code.delx.au - gnu-emacs/blob - etc/NEWS

   1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
   2
   3 Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
   5
   6 Please send Emacs bug reports to emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.
   7 If possible, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
   8
   9 This file is about changes in Emacs version 23.
  10
  11 See files NEWS.22, NEWS.21, NEWS.20, NEWS.19, NEWS.18, and NEWS.1-17
  12 for changes in older Emacs versions.
  13
  14 You can narrow news to a specific version by calling `view-emacs-news'
  15 with a prefix argument or by typing C-u C-h C-n.
  16
  17 Temporary note:
  18  +++ indicates that the appropriate manual has already been updated.
  19  --- means no change in the manuals is called for.
  20 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
  21 so we will look at it and add it to the manual.
  22
  23 \f
  24 * About external Lisp packages
  25
  26 \f
  27 * Installation Changes in Emacs 23.1
  28
  29 ** The default X toolkit is now Gtk+, rather than Lucid.
  30
  31 ** configure now checks for libgif before libungif when searching for
  32 a GIF library.
  33
  34 \f
  35 * Changes in Emacs 23.1
  36
  37 ** Emacs now supports the SVG image format through librsvg2.
  38
  39 ** If you set find-file-confirm-nonexistent-file to t, then C-x C-f
  40 requires confirmation before opening a non-existent file.
  41
  42 ** If the gpm mouse server is running and t-mouse-mode enabled, Emacs uses a
  43 Unix socket in a GNU/Linux console to talk to server, rather than faking events
  44 using the client program mev.  This C level approach provides mouse
  45 highlighting, and help echoing in the minibuffer.
  46
  47 ** The new variable next-error-recenter specifies how next-error should
  48 recenter the visited source file.  Its value can be a number (for example,
  49 0 for top line, -1 for bottom line), or nil for no recentering.
  50
  51 ** The mode-line display a `@' if the default-directory for the current buffer
  52 is on a remote machine, or a hyphen otherwise.
  53 ** The new command balance-window-area balances windows both vertically
  54 and horizontally.
  55
  56 ** The new command close-display-connection can be used to close a connection
  57 to a remote display, e.g. because the display is about to become unreachable.
  58 \f
  59 * Startup Changes in Emacs 23.1
  60
  61 ** New user option `initial-buffer-choice' specifies what to display
  62 after starting Emacs: startup screen, *scratch* buffer, visiting a
  63 file or directory.
  64
  65 \f
  66 * Incompatible Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1
  67
  68 \f
  69 * Editing Changes in Emacs 23.1
  70
  71 ** New command kill-matching-buffers kills buffers whose name matches a regexp.
  72
  73 ** Minibuffer changes:
  74
  75 *** isearch started in the minibuffer searches in the minibuffer history.
  76 Reverse isearch commands (C-r, C-M-r) search in previous minibuffer
  77 history elements, and forward isearch commands (C-s, C-M-s) search in
  78 next history elements.  When the reverse search reaches the first history
  79 element, it wraps to the last history element, and the forward search
  80 wraps to the first history element.  When the search is terminated, the
  81 history element containing the search string becomes the current.
  82
  83 \f
  84 * New Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1
  85
  86 ** minibuffer-indicate-depth-mode shows the minibuffer depth in the prompt.
  87
  88 \f
  89 * Changes in Specialized Modes and Packages in Emacs 23.1
  90
  91 ** compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error tells `compile' to jump to
  92 the first error encountered during compilations.
  93
  94 ** In the `copyright' package, you can specify your copyright holders's names.
  95 Only copyright lines with holders matching copyright-names-regexp will be
  96 considered for update.
  97
  98 ** VC
  99 *** Clicking on the VC mode-line entry now pops the VC menu.
 100
 101 *** The VC mode-line entry now has a tooltip.
 102
 103 *** VC backends can provide extra menu entries to be added to the "Version Control" menu.
 104 This can be used to add menu entries for backend specific functions.
 105
 106 ** sgml-electric-tag-pair-mode lets you simultaneously edit matched tag pairs.
 107
 108 ** BibTeX mode:
 109
 110 *** New `bibtex-entry-format' options `whitespace', `braces', and
 111 `string', disabled by default.
 112
 113 *** New variable `bibtex-cite-matcher-alist' contains rules to
 114 identify cited keys in BibTeX entries, used by `bibtex-find-crossref.
 115
 116 *** Command `bibtex-url' now allows multiple URLs per entry.
 117
 118 +++
 119 ** Tramp
 120
 121 *** New connection methods.
