497 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1498 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1499 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1501 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1502 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1503 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1505 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1506 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1507 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1508 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1509 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1510 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1511 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1514 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1516 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1517 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1518 character set as previously.
1520 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1521 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1522 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1524 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1525 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1526 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1527 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1529 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1530 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1532 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1533 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1536 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1537 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1539 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1540 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1541 buffers and strings.
1543 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1544 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1545 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1546 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1547 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1548 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1549 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1552 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1553 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1554 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1556 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1557 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1558 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1559 may differ between buffer and string text.
1561 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1562 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1564 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1565 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1566 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1567 `composition' from STRING.
1569 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1570 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1572 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1575 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1576 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1577 character set is not used.
1579 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1580 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1581 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1584 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1585 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1586 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1589 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1590 that offset in the file before writing.
1592 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1593 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1595 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1596 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1597 from which the command was issued.
1599 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1600 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1601 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1602 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1605 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1606 to `window-buffer-height'.
1608 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1610 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1611 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1612 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1614 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1617 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1618 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1620 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1621 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1622 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1624 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1625 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1626 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1627 is currently displayed in some window.
1629 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1630 argument function's results.
1632 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1633 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1635 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1636 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1638 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1639 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1641 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1642 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1645 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1646 nil don't display a cursor
1647 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1648 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1649 others display a box cursor.
1651 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1652 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1653 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1654 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1656 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1657 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1658 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1659 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1663 (string-to-syntax "()")
1666 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1669 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1670 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1677 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1682 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1687 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1694 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1695 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1698 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1699 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1700 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1701 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1704 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1706 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1707 for a regexp in a string.
1709 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1710 `mouse-position-function'.
1712 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1713 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1715 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1716 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1719 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1722 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1723 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1726 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1727 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1728 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1729 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1733 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1734 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1737 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1738 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1739 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1740 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1743 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1744 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1745 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1746 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1749 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1750 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1751 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1754 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1755 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1758 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1760 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1761 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1762 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1766 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1767 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1770 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1771 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1774 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1775 instead of being optional.
1778 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1779 modify read-only text.
1782 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1784 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1785 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1786 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1787 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1788 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1790 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1791 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1792 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1793 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1794 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1795 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1796 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1799 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1800 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1801 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1805 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1806 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1809 ** New function `propertize'
1811 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1812 strings with text properties.
1814 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1816 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1817 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1818 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1819 specified value of that property. Example:
1821 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1824 ** push and pop macros.
1826 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1827 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1828 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1830 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1831 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1832 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1834 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1836 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1837 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1839 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1840 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1841 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1842 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1844 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1845 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1846 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1847 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1850 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1851 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1853 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1854 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1855 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1856 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1857 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1859 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1861 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1862 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1863 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1864 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1865 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1866 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1867 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1868 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1869 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1870 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1871 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1872 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1873 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1874 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1875 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1878 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1880 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1882 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1884 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1885 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1889 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1890 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1891 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1895 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1896 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1898 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1900 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1901 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1902 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1903 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1904 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1906 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1908 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1909 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1910 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1914 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
1915 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
1916 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
1917 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
1918 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1920 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1922 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1924 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1926 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1928 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1930 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1933 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1935 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1937 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1939 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1941 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1943 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1945 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1947 Returns the size of TABLE.
1949 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1951 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1953 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1955 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1957 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1961 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1963 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1966 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1968 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1969 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1971 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1973 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1975 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1977 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1978 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1980 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1982 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1984 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1986 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1987 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
1988 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
1989 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1990 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1992 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1994 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1995 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1996 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1998 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1999 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2001 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2002 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2004 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2005 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2007 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2008 'case-fold-string-hash))
2010 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2013 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2015 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2016 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2017 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2020 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2022 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2023 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2026 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2027 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2028 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2029 is too short to reach that column.
2032 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2033 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2034 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2035 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2037 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2038 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2039 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2042 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2043 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2046 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2047 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2050 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2051 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2052 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2053 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2054 temporary-file-directory instead.
2057 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2058 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2059 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2060 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2063 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2064 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2067 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2069 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2070 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2071 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2074 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2076 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2077 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2078 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2079 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2080 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2081 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2083 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2084 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2085 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2086 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2089 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2091 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2092 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2093 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2096 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2097 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2101 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2103 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2104 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2107 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2110 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2112 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2113 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2116 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2118 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2119 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2125 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2126 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2128 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2129 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2130 to enable sound support.
2132 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2133 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2134 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2135 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2136 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2138 The following sound properties are supported:
2142 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2143 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2147 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2148 may be present, but not both.
2152 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2153 0..1. This property is optional.
2155 Other properties are ignored.
2157 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2159 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2162 ** Changes to garbage collection
2164 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2165 of live and free strings.
2167 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2168 strings that have been consed so far.
2171 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2175 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2177 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2180 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2182 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2184 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2185 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2186 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2187 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2188 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2190 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2191 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2194 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2197 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2199 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2200 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2201 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2202 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2205 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2207 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2208 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2209 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2210 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2212 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2213 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2215 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2216 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2217 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2218 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2219 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2220 just display it black instead.
2222 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2225 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2229 ** New face implementation.
2231 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2232 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2237 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2239 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2241 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2242 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2244 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2246 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2248 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2250 6. Foreground color.
2252 7. Background color.
2254 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2256 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2258 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2260 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2262 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2265 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2266 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2268 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2269 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2270 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2271 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2272 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2273 attributes mentioned above.
2275 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2276 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2279 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2280 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2286 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2287 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2288 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2289 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2290 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2291 results in a fully-specified face.
2294 *** Face realization.
2296 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2297 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2298 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2299 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2300 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2301 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2303 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2304 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2305 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2306 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2308 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2309 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2310 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2311 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2312 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2314 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2315 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2316 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2317 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2318 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2321 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2322 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2323 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2324 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2327 **** Clearing face caches.
2329 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2330 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2336 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2337 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2338 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2340 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2341 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2342 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2343 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2344 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2346 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2347 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2348 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2350 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2352 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2353 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2354 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2355 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2356 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2357 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2358 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2360 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2361 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2367 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2368 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2371 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2372 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2373 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2374 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2375 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2378 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2380 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2383 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2385 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2387 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2388 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2389 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2391 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2392 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2393 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2394 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2395 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2396 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2397 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2398 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2399 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2400 of the face font sort order.
2402 - Function: x-font-family-list
2404 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2405 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2406 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2407 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2409 - Variable: font-list-limit
2411 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2412 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2413 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2416 *** Setting face attributes.
2418 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2419 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2420 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2423 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2424 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2426 The following attributes are recognized:
2430 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2431 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2432 and `?' are allowed.
