1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2001-03-15
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 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 See the INSTALL file for information on installing extra libraries and
12 fonts to take advantage of the new graphical features and extra
13 charsets in this release.
15 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
17 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
19 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
20 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
22 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
23 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
26 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
27 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
29 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
30 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
32 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
33 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
34 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions. Changes to
35 build on other 64-bit systems should be straightforward modulo any
36 necessary changes to unexec.
38 ** Note that the MS-Windows port does not yet implement various of the
39 new display features described below.
41 ** This version can be built for the Macintosh, but does not implement
42 all of the new display features described below. The port currently
43 lacks unexec, asynchronous processes, and networking support. See the
44 "Emacs and the Mac OS" appendix in the Emacs manual, for the
45 description of aspects specific to the Mac.
48 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
50 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
52 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
53 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
54 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
55 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
58 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
60 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
61 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
62 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
63 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
66 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
67 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
68 under Lisp changes, below.
70 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
72 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
73 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
74 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
75 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
76 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
77 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
80 The command-line options `-fg COLOR', `-bg COLOR', and `-rv' are now
81 supported on character terminals.
83 ** New default font is Courier 12pt under X.
86 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
88 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
89 longer than one line, Emacs can resize the minibuffer window unless it
90 is on a frame of its own. You can control resizing and the maximum
91 minibuffer window size by setting the following variables:
93 - User option: max-mini-window-height
95 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
96 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
97 specifies a number of lines.
101 - User option: resize-mini-windows
103 How to resize mini-windows. If nil, don't resize. If t, always
104 resize to fit the size of the text. If `grow-only', let mini-windows
105 grow only, until they become empty, at which point they are shrunk
108 Default is `grow-only'.
112 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see
113 <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will need version 0.92.26, or later.
115 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
117 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
118 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
121 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
123 Emacs now uses toolkit scroll bars if available. When configured for
124 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scroll bar. Otherwise, when
125 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
126 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
127 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
130 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
131 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
132 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
133 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
134 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
135 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
137 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
138 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
139 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
140 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
141 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
142 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
144 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
145 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
146 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
147 imake configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
148 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
151 ** Automatic Hscrolling
153 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
154 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
157 If a window is scrolled horizontally with set-window-hscroll, or
158 scroll-left/scroll-right (C-x <, C-x >), this serves as a lower bound
159 for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will scroll
160 the text more to the left if necessary, but won't scroll the text more
161 to the right than the column set with set-window-hscroll etc.
166 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
167 of how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level
168 changes. Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is
169 displayed and is on by default. The appearance of the bar is improved
170 if Emacs has been built with XPM image support. Otherwise monochrome
173 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
174 for specific modes (with copyright assignments). Contributions would
175 also be useful to touch up some of the PBM icons manually.
180 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
181 mouse position. The Lisp package `tooltip' implements them. You can
182 turn them off via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
184 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
185 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
186 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
187 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
190 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
191 of its own. By default, when a window is selected, the cursor is
192 solid; otherwise, it is hollow. The user-option
193 `cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to display the
194 cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is shown, if
195 non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown.
197 ** Fringes to the left and right of windows are used to display
198 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
199 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
200 customizing face `fringe'.
202 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default.
203 You can change its appearance by modifying the face `mode-line'.
204 In particular, setting the `:box' attribute to nil turns off the 3D
205 appearance of the mode line. (The 3D appearance makes the mode line
206 occupy more space, and thus might cause the first or the last line of
207 the window to be partially obscured.)
209 The variable `mode-line-inverse-video', which was used in older
210 versions of emacs to make the mode-line stand out, is now deprecated.
211 However, setting it to nil will cause the `mode-line' face to be
212 ignored, and mode-lines to be drawn using the default text face.
215 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
217 Different parts of the mode line have been made mouse-sensitive on all
218 systems which support the mouse. Moving the mouse to a
219 mouse-sensitive part in the mode line changes the appearance of the
220 mouse pointer to an arrow, and help about available mouse actions is
221 displayed either in the echo area, or in the tooltip window if you
224 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
226 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
229 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
230 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
232 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
234 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
235 `*') toggles the status.
237 - Mouse-3 on the mode name displays a minor-mode menu.
242 Emacs can optionally display an hourglass pointer under X. You can
243 turn the display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
248 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
249 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
250 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
254 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
256 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
257 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
258 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
261 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
262 have to do anything to activate it.
265 ** The default for user-option `next-line-add-newlines' has been
266 changed to nil, i.e. C-n will no longer add newlines at the end of a
269 ** The <home> and <end> keys now move to the beginning or end of the
270 current line, respectively. C-<home> and C-<end> move to the
271 beginning and end of the buffer.
273 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
274 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
277 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
278 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
281 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
282 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
285 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
286 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
289 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
291 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
292 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
293 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
295 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
296 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
297 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
299 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
303 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
305 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
306 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
307 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
308 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
309 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
313 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
314 all frames except the selected one.
316 ** The new user-option `confirm-kill-emacs' can be customized to
317 let Emacs ask for confirmation before exiting.
320 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
321 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
323 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs
324 header-line (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window),
325 so that it remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled.
326 This behavior may be disabled by customizing the option
327 `Info-use-header-line'.
330 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
331 mode `iswitchb-mode'.
334 ** Just loading the msb package doesn't switch on Msb mode anymore.
335 If you have `(require 'msb)' in your .emacs, please replace it with
338 ** Polish, Czech, German, and French translations of Emacs' reference card
339 have been added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex', `cs-refcard.tex',
340 `de-refcard.tex' and `fr-refcard.tex'. Postscript files are included.
342 ** An `Emacs Survival Guide', etc/survival.tex, is available.
344 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
345 `dired-ref.tex'. A French translation is available in
349 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
350 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
351 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
352 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
354 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable throuh Customize.
356 You can no longer use `M-x customize-variable' to customize `load-path'
357 because it now contains a version-dependent component. You can still
358 use `add-to-list' and `setq' to customize this variable in your
359 `~/.emacs' init file or to modify it from any Lisp program in general.
361 ** The new user-option `normal-erase-is-backspace' can be set to
362 determine the effect of the Delete and Backspace function keys.
364 On window systems, the default value of this option is chosen
365 according to the keyboard used. If the keyboard has both a Backspace
366 key and a Delete key, and both are mapped to their usual meanings, the
367 option's default value is set to t, so that Backspace can be used to
368 delete backward, and Delete can be used to delete forward. On
369 keyboards which either have only one key (usually labeled DEL), or two
370 keys DEL and BS which produce the same effect, the option's value is
371 set to nil, and these keys delete backward.
373 If not running under a window system, setting this option accomplishes
374 a similar effect by mapping C-h, which is usually generated by the
375 Backspace key, to DEL, and by mapping DEL to C-d via
376 `keyboard-translate'. The former functionality of C-h is available on
377 the F1 key. You should probably not use this setting on a text-only
378 terminal if you don't have both Backspace, Delete and F1 keys.
380 Programmatically, you can call function normal-erase-is-backspace-mode
381 to toggle the behavior of the Delete and Backspace keys.
384 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
385 point in a pop-up window.
388 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
389 under XFree86. To enable this, use the `mouse-wheel-mode' command, or
390 customize the variable `mouse-wheel-mode'.
392 The variables `mouse-wheel-follow-mouse' and `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
393 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
396 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
397 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
398 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
399 You can customize `auto-save-list-file-prefix' to change this location.
402 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
404 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
405 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
408 ** The environment variable `EMACSLOCKDIR' is no longer used on MS-Windows.
409 This environment variable was used when creating lock files. Emacs on
410 MS-Windows does not use this variable anymore. This change was made
411 before Emacs 21.1, but wasn't documented until now.
413 ** Flyspell mode has various new options. See the `flyspell' Custom
416 ** The user option `backward-delete-char-untabify-method' controls the
417 behavior of `backward-delete-char-untabify'. The following values
420 `untabify' -- turn a tab to many spaces, then delete one space;
421 `hungry' -- delete all whitespace, both tabs and spaces;
422 `all' -- delete all whitespace, including tabs, spaces and newlines;
423 nil -- just delete one character.
425 Default value is `untabify'.
427 [This change was made in Emacs 20.3 but not mentioned then.]
429 ** In Cperl mode `cperl-invalid-face' should now be a normal face
430 symbol, not double-quoted.
432 ** Some packages are declared obsolete, to be removed in a future
433 version. They are: auto-show, c-mode, hilit19, hscroll, ooutline,
434 rnews, rnewspost. Their implementations have been moved to
438 ** The new Custom option `keyboard-coding-system' specifies a coding
439 system for keyboard input.
442 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
443 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
446 ** The new command `msdos-set-mouse-buttons' forces Emacs to behave
447 as if the mouse had a specified number of buttons. This comes handy
448 with mice that don't report their number of buttons correctly. One
449 example is the wheeled mice, which report 3 buttons, but clicks on the
450 middle button are not passed to the MS-DOS version of Emacs.
452 ** The new command M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET will delete the
453 trailing whitespace within the current restriction. You can also add
454 this function to `write-file-hooks' or `local-write-file-hooks'.
456 ** When visiting a file with M-x find-file-literally, no newlines will
457 be added to the end of the buffer even if `require-final-newline' is
460 ** auto-compression mode is no longer enabled just by loading jka-compr.el.
461 To control it, set `auto-compression-mode' via Custom or use the
462 `auto-compression-mode' command.