 122 The new methods "plinkx", "plink2", "psftp", "sftp" and "fish" have
 123 been introduced.  There are also new so-called gateway methods
 124 "tunnel" and "socks".
 125
 126 *** Multihop syntax has been removed.
 127 The pseudo-method "multi" has been removed.  Instead of, multi hops
 128 can be specified by the new variable `tramp-default-proxies-alist'.
 129
 130 *** More default settings.
 131 Default values can be set via the variables `tramp-default-user',
 132 `tramp-default-user-alist' and `tramp-default-host'.
 133
 134 *** Connection information is cached.
 135 In order to reduce connection setup, information about used
 136 connections are kept persistent in a file.  The name of this file is
 137 defined in the variable `tramp-persistency-file-name'.
 138
 139 *** Control of remote processes.
 140 Running processes on a remote host can be controlled by settings in
 141 `tramp-remote-path' and `tramp-remote-process-environment'.
 142
 143 *** Success of remote copy is checked.
 144 When the variable `file-precious-flag' is set, the success of a remote
 145 file copy is checked via the file's checksum.
 146
 147 ** Miscellaneous programming mode changes
 148
 149 *** The variable `fortran-line-length' can change the fixed-form line-length.
 150
 151 ** Miscellaneous
 152
 153 *** comint-mode uses `start-file-process' now (see Lisp Changes).
 154 If `default-directory' is a remote file name, subprocesses are started
 155 on the corresponding remote system.
 156
 157 *** C-x C-q in dired-mode now runs the command wdired-change-to-wdired-mode,
 158 and C-x C-q in wdired-mode exits it with asking a question about
 159 saving changes.
 160
 161 \f
 162 * Changes in Emacs 23.1 on non-free operating systems
 163
 164 ---
 165 ** IPv6 is supported on MS-Windows.
 166 Emacs now supports IPv6 on Windows XP and later, and earlier versions
 167 of Windows with third party IPv6 stacks installed. Previously IPv6 was
 168 supported on other platforms, but not on Windows due to using the winsock
 169 1.1 header file, even though Emacs was linking to the winsock 2 library.
 170
 171 \f
 172 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1
 173
 174 +++
 175 ** The function `dired-call-process' has been removed.
 176
 177 \f
 178 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 23.1
 179
 180 ** Non-breaking space now acts as whitespace.
 181
 182 +++
 183 ** In `condition-case', a handler can specify "let the debugger run first".
 184
 185 You do this by writing `debug' in the list of conditions to be handled,
 186 like this:
 187
 188     (condition-case nil
 189         (foo bar)
 190       ((debug error) nil))
 191
 192 ** The `require-match' argument to `completing-read' accepts a new value
 193 `confirm-only'.
 194
 195 +++
 196 ** The regexp form \(?<num>:<regexp>\) specifies the group number explicitly.
 197
 198 +++
 199 ** New variable `user-emacs-directory'.
 200 Use this instead of "~/.emacs.d".
 201
 202 +++
 203 ** The new function `start-file-process is similar to `start-process',
 204 but obeys file handlers.  The file handler is chosen based on
 205 `default-directory'.  The functions `start-file-process-shell-command'
 206 and `process-file-shell-command' are also new; they call internally
 207 `start-file-process and `process-file', respectively.
 208
 209 +++
 210 ** `file-remote-p' has new optional parameters IDENTIFICATION and CONNECTED.
 211 IDENTIFICATION specifies which part of the remote identifier has to be
 212 returned.  With CONNECTED passed non-nil, it is checked whether a
 213 remote connection has been established already.
 214
 215 ** The two new functions `looking-at-p' and `string-match-p' can do
 216 the same matching as `looking-at' and `string-match' without changing
 217 the match data.
 218
 219 ** The interactive-form of a function can be added post-facto via the
 220 `interactive-form' symbol property.  Mostly useful to add complex interactive
 221 forms to subroutines.
 222 \f
 223 * New Packages for Lisp Programming in Emacs 23.1
 224
 225 \f
 226 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 227 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
 228
 229 GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 230 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 231 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
 232 any later version.
 233
 234 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 235 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 236 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 237 GNU General Public License for more details.
 238
 239 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 240 along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
 241 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
 242 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
 243
 244 \f
 245 Local variables:
 246 mode: outline
 247 paragraph-separate: "[  \f]*$"
 248 end:
 249
 250 arch-tag: e759449d-88b3-4de4-9900-3a6c3dfa23e2