2436 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2437 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2438 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2439 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2443 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2448 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2449 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2450 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2454 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2455 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2458 `:foreground', `:background'
2460 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2464 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2465 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2466 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2471 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2472 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2473 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2478 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2479 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2480 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2481 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2485 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2486 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2487 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2488 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2489 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2490 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2491 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2492 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2493 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2494 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2495 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2496 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2497 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2498 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2499 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2500 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2505 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2506 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2510 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2511 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2512 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2513 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2514 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2515 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2517 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2518 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2522 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2523 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2524 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2527 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2528 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2529 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2531 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2534 *** Face attributes and X resources
2536 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2539 Face attribute X resource class
2540 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2541 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2542 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2543 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2544 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2545 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2546 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2547 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2548 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2549 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2550 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2551 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2552 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2553 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2554 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2555 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2556 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2557 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2558 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2559 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2562 *** Text property `face'.
2564 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2565 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2566 specification can be
2568 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2570 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2571 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2572 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2573 for face attribute names.
2575 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2576 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2577 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2580 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2582 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2583 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2584 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2585 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2586 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2587 used to clear the mapping table.
2589 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2591 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2592 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2593 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2594 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2595 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2596 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2597 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2598 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2599 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2600 modify their color-related behavior.
2602 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2605 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2607 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2608 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2609 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2610 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2611 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2612 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2613 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2614 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2615 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2618 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2620 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2622 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2623 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2624 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2626 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2628 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2629 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2630 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2632 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2633 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2634 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2635 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2636 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2637 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2638 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2641 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2642 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2643 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2645 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2647 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2649 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2651 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2652 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2653 constrained position if that is is different.
2655 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2656 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2657 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2658 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2659 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2660 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2661 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2662 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2663 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2665 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2666 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2667 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2668 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2669 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2671 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2672 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2674 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2676 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2678 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2679 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2680 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2682 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2684 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2685 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2686 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2687 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2688 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2690 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2692 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2693 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2694 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2695 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2696 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2698 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2700 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2701 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2702 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2704 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2706 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2707 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2708 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2713 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2714 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2715 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2716 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2718 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2719 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2720 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2721 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2724 IMAGE is an image specification.
2726 *** Image specifications
2728 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2729 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2730 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2731 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2732 described below are ignored.
2734 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2738 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2739 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2740 to use for its ascent.
2742 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2743 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2745 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2746 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2747 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2748 overlays that apply to the image.
2752 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2753 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2757 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2762 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2763 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2764 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2765 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2767 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2769 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2770 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2771 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2772 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2773 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2774 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2775 background of the image.
2779 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2780 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2781 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2782 may be present in the image specification.
2786 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2787 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2788 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2789 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2791 *** Supported image types
2793 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2795 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2796 properties supported are
2800 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2801 is the frame's foreground.
2805 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2806 the frame's background color.
2808 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2809 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2810 instead of a `:file' property.
2814 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2818 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2824 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2825 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2827 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2829 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2832 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2833 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2836 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2838 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2839 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2840 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2841 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2843 Additional image properties supported are:
2845 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2847 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2848 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2851 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2852 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2854 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2855 to display compressed images.
2857 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2859 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2860 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2863 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2865 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2866 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2869 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2871 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2872 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2875 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2877 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2878 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2880 Additional image properties supported are:
2884 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2885 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2887 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2888 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2889 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2892 (defun show-anim (file max)
2893 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2894 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2896 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2899 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2902 (goto-char (point-min))
2903 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2904 (insert-image img "x"))
2905 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2907 **** PNG, image type `png'
2909 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2910 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2913 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2915 Additional image properties supported are:
2919 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2920 integer. This is a required property.
2924 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2925 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2929 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2930 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2931 files. This is an required property.
2933 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2938 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2939 which are supported in the current configuration.
2941 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2942 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2943 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2944 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2945 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2947 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2949 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2950 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2951 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2952 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2953 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2959 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2962 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2963 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2964 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2965 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2966 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2967 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2968 of the display margins.
2970 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2971 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2972 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2973 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2979 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2980 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2981 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2982 that have a `help-echo' property.
2984 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
2985 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
2986 the window in which the help was found.
2988 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
2989 `help-echo' text property was found.
2991 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
2992 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
2994 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
2995 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
2998 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
2999 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3001 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3002 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3003 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3004 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3005 used as help string.
3007 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3008 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3009 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3012 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3014 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3015 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3017 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3018 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3019 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3020 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3023 (global-set-key [A-down]
3026 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3027 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3028 (global-set-key [A-up]
3031 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3032 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3035 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3037 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3038 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3039 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3040 is called with one argument, POS.
3042 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3043 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3044 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3045 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3046 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3049 ** Tool bar support.
3051 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3052 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3053 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3054 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3055 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3056 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3058 *** Tool bar item definitions
3060 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3061 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3062 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3064 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3065 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3066 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3067 property (see below).
3069 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3070 binding are currently ignored.
3072 The following properties are recognized:
3076 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3081 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3085 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3086 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3087 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3089 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3091 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3092 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3096 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3097 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3098 meaning of each of the four elements:
3100 Index Use when item is
3101 ----------------------------------------
3102 0 enabled and selected
3103 1 enabled and deselected
3104 2 disabled and selected
3105 3 disabled and deselected
3107 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3108 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3110 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3112 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3113 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3115 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3117 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3118 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3119 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3121 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3122 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3124 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3125 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3126 pixels. Default is 1.
3128 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3129 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3131 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3133 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3136 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3137 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3138 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3140 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3142 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3144 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3147 ** Mode line changes.
3150 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3152 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3153 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3154 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3156 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3157 a `local-map' text property.
3159 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3160 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3162 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3163 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3164 `local-map' property.
3166 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3167 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3170 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3171 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3174 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3175 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3178 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3180 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3181 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3182 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3183 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3186 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3189 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3190 position in the header-line.
3193 ** Text property `display'
3195 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3196 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3197 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3198 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3200 *** Variable width and height spaces
3202 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3203 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3204 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3205 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3206 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3207 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3208 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3210 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3211 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3212 properties described below.
3214 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3215 characters having the `display' property.
3219 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3220 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3222 - :relative-width FACTOR
3224 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3225 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3226 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3227 width of that character by FACTOR.
3231 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3232 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3234 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3238 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3241 - :relative-height FACTOR
3243 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3244 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3248 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3249 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3250 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3253 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3257 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3258 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3259 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3260 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3261 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3262 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3263 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3264 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3265 as display specification.
3267 *** Other display properties
3269 - :space-width FACTOR
3271 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3272 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3277 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3279 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3280 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3281 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3282 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3283 a font is available counts as a step.
3285 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3286 as tall as the frame's default font.
3288 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3289 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3291 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3292 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3296 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3297 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3298 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3299 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3300 `:height' subproperty.
3302 *** Conditional display properties
3304 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3305 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3306 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3307 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3308 the text having the `display' property.
3310 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3314 ** New menu separator types.
3316 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3317 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3318 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3319 to specify other menu separator types.