464 ** `browse-url-gnome-moz' is a new option for
465 `browse-url-browser-function', invoking Mozilla in GNOME, and
466 `browse-url-kde' can be chosen for invoking the KDE browser.
468 ** The user-option `browse-url-new-window-p' has been renamed to
469 `browse-url-new-window-flag'.
472 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
473 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
476 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
477 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
482 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
483 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
484 internationalization and mail-fetching.
486 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
487 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
489 If you used procmail like in
491 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
492 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
493 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
494 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
496 this now has changed to
499 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
502 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
503 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
505 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
506 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
507 Separate MIME packages like RMIME, mime-compose etc., will probably no
508 longer work; remove them and use the native facilities.
510 The FLIM/SEMI package still works with Emacs 21, but if you want to
511 use the native facilities, you must remove any mailcap.el[c] that was
512 installed by FLIM/SEMI version 1.13 or earlier.
514 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
515 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables. There
516 are built-in facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is
517 now just a compatibility layer.
519 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
520 called to position point.
522 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
523 summary buffers and NOV files.
525 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
526 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
528 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
529 subtly different manner.
531 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
532 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
533 ever-changing layouts.
535 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
537 *** There is image support of various kinds and some sound support.
540 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
541 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
542 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
543 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
544 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
547 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
548 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
549 file that is already visited under a different name.
551 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
552 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
554 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
555 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
556 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
557 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
558 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
559 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
562 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
563 and displays information about that.
565 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
566 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
568 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
569 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
570 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
571 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
572 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
573 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
575 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
576 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
579 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
580 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
581 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
582 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
583 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
584 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
585 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
588 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
589 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
590 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
591 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
592 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
593 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
594 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
595 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
596 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
598 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
599 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
602 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
603 displays all characters in that character set.
605 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
606 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
609 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
610 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
611 defined in newcomment.el. You can choose different styles of region
612 commenting with the variable `comment-style'.
615 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
616 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
617 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
618 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
621 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
622 on the display using several methods
625 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
626 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
627 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
630 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
631 equivalent to specifying the frame parameter.
633 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
635 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
636 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
639 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
640 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
641 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
642 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
645 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
646 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
647 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
649 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
650 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
653 ** New X resources recognized
655 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
656 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
657 is useful for debugging X problems.
661 emacs.synchronous: true
663 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
664 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
665 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
666 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
667 visual class names are
676 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
677 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
680 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
681 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
682 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
687 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
689 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
690 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
691 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
692 resource values are `true' or `on'.
696 emacs.privateColormap: true
699 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
701 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
702 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
704 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
705 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
706 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
707 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
709 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
710 read mail from the menu etc.
713 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
714 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
716 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
718 *** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
722 -------------------------
728 C-c C-o @<block> ... @end <block>
731 *** The " key now inserts either " or `` or '' depending on context.
733 ** Changes in Outline mode.
735 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
736 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
737 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
739 ** Changes to Emacs Server
742 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
743 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
744 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
745 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
746 buffers to kill, as before.
748 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
749 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
752 ** Both emacsclient and Emacs itself now accept command line options
753 of the form +LINE:COLUMN in addition to +LINE.
755 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
757 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
758 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
759 use. Default is 1000.
762 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
763 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
766 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
767 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
768 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
771 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
772 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
773 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
775 ** Faces and frame parameters.
777 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
778 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
779 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
780 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
781 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
782 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
783 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
785 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
786 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
787 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
788 `default' face and vice versa.
793 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
796 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
798 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
799 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
800 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
801 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
803 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
804 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
805 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
807 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
810 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
812 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
813 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
814 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
815 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
817 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
820 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
822 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
824 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
827 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
832 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
833 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
834 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
837 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
838 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
839 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
840 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
841 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
842 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
844 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
847 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
849 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
850 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
851 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
854 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
855 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
857 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
858 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
859 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
862 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
864 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
865 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggressively' is a
866 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
867 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
869 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
870 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggressively' is a
871 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
872 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
874 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
875 notably at the end of lines.
877 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
878 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
881 ** The function `replace-rectangle' is an alias for `string-rectangle'.
883 ** The new command M-x string-insert-rectangle is like `string-rectangle',
884 but inserts text instead of replacing it.
886 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
887 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
888 after each match to get the replacement text.
891 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
892 you edit the replacement string.
894 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
895 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
896 lisp-complete-symbol.
898 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
900 ** Changes to hideshow.el
902 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
904 A block is now recognized by its start and end regexps (both strings),
905 and an integer specifying which sub-expression in the start regexp
906 serves as the place where a `forward-sexp'-like function can operate.
907 See the documentation of variable `hs-special-modes-alist'.
909 *** During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active,
910 hidden blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' can
911 be used in the mode line format to show the line at the beginning of
914 *** User option `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' specifies a
915 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead of
916 the normal block-hiding function.
918 *** The command `hs-show-region' has been removed.
920 *** The key bindings have changed to fit the Emacs conventions,
921 roughly imitating those of Outline minor mode. Notably, the prefix
922 for all bindings is now `C-c @'. For details, see the documentation
925 *** The variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' has been removed, and
926 hideshow.el now always behaves as if this variable were set to t.
928 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
931 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
932 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
933 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
936 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
940 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
944 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
945 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
946 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
947 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
948 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be customized.
949 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
951 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock highlighting.
953 ** Changes to cmuscheme
955 *** The user-option `scheme-program-name' has been renamed
956 `cmuscheme-program-name' due to conflicts with xscheme.el.
958 ** Changes in Font Lock
960 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
961 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major mode.
963 *** Multi-line patterns are now supported. Modes using this, should
964 set font-lock-multiline to t in their font-lock-defaults.
966 *** `font-lock-syntactic-face-function' allows major-modes to choose
967 the face used for each string/comment.
969 *** A new standard face `font-lock-doc-face'.
970 Meant for Lisp docstrings, Javadoc comments and other "documentation in code".
972 ** Changes to Shell mode
974 *** The `shell' command now accepts an optional argument to specify the buffer
975 to use, which defaults to "*shell*". When used interactively, a
976 non-default buffer may be specified by giving the `shell' command a
977 prefix argument (causing it to prompt for the buffer name).
979 ** Comint (subshell) changes
981 These changes generally affect all modes derived from comint mode, which
982 include shell-mode, gdb-mode, scheme-interaction-mode, etc.
984 *** Comint now by default interprets some carriage-control characters.
985 Comint now removes CRs from CR LF sequences, and treats single CRs and
986 BSs in the output in a way similar to a terminal (by deleting to the
987 beginning of the line, or deleting the previous character,
988 respectively). This is achieved by adding `comint-carriage-motion' to
989 the `comint-output-filter-functions' hook by default.
991 *** By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp'
992 to distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which
993 parts of the text were output by the process, and which entered by the
994 user, and attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use
995 this information. Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line,
996 respect field boundaries in a fairly natural manner. To disable this
997 feature, and use the old behavior, customize the user option
998 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields'.
1000 *** Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
1001 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
1003 *** The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
1004 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
1005 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
1007 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
1008 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
1009 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
1011 *** Packages based on comint now highlight user input and program prompts,
1012 and support choosing previous input with mouse-2. To control these features,
1013 see the user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
1015 *** The new command `comint-write-output' (usually bound to `C-c C-s')
1016 saves the output from the most recent command to a file. With a prefix
1017 argument, it appends to the file.
1019 *** The command `comint-kill-output' has been renamed `comint-delete-output'
1020 (usually bound to `C-c C-o'); the old name is aliased to it for
1023 *** The new function `comint-add-to-input-history' adds commands to the input
1026 *** The new variable `comint-input-history-ignore' is a regexp for
1027 identifying history lines that should be ignored, like tcsh time-stamp
1028 strings, starting with a `#'. The default value of this variable is "^#".
1030 ** Changes to Rmail mode
1032 *** The new user-option rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
1033 set to fine tune the identification of the correspondent when
1034 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
1035 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
1036 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
1039 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
1040 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
1041 regexp matching your mail addresses.
1043 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
1044 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
1045 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
1046 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
1047 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
1049 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
1052 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
1053 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
1056 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
1057 in which folder to put messages automatically.
1059 *** The new function `rmail-redecode-body' allows to fix a message
1060 with non-ASCII characters if Emacs happens to decode it incorrectly
1061 due to missing or malformed "charset=" header.
1063 ** The new user-option `mail-envelope-from' can be used to specify
1064 an envelope-from address different from user-mail-address.
1066 ** Changes to TeX mode
1068 *** The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
1071 *** latex-mode now has a simple indentation algorithm.
1073 *** M-f and M-p jump around \begin...\end pairs.
1075 *** Added support for outline-minor-mode.
1077 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
1079 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
1080 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
1081 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
1082 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
1083 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
1084 can be edited from that buffer.
1086 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
1087 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
1088 `A' to use all marked entries).
1090 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
1091 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
1093 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
1094 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
1095 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
1098 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
1099 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
1100 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
1101 in column 1 are always made leaves.
1103 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
1104 has the following new features:
1106 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
1107 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
1108 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
1109 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
1111 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
1112 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
1113 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
1114 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
1115 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
1118 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
1122 ** Customize changes
1124 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
1125 `State' menu to add comments, or give a prefix argument to
1126 M-x customize-set-variable or M-x customize-set-value. Note that
1127 customization comments will cause the customizations to fail in
1128 earlier versions of Emacs.