3321 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3323 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3326 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3328 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3330 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3332 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3334 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3336 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3338 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3340 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3342 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3344 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3345 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3347 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3349 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3351 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3353 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3355 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3357 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3359 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3361 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3363 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3365 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3367 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3369 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3371 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3373 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3375 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3376 the corresponding single-line separators.
3379 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3381 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3382 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3383 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3384 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3385 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3386 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3387 default foreground is black.
3389 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3390 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3391 `ScrollBarBackground').
3393 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3394 settings for scroll bar colors.
3397 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3398 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3401 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3402 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3403 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3404 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3405 the original window start.
3408 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3409 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3410 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3413 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3415 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3416 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3417 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3418 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3420 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3421 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3423 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3425 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3426 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3427 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3428 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3429 temporarily to nil, for example
3431 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3432 (enlarge-window 10))
3434 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3435 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3437 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3438 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3439 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3440 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3441 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3442 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3444 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3446 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3449 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3451 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3453 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3454 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3455 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3456 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3457 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3459 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3463 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3465 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3468 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3470 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3471 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3473 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3475 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3477 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3478 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3479 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3481 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3482 is the one that is used.
3484 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3485 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3486 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3487 separate from the command's regular output.
3488 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3489 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3490 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3493 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3494 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3495 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3496 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3498 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3499 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3500 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3501 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3503 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3504 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3505 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3506 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3508 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3509 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3510 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3511 they never ignore case.
3513 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3514 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3515 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3516 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3517 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3518 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3519 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3521 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3522 the same format that was used in the file before.
3524 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3525 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3527 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3528 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3529 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3531 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3532 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3533 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3534 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3535 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3536 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3537 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3539 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3540 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3541 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3542 format. You can now customize these variables.
3544 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3545 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3546 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3547 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3549 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3550 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3551 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3553 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3554 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3555 doesn't have any effect.
3557 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3560 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3561 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3562 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3564 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3565 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3566 `auto-show-mode' command.
3568 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3569 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3570 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3571 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3572 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3574 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3575 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3577 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3578 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3579 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3581 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3582 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3583 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3584 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3586 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3588 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3589 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3590 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3591 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3592 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3594 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3595 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3597 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3598 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3599 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3600 `?' on other systems.
3602 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3603 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3606 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3607 current codepage when it starts.
3611 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3612 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3613 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3614 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3615 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3616 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3620 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3621 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3623 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3624 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3625 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3626 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3627 buffer-file-coding-system.
3629 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3630 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3633 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3634 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3635 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3636 list of possible coding systems.
3640 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3641 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3642 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3643 docstring for details.
3645 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3646 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3647 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3648 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3649 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3651 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3652 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3654 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3655 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3657 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3658 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3659 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3660 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3663 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3664 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3666 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3667 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3668 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3669 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3671 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3672 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3673 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3674 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3675 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3677 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3679 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3681 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3682 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3684 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3686 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3687 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3688 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3689 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3690 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3694 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3695 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3696 Gnus manual for the full story.
3698 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3699 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3700 group, which is created automatically.
3702 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3705 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3707 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3708 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3710 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3713 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3715 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3716 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3718 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3720 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3721 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3723 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3724 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3726 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3727 control over simplification.
3729 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3731 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3734 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3736 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3738 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3739 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3740 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3742 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3743 `a' forces normal posting method.
3745 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3748 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3751 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3752 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3754 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3757 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3759 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3761 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3762 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3764 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3765 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3767 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3769 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3772 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3773 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3775 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3776 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3778 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3780 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3782 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3784 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3786 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3787 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3788 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3790 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3791 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3792 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3793 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3794 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3796 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3797 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3798 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3799 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3801 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3802 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3803 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3806 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3808 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3809 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3811 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3812 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3813 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3814 removed from the label.
3816 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3817 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3819 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3820 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3822 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3823 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3826 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3828 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3830 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3831 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3833 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3834 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3835 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3837 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3838 changes with a special face.
3840 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3841 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3842 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3844 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3846 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3847 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3848 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3849 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3850 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3852 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3853 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3854 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3856 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3857 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3858 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3859 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3860 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3861 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3862 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3863 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3864 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3866 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3867 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3868 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3869 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3870 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3873 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3874 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3875 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3876 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3877 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3878 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3880 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3881 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3882 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3883 was not documented clearly before.
3885 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3886 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3888 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3890 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3891 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3892 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3893 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3895 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3896 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3897 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3899 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3901 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3902 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3904 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3905 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3908 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3909 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3910 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3911 file names and attributes are returned.
3913 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3914 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3915 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3916 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3919 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3920 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3922 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3924 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3925 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3926 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3929 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3930 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3933 The new function process-running-child-p
3934 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3935 terminal to its own child process.
3937 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3938 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3939 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3940 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3942 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3943 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3945 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3946 :included is an alias for :visible.
3948 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3949 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3950 to move or copy menu entries.
3952 ** Multibyte editing changes
3954 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3955 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3956 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3957 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3958 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3959 (setq char (sref str idx)
3960 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3961 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3963 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3964 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3965 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3967 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3968 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3969 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3971 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3973 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3974 across the boundary.
3976 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3977 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3978 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3979 contains 8-bit characters.
3980 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3981 contains invalid characters.
3983 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3984 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3985 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3986 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3989 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3990 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3991 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3992 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3994 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3995 compose Thai characters in a string.
3997 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3998 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3999 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4000 menus should always use the third argument.
4002 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4003 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4004 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4005 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4007 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4008 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4009 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4010 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4012 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4013 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4014 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4017 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4019 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4020 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4021 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4023 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4024 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4025 means to clear out that attribute.
4027 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4028 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4030 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4031 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4032 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4033 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4035 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4036 the gap of the current buffer.
4038 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4039 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4042 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4043 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4044 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4045 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4047 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4049 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4050 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4051 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4052 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4053 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4055 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4056 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4057 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4058 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4059 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4061 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4062 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4063 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4065 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4066 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4067 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4068 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4069 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4072 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4073 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4074 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4075 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4077 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4079 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4080 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4081 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4082 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4084 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4085 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4086 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4087 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4088 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4089 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4090 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4093 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4096 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4097 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4098 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4099 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4100 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4102 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4103 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4104 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4105 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4107 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4108 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4109 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4110 something that most users not do.
4112 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4113 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4114 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4117 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4120 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4121 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4122 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4123 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4126 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4127 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4128 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4129 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4130 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4133 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4134 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4135 to be confused by TeX commands.
4137 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4138 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4139 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4140 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4142 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4143 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4144 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4145 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4146 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4148 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4149 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4151 ** Changes in input method usage.
4153 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4154 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4157 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4159 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4160 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4162 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4163 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4165 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4167 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4169 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4170 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4172 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4173 given in the following case:
4174 o When you are using a complex input method.
4175 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4177 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4178 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4179 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4180 setting it to t is helpful.
4182 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4184 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4186 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4187 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4188 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4189 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4192 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4193 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4194 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4197 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4199 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4201 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4202 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4204 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4205 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4206 its owner and group.