1130 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
1131 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
1134 *** If Emacs was invoked with the `-q' or `--no-init-file' options, it
1135 does not allow you to save customizations in your `~/.emacs' init
1136 file. This is because saving customizations from such a session would
1137 wipe out all the other customizationss you might have on your init
1140 ** New features in evaluation commands
1142 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
1143 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
1144 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the new
1145 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
1146 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
1148 The default values for the first two of these variables are 12 and 4
1149 respectively, which means that `eval-expression' now prints at most
1150 the first 12 members of a list and at most 4 nesting levels deep (if
1151 the list is longer or deeper than that, an ellipsis `...' is
1154 <RET> or <mouse-2> on the printed text toggles between an abbreviated
1155 printed representation and an unabbreviated one.
1157 The default value of eval-expression-debug-on-error is t, so any error
1158 during evaluation produces a backtrace.
1160 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
1161 code when called with a prefix argument.
1166 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
1167 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
1168 spell-checks the current buffer.
1171 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
1174 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
1175 correction is made and re-checked.
1177 *** An Italian, Portuguese, and Slovak dictionary definition has been added.
1179 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
1182 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
1185 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
1190 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
1191 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
1192 is, delete only empty directories.
1194 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
1195 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
1196 copy directories recursively.
1198 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
1199 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
1200 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
1202 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
1203 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
1206 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
1207 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
1208 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
1209 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
1210 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
1212 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
1215 *** Dired commands that prompt for a destination file now allow the use
1216 of the `M-n' command in the minibuffer to insert the source filename,
1217 which the user can then edit. This only works if there is a single
1218 source file, not when operating on multiple marked files.
1220 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
1221 use the -f option when sending mail.
1225 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
1226 current user setups (although it's believed that these
1227 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
1228 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
1229 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
1230 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
1233 *** The hardcoded switch to "java" style in Java mode is gone.
1234 CC Mode used to automatically set the style to "java" when Java mode
1235 is entered. This has now been removed since it caused too much
1238 However, to keep backward compatibility to a certain extent, the
1239 default value for c-default-style now specifies the "java" style for
1240 java-mode, but "gnu" for all other modes (as before). So you won't
1241 notice the change if you haven't touched that variable.
1243 *** New cleanups, space-before-funcall and compact-empty-funcall.
1244 Two new cleanups have been added to c-cleanup-list:
1246 space-before-funcall causes a space to be inserted before the opening
1247 parenthesis of a function call, which gives the style "foo (bar)".
1249 compact-empty-funcall causes any space before a function call opening
1250 parenthesis to be removed if there are no arguments to the function.
1251 It's typically useful together with space-before-funcall to get the
1252 style "foo (bar)" and "foo()".
1254 *** Some keywords now automatically trigger reindentation.
1255 Keywords like "else", "while", "catch" and "finally" have been made
1256 "electric" to make them reindent automatically when they continue an
1257 earlier statement. An example:
1259 for (i = 0; i < 17; i++)
1261 res += a[i]->offset;
1264 Here, the "else" should be indented like the preceding "if", since it
1265 continues that statement. CC Mode will automatically reindent it after
1266 the "else" has been typed in full, since it's not until then it's
1267 possible to decide whether it's a new statement or a continuation of
1270 CC Mode uses Abbrev mode to achieve this, which is therefore turned on
1273 *** M-a and M-e now moves by sentence in multiline strings.
1274 Previously these two keys only moved by sentence in comments, which
1275 meant that sentence movement didn't work in strings containing
1276 documentation or other natural language text.
1278 The reason it's only activated in multiline strings (i.e. strings that
1279 contain a newline, even when escaped by a '\') is to avoid stopping in
1280 the short strings that often reside inside statements. Multiline
1281 strings almost always contain text in a natural language, as opposed
1282 to other strings that typically contain format specifications,
1283 commands, etc. Also, it's not that bothersome that M-a and M-e misses
1284 sentences in single line strings, since they're short anyway.
1286 *** Support for autodoc comments in Pike mode.
1287 Autodoc comments for Pike are used to extract documentation from the
1288 source, like Javadoc in Java. Pike mode now recognize this markup in
1289 comment prefixes and paragraph starts.
1291 *** The comment prefix regexps on c-comment-prefix may be mode specific.
1292 When c-comment-prefix is an association list, it specifies the comment
1293 line prefix on a per-mode basis, like c-default-style does. This
1294 change came about to support the special autodoc comment prefix in
1297 *** Better handling of syntactic errors.
1298 The recovery after unbalanced parens earlier in the buffer has been
1299 improved; CC Mode now reports them by dinging and giving a message
1300 stating the offending line, but still recovers and indent the
1301 following lines in a sane way (most of the time). An "else" with no
1302 matching "if" is handled similarly. If an error is discovered while
1303 indenting a region, the whole region is still indented and the error
1304 is reported afterwards.
1306 *** Lineup functions may now return absolute columns.
1307 A lineup function can give an absolute column to indent the line to by
1308 returning a vector with the desired column as the first element.
1310 *** More robust and warning-free byte compilation.
1311 Although this is strictly not a user visible change (well, depending
1312 on the view of a user), it's still worth mentioning that CC Mode now
1313 can be compiled in the standard ways without causing trouble. Some
1314 code have also been moved between the subpackages to enhance the
1315 modularity somewhat. Thanks to Martin Buchholz for doing the
1318 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
1319 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
1320 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
1321 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
1322 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
1325 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
1326 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
1327 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
1328 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
1329 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
1330 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
1332 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
1333 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
1334 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
1335 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
1336 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
1337 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
1338 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
1339 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
1341 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
1342 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
1343 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
1344 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
1347 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
1348 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
1349 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
1350 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
1351 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
1352 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
1353 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
1354 function documentation for more info.
1356 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
1357 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
1358 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
1359 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
1360 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
1361 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
1362 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
1363 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
1365 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
1367 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
1368 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
1370 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
1371 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
1372 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
1373 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
1374 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
1377 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
1378 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
1379 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
1382 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
1383 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
1384 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
1385 chapter about this in the manual.
1387 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
1388 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
1389 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
1390 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
1391 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
1393 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
1394 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
1395 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
1397 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
1398 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
1400 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
1401 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
1402 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
1405 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
1406 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
1407 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
1408 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
1411 **** The variables `c-hanging-comment-starter-p' and
1412 `c-hanging-comment-ender-p', which controlled how comment starters and
1413 enders were filled, are not used anymore. The new version of the
1414 function `c-fill-paragraph' keeps the comment starters and enders as
1415 they were before the filling.
1417 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
1418 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
1419 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
1422 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
1423 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
1424 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
1425 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1428 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1429 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1430 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1431 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1432 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1434 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1435 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1436 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1438 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1440 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1441 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1442 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1443 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1445 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1446 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1447 the column specified by comment-column.
1449 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1450 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1451 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1452 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1453 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1454 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1456 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1457 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1460 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1462 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1463 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1464 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1465 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1468 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1470 ** Makefile mode changes
1472 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1474 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1475 Fontlock mode is active.
1479 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1480 so that searches can be resumed.
1482 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1483 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1484 that started the search.
1486 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1487 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1490 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1492 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1493 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1494 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1495 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1496 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1497 `secondary-selection'.
1499 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1500 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1501 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1502 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1503 usual snappy response.
1505 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1506 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1507 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1508 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1511 ** Changes in sort.el
1513 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1514 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1515 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
1518 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1521 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1522 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1523 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1525 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1526 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1528 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1529 output ^M at the end of lines.
1531 ** Shell script mode changes.
1533 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1534 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizable, and
1535 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1539 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1541 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1542 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1543 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1544 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1545 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1547 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1548 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1550 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1551 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1553 *** You shouldn't generally need any more the -C or -c++ option: etags
1554 automatically switches to C++ parsing when it meets the `class' or
1555 `template' keywords.
1557 *** Etags now is able to delve at arbitrary deeps into nested structures in
1558 C-like languages. Previously, it was limited to one or two brace levels.
1560 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1563 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1565 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1567 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1570 *** In makefiles, tags the targets.
1572 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1573 variables are tagged.
1575 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1577 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1581 ** Changes in etags.el
1583 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1584 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1585 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1587 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1588 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1590 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1591 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1592 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1593 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1595 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1597 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1598 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1600 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1602 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1603 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1604 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1606 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1607 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1609 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1610 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1612 *** You can now search for tags that are part of the filename itself.
1613 If you have tagged the files topfile.c subdir/subfile.c
1614 /tmp/tempfile.c, you can now search for tags "topfile.c", "subfile.c",
1615 "dir/sub", "tempfile", "tempfile.c". If the tag matches the file name,
1616 point will go to the beginning of the file.
1618 *** Compressed files are now transparently supported if
1619 auto-compression-mode is active. You can tag (with Etags) and search
1620 (with find-tag) both compressed and uncompressed files.
1622 *** Tags commands like M-x tags-search no longer change point
1623 in buffers where no match is found. In buffers where a match is
1624 found, the original value of point is pushed on the marker ring.
1627 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1628 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1629 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1632 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1633 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1634 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1635 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet but recent X releases have
1636 8859-15. See etc/INSTALL for information on obtaining extra fonts.
1637 There are new Leim input methods for Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix (only)
1641 ** New language environments `Dutch' and `Spanish'.