4208 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4209 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4211 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4212 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4214 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4215 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4216 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4217 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4219 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4220 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4221 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4222 for writing keyboard macros.
4224 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4225 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4226 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4227 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4228 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4231 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4233 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4234 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4237 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4238 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4239 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4240 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4242 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4243 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4244 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4246 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4247 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4248 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4249 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4251 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4252 failure if the command produces no output.
4254 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4255 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4258 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4259 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4260 function and variable names.
4262 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4263 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4264 file-coding-system-alist.
4266 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4267 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4268 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4269 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4270 according to the current fontset.
4272 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4274 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4275 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4276 nonascii-insert-offset.
4278 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4279 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4280 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4281 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4283 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4284 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4286 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4287 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4289 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4290 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4293 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4294 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4296 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4297 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4298 all variables that have documentation.
4300 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4301 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4302 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4303 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4304 it should show; the default is 20.
4306 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4307 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4310 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4311 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4312 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4313 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4314 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4315 Newly added options are included as well.
4317 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4318 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4319 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4321 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4324 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4325 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4327 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4328 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4331 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4332 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4335 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4336 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4337 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4338 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4341 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4343 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4344 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4345 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4347 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4348 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4349 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4354 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4355 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4357 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4358 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4360 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4361 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4363 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4364 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4365 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4366 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4367 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4368 made invisible again.
4370 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4372 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4373 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4374 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4377 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4378 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4379 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4380 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4381 rmail-default-body-file.
4383 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4384 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4385 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4387 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4388 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4389 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4391 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4392 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4393 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4394 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4395 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4396 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4398 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4399 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4400 provided by feedmail are:
4402 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4403 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4404 there is also a queue for draft messages
4406 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4407 be prompted for confirmation
4409 **** does smart filling of address headers
4411 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4412 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4413 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4415 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4416 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4417 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4418 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4422 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4423 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4425 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4426 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4428 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4429 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4430 for a specified regexp.
4434 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4437 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4438 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4441 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4442 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4443 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4444 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4446 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4447 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4448 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4449 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4450 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4452 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4453 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4454 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4455 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4456 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4458 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4459 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4460 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4461 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4463 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4464 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4465 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4467 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4468 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4469 session to resolve them.
4471 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4472 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4473 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4476 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4477 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4478 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4479 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4480 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4481 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4484 ** Changes in Font Lock
4486 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4487 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4488 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4489 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4490 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4492 ** Frame name display changes
4494 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4495 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4496 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4497 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4499 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4500 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4503 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4505 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4506 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4507 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4509 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4511 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4512 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4513 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4515 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4516 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4519 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4520 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4521 previously sent input.
4523 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4524 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4525 as the search string.
4527 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4528 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4532 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4533 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4534 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4537 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4538 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4539 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4540 style is still the default however.
4542 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4544 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4545 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4546 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4548 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4549 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4551 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4552 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4554 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4555 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4557 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4558 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4560 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4561 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4562 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4563 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4565 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4567 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4568 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4569 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4571 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4572 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4573 expanding dynamically.
4575 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4576 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4578 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4579 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4580 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4581 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4583 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4585 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4587 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4588 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4589 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4590 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4591 against the first word in the title.
4593 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4594 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4595 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4596 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4597 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4598 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4600 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4601 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4602 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4603 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4605 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4607 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4608 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4609 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4610 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4611 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4612 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4614 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4615 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4617 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4618 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4619 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4621 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4622 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4626 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4627 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4628 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4630 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4631 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4632 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4633 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4636 o URLs are automatically skipped
4637 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4639 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4641 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4643 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4644 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4645 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4646 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4648 *** New recursive parser.
4650 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4651 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4652 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4654 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4656 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4657 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4658 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4660 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4662 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4664 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4666 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4668 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4670 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4671 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4673 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4675 *** References to external documents.
4677 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4678 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4679 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4680 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4681 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4682 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4683 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4685 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4687 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4688 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4690 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4691 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4693 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4695 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4696 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4698 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4700 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4701 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4702 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4703 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4704 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4705 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4708 *** Support for the varioref package
4710 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4714 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4715 and citations are created. These hooks are
4716 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4717 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4719 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4721 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4722 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4724 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4726 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4727 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4730 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4732 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4733 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4734 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4735 directories that contain the same file name.
4737 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4738 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4739 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4740 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4741 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4742 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4743 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4746 ** New modes and packages
4748 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4749 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4750 it, but some do not.
4752 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4755 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4756 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4759 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4761 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4762 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4763 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4764 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4766 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4767 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4768 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4770 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4771 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4772 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4773 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4774 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4777 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4778 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4780 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4781 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4782 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4783 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4785 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4787 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4788 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4789 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4790 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4791 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4792 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4793 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4794 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4795 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4796 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4797 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4799 Platform-specific modes:
4801 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4802 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4803 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4804 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4805 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4806 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4807 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4808 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4809 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4811 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4813 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4814 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4815 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4816 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4818 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4819 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4820 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4822 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4823 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4824 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4825 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4827 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4828 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4829 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4832 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4833 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4834 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4835 current input method for reading this one event.
4837 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4838 now control whether to output certain characters as
4839 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4840 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4841 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4842 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4844 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4846 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4847 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4849 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4850 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4851 always increases point by 1.
4853 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4854 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4856 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4858 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4859 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4860 default value changed. For example,
4862 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4867 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4870 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4871 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4872 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4873 `:version' in the top level group.
4875 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4877 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4878 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4880 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4881 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4882 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4885 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4886 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4889 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4890 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4891 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4893 ** Frame-local variables.
4895 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4896 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4897 local bindings for that variable.
4899 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4900 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4901 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4904 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4905 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4906 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4907 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4909 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4910 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4911 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4912 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4914 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4915 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4916 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4917 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4918 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4920 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4921 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4922 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4923 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4925 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4926 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4928 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4929 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4930 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4932 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4933 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4934 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4935 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4937 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4938 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4941 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4942 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4943 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4944 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4945 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4947 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4948 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4949 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4950 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4952 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4953 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4954 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4955 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4956 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4958 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4959 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4960 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4961 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4963 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4964 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4965 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4967 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4968 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4969 was directed to display this buffer.
4971 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4972 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4973 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4974 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4975 set-window-configuration.
4977 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4978 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4979 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4980 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4982 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4983 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4984 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4986 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4987 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4988 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4990 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4991 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4993 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4994 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4996 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4997 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4998 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5000 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5001 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5002 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5003 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5007 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5008 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5011 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5012 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5013 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5014 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5015 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5017 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5019 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5020 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5021 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5022 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5025 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5026 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5027 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5028 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5029 The supported properties include
5031 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5033 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5034 item should appear in the menu.
5036 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5037 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5038 It should return a binding to use instead.
5040 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5041 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5042 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5043 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5044 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5047 This means that the command normally has no
5048 keyboard equivalent.