1642 These new environments mainly select appropriate translations
1645 ** In Ethiopic language environment, special key bindings for
1646 function keys are changed as follows. This is to conform to "Emacs
1647 Lisp Coding Convention".
1649 new command old-binding
1650 --- ------- -----------
1651 f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-buffer f5
1652 S-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-region f5
1653 C-f3 ethio-fidel-to-sera-mail-or-marker f5
1655 f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-buffer unchanged
1656 S-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-region unchanged
1657 C-f4 ethio-sera-to-fidel-mail-or-marker unchanged
1659 S-f5 ethio-toggle-punctuation f3
1660 S-f6 ethio-modify-vowel f6
1661 S-f7 ethio-replace-space f7
1662 S-f8 ethio-input-special-character f8
1663 S-f9 ethio-replace-space unchanged
1664 C-f9 ethio-toggle-space f2
1666 ** The rule of input method "slovak" is slightly changed. Now the
1667 rules for translating "q" and "Q" to "`" (backquote) are deleted, thus
1668 typing them inserts "q" and "Q" respectively. Rules for translating
1669 "=q", "+q", "=Q", and "+Q" to "`" are also deleted. Now, to input
1670 "`", you must type "=q".
1673 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1674 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1675 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1677 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1680 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1683 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
1684 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1685 expression from that list, are not checked.
1687 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1688 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1689 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1690 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1692 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1695 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
1696 displays local abbrevs, only.
1700 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
1701 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
1702 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
1703 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
1704 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
1705 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of symbols that identify
1706 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
1707 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
1708 file is registered in that backend.
1710 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
1711 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
1712 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
1713 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
1714 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
1715 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
1717 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
1718 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
1719 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
1720 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
1721 where it doesn't make sense.)
1723 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
1724 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
1725 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
1729 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
1730 checks are always done now.
1732 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
1735 `vc-diff' output is now displayed in `diff-mode'.
1736 `vc-print-log' uses `log-view-mode'.
1737 `vc-log-mode' (used for *VC-Log*) has been replaced by `log-edit-mode'.
1739 The command C-x v m (vc-merge) now accepts an empty argument as the
1740 first revision number. This means that any recent changes on the
1741 current branch should be picked up from the repository and merged into
1742 the working file (``merge news'').
1744 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1745 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) now ask for a directory name from which to work
1748 *** Multiple Backends
1750 VC now lets you register files in more than one backend. This is
1751 useful, for example, if you are working with a slow remote CVS
1752 repository. You can then use RCS for local editing, and occasionally
1753 commit your changes back to CVS, or pick up changes from CVS into your
1756 To make this work, the ``more local'' backend (RCS in our example)
1757 should come first in `vc-handled-backends', and the ``more remote''
1758 backend (CVS) should come later. (The default value of
1759 `vc-handled-backends' already has it that way.)
1761 You can then commit changes to another backend (say, RCS), by typing
1762 C-u C-x v v RCS RET (i.e. vc-next-action now accepts a backend name as
1763 a revision number). VC registers the file in the more local backend
1764 if that hasn't already happened, and commits to a branch based on the
1765 current revision number from the more remote backend.
1767 If a file is registered in multiple backends, you can switch to
1768 another one using C-x v b (vc-switch-backend). This does not change
1769 any files, it only changes VC's perspective on the file. Use this to
1770 pick up changes from CVS while working under RCS locally.
1772 After you are done with your local RCS editing, you can commit your
1773 changes back to CVS using C-u C-x v v CVS RET. In this case, the
1774 local RCS archive is removed after the commit, and the log entry
1775 buffer is initialized to contain the entire RCS change log of the file.
1779 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
1780 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
1781 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
1782 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
1783 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
1784 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
1785 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
1787 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, then VC also makes local backups of
1788 repository versions. This means that ordinary diffs (C-x v =) and
1789 revert operations (C-x v u) can be done completely locally, without
1790 any repository interactions at all. The name of a local version
1791 backup of FILE is FILE.~REV.~, where REV is the repository version
1792 number. This format is similar to that used by C-x v ~
1793 (vc-version-other-window), except for the trailing dot. As a matter
1794 of fact, the two features can each use the files created by the other,
1795 the only difference being that files with a trailing `.' are deleted
1796 automatically after commit. (This feature doesn't work on MS-DOS,
1797 since DOS disallows more than a single dot in the trunk of a file
1800 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
1801 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
1802 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
1803 commit, you can either use C-x v m RET to perform an update on the
1804 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
1805 entire directory tree.
1807 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
1808 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
1809 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
1810 "watched" by other developers.)
1812 The commands C-x v s (vc-create-snapshot) and C-x v r
1813 (vc-retrieve-snapshot) are now also implemented for CVS. If you give
1814 an empty snapshot name to the latter, that performs a `cvs update',
1815 starting at the given directory.
1817 *** Lisp Changes in VC
1819 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
1820 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
1821 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
1822 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
1823 a version system named SYS, you write a library named vc-sys.el, which
1824 provides a number of functions vc-sys-... (see commentary at the top
1825 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
1826 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the symbol
1827 `SYS' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
1829 ** The customizable EDT emulation package now supports the EDT
1830 SUBS command and EDT scroll margins. It also works with more
1831 terminal/keyboard configurations and it now works under XEmacs.
1832 See etc/edt-user.doc for more information.
1834 ** New modes and packages
1836 *** The new global minor mode `minibuffer-electric-default-mode'
1837 automatically hides the `(default ...)' part of minibuffer prompts when
1838 the default is not applicable.
1840 *** Artist is an Emacs lisp package that allows you to draw lines,
1841 rectangles and ellipses by using your mouse and/or keyboard. The
1842 shapes are made up with the ascii characters |, -, / and \.
1846 - Intersecting: When a `|' intersects with a `-', a `+' is
1847 drawn, like this: | \ /
1851 - Rubber-banding: When drawing lines you can interactively see the
1852 result while holding the mouse button down and moving the mouse. If
1853 your machine is not fast enough (a 386 is a bit too slow, but a
1854 pentium is well enough), you can turn this feature off. You will
1855 then see 1's and 2's which mark the 1st and 2nd endpoint of the line
1858 - Arrows: After having drawn a (straight) line or a (straight)
1859 poly-line, you can set arrows on the line-ends by typing < or >.
1861 - Flood-filling: You can fill any area with a certain character by
1864 - Cut copy and paste: You can cut, copy and paste rectangular
1865 regions. Artist also interfaces with the rect package (this can be
1866 turned off if it causes you any trouble) so anything you cut in
1867 artist can be yanked with C-x r y and vice versa.
1869 - Drawing with keys: Everything you can do with the mouse, you can
1870 also do without the mouse.
1872 - Aspect-ratio: You can set the variable artist-aspect-ratio to
1873 reflect the height-width ratio for the font you are using. Squares
1874 and circles are then drawn square/round. Note, that once your
1875 ascii-file is shown with font with a different height-width ratio,
1876 the squares won't be square and the circles won't be round.
1878 - Drawing operations: The following drawing operations are implemented:
1880 lines straight-lines
1882 poly-lines straight poly-lines
1884 text (see-thru) text (overwrite)
1885 spray-can setting size for spraying
1886 vaporize line vaporize lines
1887 erase characters erase rectangles
1889 Straight lines are lines that go horizontally, vertically or
1890 diagonally. Plain lines go in any direction. The operations in
1891 the right column are accessed by holding down the shift key while
1894 It is possible to vaporize (erase) entire lines and connected lines
1895 (rectangles for example) as long as the lines being vaporized are
1896 straight and connected at their endpoints. Vaporizing is inspired
1897 by the drawrect package by Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>.
1899 - Picture mode compatibility: Artist is picture mode compatible (this
1903 *** The new package Eshell is an operating system command shell
1904 implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp. Use `M-x eshell' to invoke it.
1905 It functions similarly to bash and zsh, and allows running of Lisp
1906 functions and external commands using the same syntax. It supports
1907 history lists, aliases, extended globbing, smart scrolling, etc. It
1908 will work on any platform Emacs has been ported to. And since most of
1909 the basic commands -- ls, rm, mv, cp, ln, du, cat, etc. -- have been
1910 rewritten in Lisp, it offers an operating-system independent shell,
1911 all within the scope of your Emacs process.
1914 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1915 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1916 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1917 on certain projects.
1920 *** The new package hi-lock.el provides commands to highlight matches
1921 of interactively entered regexps. For example,
1923 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1925 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1926 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1927 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1928 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1929 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1930 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1931 corresponding file is read. There are commands to highlight matches
1932 to phrases and to highlight entire lines containing a match.
1935 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1939 *** The new package tildify.el allows to add hard spaces or other text
1940 fragments in accordance with the current major mode.
1942 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1943 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1945 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1946 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1947 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1948 `comment-region' now doesn't always comment a-line-at-a-time, but only
1949 comments the region, breaking the line at point if necessary.
1952 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1953 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1954 separate Texinfo file.
1957 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1958 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1959 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1960 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1961 enter check-in log messages.
1964 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1965 without invoking external programs.
1967 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1968 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1969 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1970 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1971 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1973 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1974 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1977 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1978 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1980 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1981 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1982 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1983 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1984 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1987 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1988 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1989 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1990 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1993 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1994 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1995 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1997 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
2000 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
2002 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
2004 ; comment (until end of line)
2008 $A default non-terminal
2009 $"C" default terminal
2010 $?C? default special
2011 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
2012 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
2013 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
2014 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
2015 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
2016 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
2017 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
2018 C+ one or more occurrences of C
2019 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
2020 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
2021 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
2022 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
2023 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
2024 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
2025 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
2027 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
2029 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
2030 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
2031 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
2032 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
2033 equal signs of assignments.
2036 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
2037 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
2040 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
2041 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
2042 buffer menu with this package. See the Custom group `bs'.
2044 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
2046 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
2047 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
2048 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
2049 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
2050 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
2051 which answers different needs.
2054 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
2055 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
2056 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
2057 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
2058 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
2062 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
2063 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
2066 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
2069 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
2071 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
2073 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-comint-mode' and
2074 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
2075 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
2076 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
2077 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
2078 and background colors.
2080 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
2084 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
2087 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
2090 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
2092 *** whitespace.el is a package for warning about and cleaning bogus
2093 whitespace in a file.
2095 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
2096 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
2097 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
2098 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
2099 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
2100 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
2101 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
2103 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
2105 Here is an example of columns:
2108 dog pineapple car EXTRA
2109 porcupine strawberry airplane
2111 Doing the following settings:
2113 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
2114 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
2115 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
2116 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
2119 Selecting the lines above and typing:
2121 M-x delimit-columns-region
2125 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
2126 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
2127 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
2129 delim-col has the following options:
2131 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
2134 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
2135 between each column.
2137 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
2140 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
2143 delim-col has the following commands:
2145 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
2146 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
2149 *** Recentf mode maintains a menu for visiting files that were
2150 operated on recently. User option recentf-menu-filter specifies a
2151 menu filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the
2152 recent file list can be displayed:
2154 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
2155 - sorted by file paths, file names, ascending or descending.
2156 - showing paths relative to the current default-directory
2158 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
2159 dynamically change the menu appearance.
2161 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
2165 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
2166 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
2167 specific to Message mode.
2170 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
2171 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
2172 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
2174 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
2175 interface to access directory servers using different directory
2176 protocols. It has a separate manual.
2178 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
2179 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
2182 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
2184 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
2185 minibuffer with completion.
2187 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
2188 with the diary features.
2190 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
2191 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
2193 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
2196 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
2199 *** pcomplete.el is a library that provides programmable completion
2200 facilities for Emacs, similar to what zsh and tcsh offer. The main
2201 difference is that completion functions are written in Lisp, meaning
2202 they can be profiled, debugged, etc.
2204 *** antlr-mode is a new major mode for editing ANTLR grammar files.
2205 It is automatically turned on for files whose names have the extension
2209 ** Refill minor mode provides preliminary support for keeping
2210 paragraphs filled as you modify them.
2212 ** The variable `double-click-fuzz' specifies how much the mouse
2213 may be moved between clicks that are recognized as a pair. Its value
2214 is measured in pixels.
2217 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
2218 to be visited as images.
2220 ** Withdrawn packages
2222 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
2223 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
2225 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
2227 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
2230 * Incompatible Lisp changes
2232 There are a few Lisp changes which are not backwards-compatible and
2233 may require changes to existing code. Here is a list for reference.
2234 See the sections below for details.
2236 ** Since `format' preserves text properties, the idiom
2237 `(format "%s" foo)' no longer works to copy and remove properties.
2238 Use `copy-sequence' and `set-text-properties'.
2240 ** Since the `keymap' text property now has significance, some code
2241 which uses both `local-map' and `keymap' properties (for portability)
2242 may, for instance, give rise to duplicate menus when the keymaps from
2243 these properties are active.
2245 ** The change in the treatment of non-ASCII characters in search
2246 ranges may affect some code.
2248 ** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
2249 buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
2250 make a difference to some code.
2252 ** The new treatment of the minibuffer prompt might affect code which
2253 operates on the minibuffer.
2255 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
2256 cause `no-conversion' and `emacs-mule-unix' coding systems to produce
2257 different results when reading files with non-ASCII characters
2258 (previously, both coding systems would produce the same results).
2259 Specifically, `no-conversion' interprets each 8-bit byte as a separate
2260 character. This makes `no-conversion' inappropriate for reading
2261 multibyte text, e.g. buffers written to disk in their internal MULE
2262 encoding (auto-saving does that, for example). If a Lisp program
2263 reads such files with `no-conversion', each byte of the multibyte
2264 sequence, including the MULE leading codes such as \201, is treated as
2265 a separate character, which prevents them from being interpreted in
2266 the buffer as multibyte characters.
2268 Therefore, Lisp programs that read files which contain the internal
2269 MULE encoding should use `emacs-mule-unix'. `no-conversion' is only
2270 appropriate for reading truly binary files.
2272 ** Code that relies on the obsolete `before-change-function' and
2273 `after-change-function' to detect buffer changes will now fail. Use
2274 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions' instead.
2276 ** Code that uses `concat' with integer args now gets an error, as
2279 ** The function base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte
2282 ** Not a Lisp incompatibility as such but, with the introduction of
2283 extra private charsets, there is now only one slot free for a new
2284 dimension-2 private charset. User code which tries to add more than
2285 one extra will fail unless you rebuild Emacs with some standard
2286 charset(s) removed; that is probably inadvisable because it changes
2287 the emacs-mule encoding. Also, files stored in the emacs-mule
2288 encoding using Emacs 20 with additional private charsets defined will
2289 probably not be read correctly by Emacs 21.
2291 ** The variable `directory-sep-char' is slated for removal.
2292 Not really a change (yet), but a projected one that you should be
2293 aware of: The variable `directory-sep-char' is deprecated, and should
2294 not be used. It was always ignored on GNU/Linux and Unix systems and
2295 on MS-DOS, but the MS-Windows port tried to support it by adapting the
2296 behavior of certain primitives to the value of this variable. It
2297 turned out that such support cannot be reliable, so it was decided to
2298 remove this variable in the near future. Lisp programs are well
2299 advised not to set it to anything but '/', because any different value
2300 will not have any effect when support for this variable is removed.
2303 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
2304 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
2306 ** The new function amimate-string, from lisp/play/animate.el
2307 allows the animated display of strings.
2309 ** The new function `interactive-form' can be used to obtain the
2310 interactive form of a function.
2312 ** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
2313 between custom options. Example:
2315 (defcustom default-input-method nil
2316 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
2317 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
2318 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
2320 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
2321 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
2323 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
2324 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
2325 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
2327 ** The new hook `kbd-macro-termination-hook' is run at the end of
2328 function execute-kbd-macro. Functions on this hook are called with no
2329 args. The hook is run independent of how the macro was terminated
2330 (signal or normal termination).
2333 ** Functions `butlast' and `nbutlast' for removing trailing elements
2334 from a list are now available without requiring the CL package.
2337 ** The new user-option `even-window-heights' can be set to nil
2338 to prevent `display-buffer' from evening out window heights.
2341 ** The user-option `face-font-registry-alternatives' specifies
2342 alternative font registry names to try when looking for a font.
2344 ** Function `md5' calculates the MD5 "message digest"/"checksum".
2347 ** Function `delete-frame' runs `delete-frame-hook' before actually
2348 deleting the frame. The hook is called with one arg, the frame
2352 ** `add-hook' now makes the hook local if called with a non-nil LOCAL arg.
2355 ** The treatment of non-ASCII characters in search ranges has changed.
2356 If a range in a regular expression or the arg of
2357 skip-chars-forward/backward starts with a unibyte character C and ends
2358 with a multibyte character C2, the range is divided into two: one is
2359 C..?\377, the other is C1..C2, where C1 is the first character of C2's
2363 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
2364 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
2367 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
2368 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
2371 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
2372 with the more general `:mask' property.
2375 ** Image specifications accept more `:conversion's.
2377 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
2381 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
2382 is running in batch mode. For example,
2384 (message "%s" (read t))
2386 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
2390 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
2391 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
2393 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
2394 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
2398 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
2401 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
2403 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurrences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
2404 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
2406 - Function: remq ELT LIST
2408 Return a copy of LIST with all occurrences of ELT removed. The
2409 comparison is done with `eq'.
2412 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
2414 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
2418 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
2419 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
2420 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
2423 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
2424 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
2426 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
2427 function was declared obsolete.
2430 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
2431 retained as an alias).
2433 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
2434 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
2435 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
2437 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
2439 - Function: window-list &optional FRAME WINDOW MINIBUF
2441 Return a list of windows on FRAME, starting with WINDOW. FRAME nil or
2442 omitted means use the selected frame. WINDOW nil or omitted means use
2443 the selected window. MINIBUF t means include the minibuffer window,
2444 even if it isn't active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means include the
2445 minibuffer window only if it's active. MINIBUF neither nil nor t
2446 means never include the minibuffer window.
2448 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
2450 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
2452 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
2454 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
2455 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
2456 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
2457 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
2460 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
2461 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
2462 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
2463 minibuffer even if it is active.
2465 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
2466 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
2467 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
2468 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
2469 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
2470 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
2472 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
2473 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
2474 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
2475 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
2476 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
2477 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
2478 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
2480 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
2481 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
2482 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
2484 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
2485 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
2486 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
2487 Default value is nil.
2490 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
2494 ** The new user option `line-number-display-limit-width' controls
2495 the maximum width of lines in a buffer for which Emacs displays line
2496 numbers in the mode line. The default is 200.
2498 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
2499 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
2500 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
2503 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information about the argument
2504 list of a primitive.
2506 ** `where-is-internal' now also accepts a list of keymaps.
2509 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
2510 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
2511 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
2512 than replacing the local map.
2514 ** The obsolete variables `before-change-function' and
2515 `after-change-function' are no longer acted upon and have been
2516 removed. Use `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions'
2519 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
2522 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments,
2523 as promised long ago.
2525 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
2527 ** The new variable auto-coding-regexp-alist specifies coding systems
2528 for reading specific files, analogous to auto-coding-alist, but
2529 patterns are checked against file contents instead of file names.