5049 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5050 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5051 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5052 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5053 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5055 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5056 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5058 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5062 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5063 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5064 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5065 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5067 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5069 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5070 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5071 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5072 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5073 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5074 forward, away from the user.
5076 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5078 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5079 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5080 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5081 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5082 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5084 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5086 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5087 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5088 that were dragged and dropped.
5090 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5092 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5094 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5095 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5096 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5098 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5099 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5100 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5102 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5103 in Emacs 19 and before.
5105 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5106 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5108 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5109 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5110 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5111 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5113 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5114 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5115 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5116 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5117 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5119 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5120 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5121 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5122 consistent with the new representation.
5124 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5125 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5126 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5127 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5129 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5130 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5131 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5133 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5134 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5135 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5137 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5138 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5139 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5141 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5142 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5144 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5145 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5147 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5148 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5149 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5150 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5152 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5153 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5155 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5156 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5157 buffer or string being searched.
5159 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5160 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5161 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5162 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5163 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5164 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5165 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5167 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5169 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5170 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5171 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5172 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5173 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5174 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5175 define-coding-system-alias.
5177 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5178 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5179 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5180 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5181 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5182 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5183 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5186 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5187 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5188 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5189 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5191 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5192 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5193 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5194 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5196 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5197 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5198 This function requires a user interaction.
5200 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5201 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5202 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5203 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5204 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5205 select-safe-coding-system.
5207 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5208 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5209 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5212 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5213 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5214 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5216 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5217 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5218 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5219 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5221 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5222 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5223 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5226 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5227 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5229 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5230 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5231 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5232 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5233 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5234 range of characters.
5236 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5237 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5239 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5240 in the current buffer at position POS.
5242 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5243 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5244 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5245 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5246 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5247 binding input-method-function to nil.
5249 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5250 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5251 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5252 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5253 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5255 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5256 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5258 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5259 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5261 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5262 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5263 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5264 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5265 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5267 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5269 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5270 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5271 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5274 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5275 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5277 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5278 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5279 in your .emacs file.)
5281 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5282 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5284 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5285 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5287 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5288 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5291 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5292 delete the character before point, as usual.
5294 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5295 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5296 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5298 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5299 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5300 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5301 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5302 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5305 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5306 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5307 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5308 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5309 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5311 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5312 and is an alias for it.
5314 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5315 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5317 ** Scrolling changes
5319 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5320 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5322 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5323 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5326 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5327 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5328 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5329 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5331 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5332 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5333 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5334 recenters the window.
5336 ** International character set support (MULE)
5338 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5339 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5340 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5341 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5342 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5343 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5345 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5346 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5347 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5348 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5349 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5351 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5352 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5353 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5354 language, to make it possible to type them.
5356 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5357 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5359 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5360 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5362 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5364 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5366 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5367 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5368 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5369 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5370 characters for their work until they want to change.
5374 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5375 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5376 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5377 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5378 support several input methods.
5380 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5381 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5384 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5385 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5386 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5387 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5388 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5391 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5392 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5393 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5394 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5395 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5397 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5398 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5399 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5400 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5402 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5403 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5404 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5405 the first guess is wrong.
5407 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5408 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5410 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5411 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5412 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5413 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5415 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5416 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5417 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5418 translate automatically to and from either one.
5420 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5422 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5423 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5424 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5427 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5428 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5429 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5430 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5432 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5433 character conversion as well.
5435 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5437 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5438 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5439 requires using many fonts.
5441 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5442 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5444 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5445 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5446 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5447 you would use a font.
5449 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5450 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5451 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5453 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5454 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5455 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5456 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5457 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5459 *** Defining fontsets.
5461 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5462 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5463 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5465 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5466 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5467 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5468 standard fontset are created automatically.
5470 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5471 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5472 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5473 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5474 name is `fontset-startup'.
5476 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5477 The resource value should have this form:
5478 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5479 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5480 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5481 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5482 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5483 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5484 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5485 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5486 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5488 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5489 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5490 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5492 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5493 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5495 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5496 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5497 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5498 Here is the substitution rule:
5499 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5500 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5501 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5502 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5503 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5505 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5506 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5507 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5509 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5510 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5511 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5512 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5515 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5516 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5518 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5519 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5520 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5521 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5522 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5523 system for new files that you create.
5525 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5526 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5527 whole Emacs session.
5529 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5530 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5531 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5533 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5534 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5535 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5536 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5537 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5539 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5540 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5541 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5542 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5543 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5545 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5546 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5548 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5549 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5551 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5552 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5554 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5555 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5556 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5557 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5560 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5561 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5562 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5563 translated into that character code.
5565 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5566 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5568 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5570 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5571 the coding system for keyboard input.
5573 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5574 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5575 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5577 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5579 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5580 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5581 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5582 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5583 designed to work with terminals.
5585 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5586 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5587 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5588 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5589 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5590 in the corresponding buffer.
5592 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5594 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5595 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5596 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5598 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5599 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5600 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5603 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5604 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5606 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5607 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5608 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5609 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5611 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5612 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5613 related information.
5615 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5616 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5619 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5620 information about the support for a particular language.
5621 You specify the language as an argument.
5623 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5624 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5627 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5628 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5629 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5630 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5632 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5634 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5635 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5636 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5637 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5638 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5639 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5640 K euc-korea (Korean)
5643 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5646 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5647 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5648 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5652 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5653 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5654 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5655 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5657 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5658 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5660 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5661 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5662 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5663 Rmail files themselves.
5665 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5666 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5668 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5671 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5672 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5673 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5674 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5675 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5677 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5678 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5679 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5682 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5683 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5684 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5685 without any conversion.
5687 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5688 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5689 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5690 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5692 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5693 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5695 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5696 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5698 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5699 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5701 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5702 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5703 in the buffer before point.
5705 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5706 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5709 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5710 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5712 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5714 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5715 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5717 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5718 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5719 can become a bottleneck.
5721 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5722 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5723 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5724 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5725 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5726 so useful that the change is worth while.
5728 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5729 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5730 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5731 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5733 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5734 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5737 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5738 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5739 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5741 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5742 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5743 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5745 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5746 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5747 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5749 ** Changes in View mode.
5751 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5752 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5754 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5755 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5757 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5760 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5761 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5763 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5764 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5765 not just the selected window.
5767 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5768 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5769 turns View mode on or off.
5771 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5772 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5773 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5775 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5776 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5778 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5779 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5780 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5781 which version to compare with.
5783 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5784 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5786 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5787 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5788 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5789 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5791 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5792 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5793 blocks, all of them or none.
5795 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5796 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5799 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5800 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5801 However, the mode will not be changed if
5802 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5803 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5804 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5805 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5807 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5809 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5810 these commands do not change the major mode.
5812 ** M-x occur changes.
5814 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5815 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5817 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5818 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5819 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5821 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5822 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5823 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5824 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5825 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5827 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5828 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5829 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5830 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5832 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5833 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5834 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5836 ** Outline mode changes.