2532 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
2534 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2535 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2536 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2537 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2539 *** The features `md5' and `overlay' are now provided by default.
2541 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
2542 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
2543 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
2544 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
2546 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
2547 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
2548 when they find 8-bit characters. Previously, they included `ascii' in a
2549 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
2551 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
2552 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
2553 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
2555 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
2556 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
2557 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
2558 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
2559 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
2560 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
2561 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
2564 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
2566 A fontset can now be specified for each independent character, for
2567 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
2568 character set as previously.
2570 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
2571 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
2572 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
2574 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
2575 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
2576 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
2577 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
2579 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
2580 name of a font and REGISTRY is a registry name of a font.
2582 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
2583 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
2586 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
2587 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
2589 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
2590 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
2591 buffers and strings.
2593 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
2594 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
2595 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
2596 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
2597 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
2598 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
2599 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
2602 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
2603 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
2604 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
2606 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
2607 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
2608 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
2609 may differ between buffer and string text.
2611 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
2612 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
2614 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
2615 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
2616 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
2617 `composition' from STRING.
2619 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
2620 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
2622 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
2625 ** The new coding system `mac-roman' is primarily intended for use on
2626 the Macintosh but may be used generally for Macintosh-encoded text.
2628 ** The new character sets `mule-unicode-0100-24ff',
2629 `mule-unicode-2500-33ff', and `mule-unicode-e000-ffff' have been
2630 introduced for Unicode characters in the range U+0100..U+24FF,
2631 U+2500..U+33FF, U+E000..U+FFFF respectively.
2633 Note that the character sets are not yet unified in Emacs, so
2634 characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
2635 etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
2636 different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
2637 which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
2638 encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system.
2640 ** The new coding system `mule-utf-8' has been added.
2641 It provides limited support for decoding/encoding UTF-8 text. For
2642 details, please see the documentation string of this coding system.
2644 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
2645 `japanese-jisx0213-2' have been introduced for the new Japanese
2646 standard JIS X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
2648 ** The new character sets `latin-iso8859-14' and `latin-iso8859-15'
2649 have been introduced.
2652 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
2653 have been introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
2654 0xA0..0xFF respectively. Note that the multibyte representation of
2655 eight-bit-control is never exposed; this leads to an exception in the
2656 emacs-mule coding system, which encodes everything else to the
2657 buffer/string internal representation. Note that to search for
2658 eight-bit-graphic characters in a multibyte buffer, the search string
2659 must be multibyte, otherwise such characters will be converted to
2660 their multibyte equivalent.
2663 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
2664 that offset in the file before writing.
2666 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
2667 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
2669 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
2670 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
2671 from which the command was issued.
2673 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
2674 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
2675 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
2676 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
2679 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
2680 to `window-buffer-height'.
2682 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
2684 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
2685 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
2686 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
2688 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
2691 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optional third argument
2692 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
2694 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
2695 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
2696 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
2698 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
2699 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
2700 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
2701 is currently displayed in some window.
2703 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
2704 argument function's results.
2706 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
2707 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails. Also,
2708 base64-decode-string now always returns a unibyte string (in Emacs 20,
2709 it returned a multibyte string when the result was a valid multibyte
2712 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
2713 header in the list of headers passed to it.
2715 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
2716 ignores differences in case and text representation.
2718 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
2719 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
2722 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
2723 nil don't display a cursor
2724 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
2725 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
2726 others display a box cursor.
2728 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
2729 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
2730 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
2731 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
2733 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
2734 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
2735 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
2736 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
2740 (string-to-syntax "()")
2743 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
2746 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
2747 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
2754 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
2759 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
2764 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
2771 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
2772 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
2775 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
2776 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
2777 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
2778 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
2781 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
2783 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
2784 for a regexp in a string.
2786 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
2787 `mouse-position-function'.
2789 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
2790 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
2792 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
2793 Keywords are now always considered constants.
2796 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
2799 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
2800 returned by function `recent-keys'.
2803 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
2804 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
2805 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
2806 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
2810 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
2811 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
2814 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
2815 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
2816 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
2817 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
2820 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
2821 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
2822 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
2823 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
2826 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
2827 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
2828 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
2831 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
2832 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
2835 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
2837 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
2838 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
2839 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
2843 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
2844 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
2845 Also back-references like \2 are now considered as an error if the
2846 corresponding subgroup does not exist (or is not closed yet).
2847 Previously it would have been silently turned into `2' (ignoring the `\').
2850 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
2851 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
2854 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
2855 instead of being optional.
2858 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
2859 modify read-only text.
2861 ** New functions and variables for locales.
2864 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
2865 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
2866 time functions like strftime. The new variables
2867 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
2868 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
2870 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
2871 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
2872 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
2873 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
2874 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
2875 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
2876 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
2879 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
2880 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
2881 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
2885 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
2886 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
2889 ** New function `propertize'
2891 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
2892 strings with text properties.
2894 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
2896 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
2897 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
2898 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
2899 specified value of that property. Example:
2901 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
2904 ** push and pop macros.
2906 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
2907 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
2908 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
2910 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
2911 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
2912 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
2914 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
2916 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
2917 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
2919 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
2920 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
2921 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
2922 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
2924 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
2925 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
2926 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
2927 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
2930 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such as
2931 [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on. These must be used within a character
2932 class--for instance, [-[:digit:].+] matches digits or a period
2935 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
2936 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
2937 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
2938 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
2939 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
2941 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
2943 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
2944 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2945 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2946 [:alpha:] matches letters.
2947 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2948 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2949 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
2950 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
2951 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
2952 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
2953 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2954 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2955 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2956 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
2957 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2960 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2962 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2964 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2966 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2967 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2971 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2972 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2973 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2977 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2978 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2980 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2982 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2983 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2984 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2985 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2986 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2988 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2990 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2991 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2992 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2996 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2997 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2998 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2999 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
3000 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
3002 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
3004 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
3006 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
3008 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
3010 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
3012 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
3015 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
3017 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
3019 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
3021 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
3023 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
3025 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
3027 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
3029 Returns the size of TABLE.
3031 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
3033 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
3035 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
3037 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
3039 - Function: clrhash TABLE
3043 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
3045 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
3048 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
3050 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
3051 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
3053 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
3055 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
3057 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
3059 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
3060 arguments KEY and VALUE.
3062 - Function: sxhash OBJ
3064 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
3066 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
3068 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
3069 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
3070 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
3071 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
3072 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
3074 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
3076 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
3077 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
3078 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
3080 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
3081 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
3083 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
3084 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
3086 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
3087 (sxhash (upcase a)))
3089 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
3090 'case-fold-string-hash))
3092 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
3095 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
3097 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
3098 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
3099 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
3102 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
3104 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
3105 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
3108 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
3109 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
3110 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
3111 is too short to reach that column.
3114 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
3115 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
3116 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
3117 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
3119 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
3120 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
3121 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
3124 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
3125 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
3128 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
3129 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
3132 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
3133 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
3134 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
3135 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
3136 temporary-file-directory instead.
3139 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
3140 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
3141 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
3142 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
3145 ** assq-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
3146 elements of an alist which have a car `eq' to a particular value.
3149 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
3151 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
3152 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
3153 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
3156 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
3158 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
3159 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
3160 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
3161 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
3162 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
3163 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
3165 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
3166 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
3167 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
3168 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
3171 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
3173 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
3174 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
3175 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
3178 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
3179 string where arguments appear in the result string.
3183 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
3185 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
3186 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
3189 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
3192 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
3194 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
3195 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
3198 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
3200 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
3201 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
3207 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
3208 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
3210 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
3211 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
3212 to enable sound support.
3214 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
3215 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
3216 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
3217 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
3218 sound to play, before playing the sound.
3220 The following sound properties are supported:
3224 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
3225 searched relative to `data-directory'.
3229 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
3230 may be present, but not both.
3234 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
3235 0..1. This property is optional.
3239 DEVICE is a string specifying the system device on which to play the
3240 sound. The default device is system-dependent.
3242 Other properties are ignored.
3244 An alternative interface is called as
3245 (play-sound-file FILE &optional VOLUME DEVICE).
3247 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
3250 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
3253 ** Changes to garbage collection
3255 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
3256 of live and free strings.
3258 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
3259 strings that have been consed so far.
3262 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
3266 ** The user-option `resize-mini-windows' controls how Emacs resizes
3270 ** The function `pos-visible-in-window-p' now has a third optional
3271 argument, PARTIALLY. If a character is only partially visible, nil is
3272 returned, unless PARTIALLY is non-nil.
3274 ** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
3277 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
3280 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
3283 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
3285 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
3287 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
3288 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
3289 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
3290 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
3291 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
3294 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
3297 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
3299 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
3300 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
3301 or omitted means use the selected frame.
3304 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
3305 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
3308 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
3312 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
3316 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
3318 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
3319 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
3320 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
3321 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
3323 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
3324 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
3326 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
3327 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
3328 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
3329 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
3330 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
3331 just display it black instead.
3333 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
3336 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
3340 ** New face implementation.
3342 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
3343 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
3348 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
3350 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
3352 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
3353 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
3355 3. Font height in 1/10pt
3357 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
3359 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
3361 6. Foreground color.
3363 7. Background color.
3365 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
3367 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
3369 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
3371 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
3373 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
3376 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
3377 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
3379 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
3380 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
3381 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
3382 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
3383 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each of the face
3384 attributes mentioned above.
3386 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
3387 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
3390 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
3391 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
3397 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
3398 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
3399 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
3400 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
3401 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
3402 results in a fully-specified face.