5838 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5840 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5842 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5843 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5844 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5847 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5848 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5851 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5852 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5854 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5856 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5857 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5858 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5859 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5861 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5862 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5863 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5865 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5866 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5869 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5870 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5871 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5872 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5874 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5875 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5876 can be. The default value is 30.
5878 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5880 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5881 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5882 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5883 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5884 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5887 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5888 compose-mail-other-frame.
5890 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5891 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5892 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5893 buffer that shows the original message.
5895 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5896 with separator lines around the contents.
5898 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5899 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5900 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5901 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5903 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5905 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5906 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5907 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5908 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5910 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5911 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5914 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5915 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5918 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5919 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5920 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5921 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5923 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5924 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5925 be taken to be magic.
5927 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5928 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5929 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5931 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5932 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5934 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5935 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5937 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5939 new key dired.el binding old key
5940 ------- ---------------- -------
5941 * c dired-change-marks c
5943 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5944 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5945 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5947 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5948 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5949 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5950 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5951 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5952 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5956 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5957 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5958 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5959 each time you run it.
5961 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5962 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5964 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5965 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5966 means to move in the opposite direction.
5968 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5969 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5971 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5972 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5973 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5974 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5979 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5981 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5984 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5985 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5987 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5990 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5992 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5994 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5996 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5997 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5998 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6000 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6002 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6004 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6005 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6007 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6008 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6009 used to pick articles.
6011 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6012 another have been added.
6014 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6016 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6017 generating lines in buffers.
6019 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6022 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6024 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6026 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6028 *** Scores can be decayed.
6030 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6032 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6033 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6035 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6038 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6040 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6041 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6043 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6045 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6046 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6048 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6049 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6051 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6054 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6055 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6057 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6059 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6061 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6063 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6065 Use the `Y c' command.
6067 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6069 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6071 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6073 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6074 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6076 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6078 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6080 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6081 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6083 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6085 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6086 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6087 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6088 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6091 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6092 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6093 particular news group. This can be done by:
6095 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6097 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6098 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6099 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6100 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6101 for reading and posting).
6103 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6104 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6105 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6106 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6109 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6110 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6112 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6113 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6114 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6115 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6116 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6118 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6119 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6123 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6124 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6125 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6126 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6127 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6130 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6131 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6132 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6133 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6134 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6135 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6137 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6138 of the current buffer.
6140 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6141 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6142 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6144 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6145 style that the Python developers like.
6147 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6148 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6149 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6153 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6154 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6155 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6157 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6158 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6161 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6162 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6164 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6165 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6166 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6167 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6169 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6170 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6172 ** Calendar changes.
6174 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6175 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6176 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6180 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6182 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6184 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6185 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6186 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6187 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6188 It defaults to `letter'.
6189 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6191 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6192 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6193 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6195 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6196 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6199 *** Horizontal layout
6201 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6202 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6203 All are measured in points.
6207 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6208 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6209 All are measured in points.
6213 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6214 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6215 margin above the text.
6217 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6218 framing box is printed around the header.
6220 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6221 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6223 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6224 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6225 `ps-header-font-size'.
6229 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6230 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6231 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6232 elements to this alist.
6234 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6235 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6237 ** hideshow changes.
6239 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6242 *** Support for java-mode added.
6244 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6245 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6247 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6248 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6249 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6251 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6252 robust and a lot faster.
6254 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6256 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6257 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6258 documentation for more details.
6260 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6262 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6263 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6264 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6265 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6266 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6268 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6269 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6270 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6271 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6277 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6278 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6279 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6280 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6281 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6282 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6284 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6286 *** Maximum decoration
6288 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6289 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6290 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6291 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6292 to get the old behavior.
6296 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6298 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6299 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6301 *** Configurable support
6303 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6304 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6305 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6306 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6307 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6308 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6309 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6311 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6312 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6313 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6315 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6317 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6318 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6321 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6323 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6329 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6330 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6331 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6332 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6334 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6336 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6337 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6338 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6340 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6342 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6343 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6344 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6345 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6346 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6347 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6348 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6350 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6351 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6352 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6353 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6354 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6355 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6357 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6359 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6360 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6361 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6362 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6364 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6367 ** Ada mode changes.
6369 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6370 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6371 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6372 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6375 *** There are two new commands:
6376 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6377 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6379 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6380 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6381 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6383 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6384 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6385 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6387 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6388 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6389 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6390 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6392 ** Scheme mode changes.
6394 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6395 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6396 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6397 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6400 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6401 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6402 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6403 variables as buffer-local variables.
6405 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6408 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6410 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6411 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6412 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6413 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6415 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6416 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6419 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6420 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6421 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6422 option takes precedence.
6424 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6425 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6426 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6428 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6429 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6432 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6433 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6435 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6436 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6439 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6440 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6441 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6442 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6443 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6444 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6446 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6447 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6448 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6449 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6451 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6452 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6453 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6454 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6455 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6457 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6458 since it applies only to the current frame.
6460 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6461 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6462 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6464 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6465 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6466 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6467 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6468 instead of just the file you are editing.
6472 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6473 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6474 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6475 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6476 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6479 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6480 knows which kind of label is needed.
6482 C-c ) reftex-reference
6483 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6484 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6486 C-c [ reftex-citation
6487 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6488 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6490 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6491 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6494 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6495 can quickly jump to every section.
6497 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6498 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6499 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6500 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6501 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6503 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6505 *** Info documentation is now available.
6507 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6508 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6510 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6511 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6513 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6514 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6516 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6517 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6518 appropriate functions.
6520 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6521 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6523 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6526 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6527 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6529 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6532 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6533 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6534 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6536 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6537 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6538 prefixed with `ALT'.
6540 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6541 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6542 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6545 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6546 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6547 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6549 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6550 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6552 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6553 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6554 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6556 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6558 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6560 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6563 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6564 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6567 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6570 *** Added support for imenu.
6572 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6573 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6574 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6575 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6577 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6578 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6580 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6582 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6584 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6585 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6586 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6589 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6590 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6592 ** browse-url changes
6594 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6595 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6596 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6597 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6598 customization variables.
6600 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6602 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6603 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6604 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6608 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6609 pops up the Info file for this command.
6611 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6612 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6613 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6616 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6617 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6618 files in the same directory.
6620 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6621 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6622 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6626 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6627 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6629 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6630 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6631 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6632 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6633 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6634 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6635 color when Viper is in insert state.
6636 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6637 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6638 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6642 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6643 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6644 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6645 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6646 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6648 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6650 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6651 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6653 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6654 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6655 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6657 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6658 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6659 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6660 methods and protocols.
6662 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6663 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6664 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6667 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6668 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6669 at least M times and as many as N times.
6671 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6672 in files has changed slightly.
6674 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6675 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6676 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6677 with old time-stamp-format values.
6679 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6680 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6681 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6684 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6685 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6686 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6687 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6688 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6689 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6691 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6692 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6693 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6695 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6696 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6697 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6698 recommended now will continue to work then.
6700 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6703 ** There are some additional major modes:
6705 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6706 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6707 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6709 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6710 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6713 ** New Lisp packages include:
6715 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6717 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6718 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6720 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6722 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6725 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6726 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6729 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6730 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6731 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6732 strings or comments.
6734 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6735 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6736 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6737 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6740 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6741 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6743 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6744 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6746 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6748 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6749 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6751 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6753 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6755 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6757 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6758 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6760 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6761 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6762 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6763 original place after inserting the copy.
6765 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6768 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6769 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6770 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6772 Enable mouse-drag with:
6773 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6775 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6777 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6778 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6780 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6781 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6785 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6786 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6787 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6788 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6789 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6790 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6791 instance) and vice versa.
6793 To use this package load it using
6794 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6795 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6796 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6797 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6798 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6799 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6801 *** Interface to ph.
6803 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6805 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6806 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6809 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6811 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6812 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6813 while the real cursor does not move.
6815 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6816 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6818 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6819 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6823 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6824 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6825 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6826 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6828 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6830 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6832 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6834 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6835 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6836 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6837 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6838 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6840 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6841 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6842 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6843 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6844 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6845 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6847 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6849 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6850 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6851 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6852 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6854 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6855 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6857 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6858 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6861 ** Basic Lisp changes
6863 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6864 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6866 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6867 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6870 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6872 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6874 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6875 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6877 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6878 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6881 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6883 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6885 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6887 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6888 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6889 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6892 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6893 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6894 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6896 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6897 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6898 adding one of these suffixes.
6900 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6901 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6902 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6904 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6905 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6907 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6909 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6910 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6912 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6913 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6915 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6917 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6918 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6920 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6921 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6922 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6923 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6925 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6926 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6929 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6930 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6931 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6934 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6935 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6938 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6940 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6941 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6942 Then it returns that string.
6944 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6946 (with-output-to-string
6947 (princ "The buffer is ")
6948 (princ (buffer-name)))
6950 returns "The buffer is foo".
6952 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6955 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6956 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6957 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6959 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6960 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6962 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6963 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6964 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6965 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6966 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6967 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6969 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6970 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6971 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6974 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6975 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6976 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6977 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6978 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6980 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6981 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6982 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6983 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6985 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6986 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6988 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6990 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6991 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6992 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6993 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6996 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6997 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7000 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7002 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7003 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7004 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7005 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7006 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7008 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7010 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7011 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7012 more than the number of characters.
7014 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7015 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7016 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7017 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7018 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7019 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7021 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7022 and returns a string containing those characters.
7024 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7025 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7026 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7027 character, sref signals an error.
7029 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7030 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7031 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7033 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7034 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7035 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7037 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7038 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7039 to a vector of the characters in it.
7041 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7042 of a string. You call it as follows:
7044 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7046 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7047 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7048 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7049 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7050 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7052 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7053 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7055 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7056 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7058 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7059 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7060 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7061 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7063 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7065 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7067 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7068 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7069 are not included in the resulting value.
7071 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7072 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7073 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7074 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7076 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7077 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7078 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7079 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7080 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7081 column START-COLUMN.
7083 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7084 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7085 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7086 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7087 changed text, before the change.
7089 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7090 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7091 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7093 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7095 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7097 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7098 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7100 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7101 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7102 which identify the character within that character set.
7104 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7105 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7106 opposite of split-char.
7108 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7109 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7111 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7112 of all the characters in a string.
7114 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7115 and specifying coding systems.
7117 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7118 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7119 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7120 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7121 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7122 as what to do about code conversion.)
7124 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7125 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7127 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7128 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7129 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7131 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7132 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7133 to match against a file name.
7135 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7136 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7137 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7138 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7139 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7140 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7142 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7143 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7145 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7146 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7148 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7149 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7150 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7153 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7154 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7155 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7156 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7157 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7158 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7160 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7161 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7163 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7164 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7165 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7166 start the subprocess.
7168 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7169 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7170 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7171 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7172 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7174 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7175 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7178 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7179 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7180 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7181 connection permanently or until overridden.
7183 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7184 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7185 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7186 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7187 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7188 system for one operation at a time.
7190 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7191 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7193 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7194 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7195 The value is a cons cell,
7196 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7197 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7198 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7199 input to the subprocess.
7201 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7202 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7204 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7205 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7206 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7208 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7209 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7210 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7211 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7214 Thus, instead of writing
7216 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7217 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7219 you would now write this:
7221 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7222 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7226 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7227 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7228 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7229 for a description of them.
7231 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7232 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7234 (defgroup ispell nil
7235 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7238 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7239 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7240 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7241 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7242 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7244 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7245 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7246 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7247 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7248 first-level subgroups.
7250 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7252 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7253 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7257 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7258 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7259 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7260 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7261 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7262 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7264 ** Text property changes
7266 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7269 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7270 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7271 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7272 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7273 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7275 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7276 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7277 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7278 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7280 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7281 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7282 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7284 ** Changes in invisibility features
7286 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7287 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7288 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7289 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7290 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7291 make the overlay visible.
7293 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7294 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7295 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7296 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7297 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7298 t when it should hide it.
7300 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7302 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7303 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7304 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7305 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7306 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7307 Here is an example of how to do this:
7309 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7310 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7311 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7312 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7315 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7318 ;; When done with the overlays:
7319 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7321 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7323 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7325 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7326 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7327 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7328 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7330 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7331 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7332 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7334 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7335 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7337 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7338 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7340 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7341 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7342 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7344 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7345 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7346 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7347 determine the syntax type of the character.
7349 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7350 of the current buffer.
7352 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7353 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7354 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7356 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7357 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7358 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7359 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7360 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7362 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7365 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7366 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7367 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7369 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7370 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7371 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7372 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7373 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7375 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7376 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7377 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7379 ** Changes in face features
7381 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7382 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7384 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7385 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7387 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7388 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7390 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7391 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7393 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7394 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7395 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7396 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7399 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7400 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7402 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7404 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7405 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7406 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7407 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7409 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7412 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7413 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7415 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7416 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7418 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7419 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7421 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7422 character code conversion as well as other things.
7424 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7425 (formerly it did not).
7427 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7428 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7430 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7431 instead of constant strings.
7433 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7434 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7435 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7437 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7438 in the same way as before.
7440 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7441 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7442 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7444 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7445 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7446 else, and returns nil.
7448 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7449 directory cannot be listed.
7451 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7453 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7454 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7455 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7456 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7459 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7460 It is available through the history command M-n.
7462 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7463 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7464 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7465 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7466 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7468 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7469 argument in this way.
7471 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7472 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7473 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7475 ** Echo area features
7477 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7478 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7479 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7480 after the echo area is cleared.
7482 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7483 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7485 ** Keyboard input features
7487 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7488 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7490 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7491 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7494 ** Frame-related changes
7496 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7497 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7498 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7500 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7501 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7502 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7504 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7505 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7506 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7507 in the selected frame.