3405 *** Face realization.
3407 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
3408 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
3409 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
3410 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
3411 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
3412 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
3414 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
3415 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
3416 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
3417 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
3419 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
3420 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
3421 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
3422 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
3423 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
3425 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
3426 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
3427 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
3428 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
3429 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
3432 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
3433 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
3434 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
3435 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
3438 **** Clearing face caches.
3440 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
3441 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
3447 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
3448 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
3449 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
3451 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
3452 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
3453 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
3454 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
3455 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
3457 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
3458 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
3459 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
3461 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
3463 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
3464 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
3465 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
3466 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
3467 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
3468 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
3469 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
3471 Setting `face-font-family-alternatives' allows the user to specify
3472 alternative font families to try if a family specified by a face
3475 Setting `face-font-registry-alternatives' allows the user to specify
3476 all alternative font registry names to try for a face specifying a
3479 Please note that the interpretations of the above two variables are
3482 Setting face-ignored-fonts allows the user to ignore specific fonts.
3488 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
3489 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
3492 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
3493 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
3494 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
3495 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
3496 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
3499 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
3501 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
3504 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
3506 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
3508 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
3509 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
3510 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
3512 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
3513 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
3514 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
3515 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
3516 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
3517 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
3518 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
3519 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
3520 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
3521 of the face font sort order.
3523 - Function: x-font-family-list
3525 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
3526 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
3527 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
3528 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
3530 - Variable: font-list-limit
3532 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
3533 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
3534 matching font. The default is currently 100.
3537 *** Setting face attributes.
3539 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
3540 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
3541 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
3544 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
3545 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
3547 The following attributes are recognized:
3551 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
3552 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
3553 and `?' are allowed.
3557 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
3558 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
3559 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
3560 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
3564 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
3565 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
3566 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
3567 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
3571 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
3572 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
3573 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
3577 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
3578 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
3581 `:foreground', `:background'
3583 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
3587 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
3588 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
3589 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
3594 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
3595 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
3596 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
3601 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
3602 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
3603 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
3604 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
3608 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
3609 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
3610 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
3611 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
3612 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
3613 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
3614 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
3615 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
3616 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
3617 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
3618 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
3619 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
3620 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
3621 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
3622 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
3623 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
3628 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
3629 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
3633 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
3634 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
3635 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
3636 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
3637 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
3638 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
3640 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
3641 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
3645 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
3646 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
3647 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
3650 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
3651 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
3652 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
3654 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
3659 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
3660 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
3661 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
3663 *** Face attributes and X resources
3665 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
3668 Face attribute X resource class
3669 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
3670 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
3671 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
3672 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
3673 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
3674 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
3675 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
3676 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
3677 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
3678 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
3679 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
3680 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
3681 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
3682 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
3683 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
3684 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
3685 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
3686 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
3687 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
3688 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
3691 *** Text property `face'.
3693 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
3694 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
3695 specification can be
3697 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
3699 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
3700 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
3701 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
3702 for face attribute names.
3704 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
3705 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
3706 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
3709 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
3711 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
3712 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
3713 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
3714 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
3715 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
3716 used to clear the mapping table.
3718 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
3720 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
3721 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
3722 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
3723 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
3724 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
3725 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
3726 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
3727 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
3728 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
3729 modify their color-related behavior.
3731 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
3734 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
3736 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
3737 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
3738 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
3739 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
3740 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
3741 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
3742 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
3743 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
3744 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
3746 The new function `display-images-p' returns non-nil if a particular
3747 display can display image files.
3750 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
3752 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
3753 To disallow this completely (like previous versions of emacs), customize
3754 the variable `minibuffer-prompt-properties', and turn on the
3755 `Inviolable' option.
3757 The function minibuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
3758 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
3759 Otherwise, it returns zero.
3761 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
3763 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
3764 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
3765 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
3767 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
3768 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
3769 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
3770 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
3771 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
3772 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
3773 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
3776 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
3777 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
3778 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
3780 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
3782 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
3784 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
3786 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3787 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
3788 constrained position if that is different.
3790 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
3791 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
3792 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
3793 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
3794 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3795 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
3796 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
3797 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
3798 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
3800 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
3801 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
3802 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
3803 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
3804 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
3806 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
3807 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
3809 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
3811 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
3813 Delete the field surrounding POS.
3814 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3815 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3817 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3819 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
3820 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3821 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3822 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
3823 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
3825 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3827 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
3828 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3829 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3830 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
3831 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
3833 - Function: field-string &optional POS
3835 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
3836 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3837 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3839 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
3841 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
3842 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3843 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3848 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
3849 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
3850 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
3851 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
3853 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
3854 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
3855 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
3856 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
3859 IMAGE is an image specification.
3861 *** Image specifications
3863 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
3864 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
3865 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
3866 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
3867 described below are ignored.
3869 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
3873 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
3874 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
3875 to use for its ascent.
3877 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
3878 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
3880 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
3881 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
3882 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
3883 overlays that apply to the image.
3887 MARGIN must be either a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put
3888 as margin around the image, or a pair (X . Y) with X specifying the
3889 horizontal margin and Y specifying the vertical margin. Default is 0.
3893 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
3898 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
3900 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
3901 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
3903 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
3904 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
3905 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
3906 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
3907 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
3908 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
3909 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
3910 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
3913 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
3915 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
3917 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
3918 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
3919 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
3920 of the factors' absolute values.
3922 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
3928 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
3934 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
3939 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
3940 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
3941 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
3942 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
3943 image, assuming the most frequently occurring color from the corners is
3944 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
3945 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
3948 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
3949 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
3954 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
3955 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
3956 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
3957 may be present in the image specification.
3961 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
3962 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
3963 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
3964 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
3966 *** Supported image types
3968 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
3970 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
3971 properties supported are
3975 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
3976 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground.
3980 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
3981 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
3983 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
3984 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
3985 instead of a `:file' property.
3989 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
3993 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
3999 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
4000 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
4002 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
4004 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
4007 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
4008 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
4011 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
4013 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
4014 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
4015 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
4016 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
4018 Additional image properties supported are:
4020 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
4022 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
4023 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
4026 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
4027 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
4029 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
4030 to display compressed images.
4032 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
4034 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
4035 mono images are supported. Additional image properties supported for
4040 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4041 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's foreground.
4045 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color, or nil
4046 meaning to use the default. Default is the frame's background color.
4048 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
4050 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
4051 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
4054 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
4056 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
4057 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
4060 **** GIF, image type `gif'
4062 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
4063 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
4065 Additional image properties supported are:
4069 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
4070 multi-image GIF file. An error is signaled if INDEX is too large.
4072 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
4073 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
4074 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
4077 (defun show-anim (file max)
4078 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
4079 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
4081 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
4084 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
4087 (goto-char (point-min))
4088 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
4089 (insert-image img "x"))
4090 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
4092 **** PNG, image type `png'
4094 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
4095 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
4098 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
4100 Additional image properties supported are:
4104 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
4105 integer. This is a required property.
4109 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
4110 must be a integer. This is an required property.
4114 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
4115 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
4116 files. This is an required property.
4118 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
4123 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
4124 which are supported in the current configuration.
4126 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
4127 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
4128 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
4129 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
4130 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
4132 *** Simplified image API, image.el
4134 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
4135 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
4136 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
4137 define an image based on available image types. The functions
4138 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
4144 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
4147 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
4148 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
4149 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
4150 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
4151 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
4152 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
4153 of the display margins.
4155 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
4156 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
4157 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
4158 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
4164 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
4165 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
4166 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
4167 that have a `help-echo' property.
4169 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
4170 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
4171 the window in which the help was found.
4173 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
4174 `help-echo' text property was found.
4176 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
4177 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
4179 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
4180 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
4183 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
4184 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
4186 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
4187 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
4188 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
4189 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
4190 used as help string.
4192 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
4193 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
4194 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
4197 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
4199 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
4200 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
4202 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
4203 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
4204 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
4205 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
4208 (global-set-key [A-down]
4211 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4212 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
4213 (global-set-key [A-up]
4216 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
4217 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
4220 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
4222 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
4223 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
4224 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
4225 is called with one argument, POS.
4227 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
4228 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
4229 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
4230 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
4231 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
4234 ** Tool bar support.
4236 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
4237 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
4238 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
4239 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
4240 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
4241 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
4243 *** Tool bar item definitions
4245 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
4246 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
4247 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
4249 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
4250 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
4251 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
4252 property (see below).
4254 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
4255 binding are currently ignored.
4257 The following properties are recognized:
4261 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
4266 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
4270 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
4271 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
4272 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
4274 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
4276 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
4277 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
4281 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
4282 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
4283 meaning of each of the four elements:
4285 Index Use when item is
4286 ----------------------------------------
4287 0 enabled and selected
4288 1 enabled and deselected
4289 2 disabled and selected
4290 3 disabled and deselected
4292 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
4293 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
4295 `:help HELP-STRING'.
4297 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
4298 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
4300 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
4301 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
4302 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
4305 The default bindings use a menu-item :filter to derive the tool-bar
4306 dynamically from variable `tool-bar-map' which may be set
4307 buffer-locally to override the global map.
4309 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
4311 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
4312 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
4313 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
4315 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
4316 raised when the mouse moves over them.
4318 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
4319 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
4320 pixels, or a pair of integers (X . Y) specifying horizontal and
4321 vertical margins . Default is 1.