7509 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7510 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7511 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7513 ** X Windows features
7515 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7516 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7517 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7519 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7520 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7522 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7523 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7524 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7526 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7527 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7529 ** Subprocess features
7531 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7532 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7535 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7536 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7538 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7539 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7541 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7542 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7544 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7545 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7546 goes after the other menu items.
7548 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7549 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7550 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7553 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7554 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7556 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7557 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7560 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7561 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7562 but its hook is still run.
7564 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7565 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7567 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7568 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7569 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7571 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7572 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7573 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7576 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7577 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7579 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7580 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7581 functions like display-time.
7583 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7584 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7586 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7587 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7588 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7590 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7591 if there is an error in compilation.
7593 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7594 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7595 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7596 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7598 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7599 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7600 the *scratch* buffer.
7602 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7603 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7604 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7605 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7607 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7608 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7609 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7611 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7612 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7613 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7614 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7616 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7617 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7618 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7620 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7621 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7622 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7623 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7624 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7627 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7628 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7629 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7630 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7632 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7633 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7634 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7635 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7637 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7639 ** imenu.el changes.
7641 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7642 item from menu created by imenu.
7644 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7645 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7646 select one of those items.
7648 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7650 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7652 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7653 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7655 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7656 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7657 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7659 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7661 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7662 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7664 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7665 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7666 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7667 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7668 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7671 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7672 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7674 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7675 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7676 as in previous Emacs versions.
7678 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7679 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7680 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7683 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7684 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7685 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7686 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7689 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7690 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7691 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7692 line and then executing the macro.
7694 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7696 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7697 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7698 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7703 *** Font Lock support modes
7705 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7706 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7707 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7708 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7709 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7711 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7713 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7719 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7720 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7721 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7722 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7723 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7724 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7725 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7727 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7729 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7731 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7733 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7735 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7738 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7743 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7744 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7745 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7746 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7748 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7749 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7751 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7752 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7755 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7756 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7758 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7760 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7762 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7764 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7767 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7769 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7771 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7773 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7775 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7778 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7780 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7782 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7784 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7786 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7788 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7790 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7792 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7795 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7797 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7800 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7802 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7803 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7805 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7807 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7809 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7811 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7813 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7816 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7818 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7819 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7821 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7822 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7823 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7825 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7826 articles with the `*' command.
7828 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7830 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7832 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7834 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7836 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7837 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7839 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7842 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7844 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7846 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7848 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7850 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7852 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7854 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7856 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7858 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7860 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7861 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7863 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7866 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7868 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7869 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7871 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7873 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7875 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7877 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7880 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7882 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7884 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7885 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7887 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7889 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7891 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7893 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7895 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7897 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7900 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7902 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7903 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7904 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7907 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7910 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7913 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7914 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7917 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7918 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7919 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7920 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7921 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7924 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7926 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7928 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7929 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7930 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7931 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7932 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7934 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7935 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7936 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7938 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7940 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7941 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7942 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7943 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7944 chapter of the manual for details.
7946 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7947 customization variables take effect.
7949 ** Marking with the mouse.
7951 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7952 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7953 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7955 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7957 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7959 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7960 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7962 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7963 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7964 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7965 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7966 applications, these problems are significant.
7968 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7969 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7970 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7971 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7972 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7974 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7975 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7977 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7978 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7979 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7980 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7981 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7982 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7984 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7986 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7987 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7988 minibuffer contains.
7990 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7992 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7993 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7994 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7995 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7997 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7998 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7999 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8000 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8002 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8003 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8005 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8006 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8007 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8009 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8010 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8011 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8012 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8014 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8016 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8017 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8019 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8021 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8022 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8023 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8024 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8025 immediately after the selected one.
8027 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8028 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8030 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8032 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8033 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8034 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8035 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8038 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8039 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8042 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8043 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8044 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8045 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8046 now that the bug is fixed.
8048 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8050 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8051 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8052 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8053 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8055 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8056 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8057 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8058 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8060 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8061 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8062 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8064 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8065 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8066 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8067 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8070 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8071 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8073 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8074 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8075 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8076 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8078 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8079 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8080 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8081 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8082 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8083 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8085 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8086 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8087 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8088 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8090 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8091 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8092 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8094 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8095 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8096 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8097 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8098 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8099 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8100 to a limitation in font-lock).
8102 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8104 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8105 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8106 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8109 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8110 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8112 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8114 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8116 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8118 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8120 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8121 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8122 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8123 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8124 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8125 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8127 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8130 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8131 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8133 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8138 *** Global Font Lock mode
8140 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8141 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8142 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8143 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8144 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8146 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8148 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8152 *** Local Refontification
8154 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8155 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8156 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8157 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8159 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8160 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8161 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8162 above and below point.
8164 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8168 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8169 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8170 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8171 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8172 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8175 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8177 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8178 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8180 ** hide-show changes.
8182 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8183 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8186 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8187 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8189 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8190 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8191 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8195 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8196 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8198 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8199 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8201 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8203 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8204 pressing both mouse buttons.
8206 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8207 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8210 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8213 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8215 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8216 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8218 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8220 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8222 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8224 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8226 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8228 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8230 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8231 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8232 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8233 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8234 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8236 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8238 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8239 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8240 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8243 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8246 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8248 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8249 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8251 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8252 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8254 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8255 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8256 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8258 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8259 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8262 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8264 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8265 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8266 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8268 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8269 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8270 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8272 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8273 up if too much time passes.
8275 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8277 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8278 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8279 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8282 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8283 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8284 call looks like this:
8286 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8288 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8289 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8290 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8293 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8294 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8297 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8298 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8299 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8300 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8302 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8303 idle for SECS seconds.
8305 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8306 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8307 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8310 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8311 there is no answer within a certain time.
8313 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8315 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8316 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8317 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8319 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8320 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8321 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8322 arguments in between are ignored.
8324 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8325 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8327 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8328 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8329 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8330 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8333 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8334 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8335 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8336 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8337 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8338 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8340 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8341 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8342 systems with limited file name syntax.
8344 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8345 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8346 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8349 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8350 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8351 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8353 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8354 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8355 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8356 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8357 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8359 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8360 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8361 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8363 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8364 marker from its buffer position.
8366 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8367 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8368 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8370 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8371 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8372 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8373 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8374 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8375 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8377 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8378 errors that happen often during editing.
8380 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8381 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8382 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8384 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8385 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8387 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8388 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8389 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8390 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8391 and not get-buffer-window.
8393 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8394 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8395 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8397 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8398 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8399 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8400 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8401 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8402 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8403 over and over for the same text.
8405 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8407 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8408 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8410 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8413 in addition to the normal
8417 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8418 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8419 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8421 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
8423 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8424 Copyright information:
8426 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8428 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8429 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8430 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8431 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8433 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8434 of this document, or of portions of it,
8435 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8436 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8440 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"