4323 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
4324 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
4326 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
4328 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
4331 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
4332 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
4333 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
4335 is the original tool bar item definition, then
4337 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
4339 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
4342 ** Mode line changes.
4345 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
4347 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
4348 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
4349 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
4351 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
4352 a `local-map' text property.
4354 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
4355 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
4357 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
4358 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
4359 `local-map' property.
4361 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
4362 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
4365 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
4366 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
4369 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
4370 variable mode-line-format to nil.
4373 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
4375 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
4376 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
4377 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
4378 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
4381 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
4384 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
4385 position in the header-line.
4388 ** Text property `display'
4390 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
4391 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
4392 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
4393 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
4394 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
4396 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
4398 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
4399 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
4401 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
4402 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
4403 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
4404 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
4405 simpler form STRING as property value.
4407 *** Variable width and height spaces
4409 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
4410 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
4411 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
4412 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
4413 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
4414 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
4415 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
4417 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
4418 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
4419 properties described below.
4421 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
4422 characters having the `display' property.
4426 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
4427 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
4429 - :relative-width FACTOR
4431 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
4432 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
4433 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
4434 width of that character by FACTOR.
4438 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
4439 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
4441 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
4445 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
4448 - :relative-height FACTOR
4450 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
4451 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
4455 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
4456 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
4457 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
4460 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
4464 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
4465 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
4466 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
4467 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
4468 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
4469 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
4470 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
4471 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
4472 as display specification.
4474 *** Other display properties
4476 - (space-width FACTOR)
4478 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
4479 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
4484 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
4486 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
4487 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
4488 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
4489 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
4490 a font is available counts as a step.
4492 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
4493 as tall as the frame's default font.
4495 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
4496 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
4498 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
4499 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
4503 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
4504 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
4505 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
4506 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
4507 `height' subproperty.
4509 *** Conditional display properties
4511 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
4512 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
4513 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
4514 During evaluation, point is temporarily set to the end position of
4515 the text having the `display' property.
4517 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
4521 ** New menu separator types.
4523 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
4524 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
4525 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
4526 to specify other menu separator types.
4528 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
4530 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
4533 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
4535 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
4537 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
4539 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
4541 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
4543 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
4545 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
4547 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
4549 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
4551 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the form
4552 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
4554 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
4556 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
4558 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
4560 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
4562 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
4564 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
4566 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
4568 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
4570 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
4572 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
4574 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
4576 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
4578 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
4580 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
4582 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
4583 the corresponding single-line separators.
4586 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
4588 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
4589 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
4590 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
4591 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
4592 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
4593 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
4594 default foreground is black.
4596 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
4597 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
4598 `ScrollBarBackground').
4600 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
4601 settings for scroll bar colors.
4604 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
4605 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
4608 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
4609 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
4610 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
4611 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
4612 the original window start.
4615 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
4616 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
4617 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
4620 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
4622 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
4623 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
4624 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
4625 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
4627 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
4628 fixed-width and fixed-height.
4630 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
4632 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
4633 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
4634 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
4635 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
4636 temporarily to nil, for example
4638 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
4639 (enlarge-window 10))
4641 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
4642 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
4644 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
4645 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
4646 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
4647 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
4648 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
4649 support a vertical-bar cursor).
4654 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
4656 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
4659 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
4661 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
4663 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
4664 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
4665 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
4666 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
4667 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
4669 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
4673 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
4675 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
4679 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
4681 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
4682 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
4684 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
4686 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
4688 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
4689 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
4690 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
4692 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
4693 is the one that is used.
4695 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
4696 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
4697 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
4698 separate from the command's regular output.
4699 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
4700 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
4701 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
4704 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
4705 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
4706 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
4707 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
4709 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
4710 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
4711 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
4712 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
4714 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
4715 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
4716 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
4717 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
4719 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
4720 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
4721 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
4722 they never ignore case.
4724 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
4725 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
4726 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
4727 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
4728 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
4729 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
4730 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
4732 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
4733 the same format that was used in the file before.
4735 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
4736 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
4738 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
4739 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
4740 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
4742 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
4743 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
4744 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
4745 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
4746 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
4747 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
4748 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
4750 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
4751 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
4752 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
4753 format. You can now customize these variables.
4755 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
4756 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
4757 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
4758 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
4760 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
4761 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
4762 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
4764 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
4765 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
4766 doesn't have any effect.
4768 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
4771 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
4772 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
4773 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
4775 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
4776 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
4777 `auto-show-mode' command.
4779 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
4780 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
4781 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
4782 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
4783 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
4785 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
4786 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
4788 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
4789 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
4790 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
4792 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
4793 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
4794 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
4795 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
4797 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
4799 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
4800 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
4801 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
4802 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
4803 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
4805 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
4806 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
4808 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
4809 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
4810 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
4811 `?' on other systems.
4813 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
4814 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
4817 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
4818 current codepage when it starts.
4822 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
4823 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
4824 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
4825 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
4826 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
4827 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
4831 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
4832 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
4834 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
4835 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
4836 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
4837 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
4838 buffer-file-coding-system.
4840 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
4841 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
4844 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
4845 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
4846 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
4847 list of possible coding systems.
4851 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
4852 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
4853 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
4854 docstring for details.
4856 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
4857 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
4858 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
4859 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
4860 lineup functions use this feature currently.
4862 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
4863 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
4865 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
4866 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
4868 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
4869 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
4870 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
4871 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
4874 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
4875 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
4877 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
4878 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
4879 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
4880 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
4882 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
4883 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
4884 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
4885 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
4886 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
4888 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
4890 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
4892 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
4893 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
4895 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
4897 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
4898 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
4899 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
4900 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
4901 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
4905 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
4906 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
4907 Gnus manual for the full story.
4909 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
4910 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
4911 group, which is created automatically.
4913 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
4916 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
4918 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
4919 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
4921 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
4924 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
4926 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
4927 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
4929 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
4931 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
4932 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
4934 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
4935 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
4937 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
4938 control over simplification.
4940 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
4942 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
4945 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
4947 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
4949 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
4950 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
4951 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
4953 *** Canceling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
4954 `a' forces normal posting method.
4956 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
4959 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
4962 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
4963 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
4965 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
4968 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
4970 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
4972 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
4973 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
4975 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
4976 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
4978 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
4980 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
4983 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
4984 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
4986 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
4987 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
4989 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
4991 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
4993 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
4995 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
4997 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
4998 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
4999 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
5001 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
5002 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
5003 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
5004 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
5005 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
5007 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
5008 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
5009 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
5010 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
5012 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
5013 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
5014 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
5017 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5019 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
5020 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
5022 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
5023 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
5024 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
5025 removed from the label.
5027 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
5028 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
5030 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
5031 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
5033 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
5034 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
5037 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
5039 ** New/deleted modes and packages
5041 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
5042 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
5044 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
5045 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
5046 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
5048 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
5049 changes with a special face.
5051 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
5052 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
5053 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
5055 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
5057 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
5058 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
5059 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
5060 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
5061 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
5063 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
5064 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
5065 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
5067 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
5068 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
5069 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
5070 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
5071 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
5072 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
5073 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
5074 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
5075 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
5077 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
5078 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
5079 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
5080 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
5081 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
5084 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
5085 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
5086 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
5087 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
5088 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
5089 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
5091 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
5092 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
5093 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
5094 was not documented clearly before.
5096 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
5097 This includes Tetris and Snake.
5099 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
5101 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
5102 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
5103 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
5104 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
5106 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
5107 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
5108 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
5110 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
5112 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
5113 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
5115 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
5116 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
5119 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
5120 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
5121 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
5122 file names and attributes are returned.
5124 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
5125 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
5126 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its attributes.
5127 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
5130 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
5131 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
5133 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
5135 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
5136 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
5137 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
5140 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
5141 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
5144 The new function process-running-child-p
5145 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
5146 terminal to its own child process.
5148 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
5149 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
5150 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
5151 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
5153 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
5154 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
5156 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
5157 :included is an alias for :visible.
5159 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
5160 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
5161 to move or copy menu entries.
5163 ** Multibyte editing changes
5165 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
5166 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
5167 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
5168 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
5169 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
5170 (setq char (sref str idx)
5171 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
5172 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
5174 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
5175 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
5176 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
5178 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
5179 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
5180 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
5182 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibited
5184 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
5185 across the boundary.
5187 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
5188 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
5189 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
5190 contains 8-bit characters.
5191 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
5192 contains invalid characters.
5194 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
5195 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
5196 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
5197 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
5200 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
5201 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
5202 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
5203 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
5205 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
5206 compose Thai characters in a string.
5208 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
5209 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
5210 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
5211 menus should always use the third argument.
5213 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
5214 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
5215 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
5216 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
5218 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
5219 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
5220 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
5221 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
5223 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
5224 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
5225 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
5228 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
5230 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
5231 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
5232 requested feature cannot be loaded.
5234 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
5235 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
5236 means to clear out that attribute.
5238 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
5239 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
5241 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
5242 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
5243 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
5244 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
5246 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
5247 the gap of the current buffer.
5249 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
5250 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
5253 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
5254 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
5255 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
5256 it back in after any modifications have been made.
5258 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
5260 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
5261 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
5262 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
5263 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
5264 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
5266 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
5267 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
5268 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
5269 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
5270 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
5272 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
5273 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
5274 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
5276 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
5277 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
5278 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
5279 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
5280 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
5283 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
5284 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
5285 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
5286 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
5288 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
5290 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
5291 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
5292 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
5293 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
5295 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
5296 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
5297 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
5298 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
5299 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
5300 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
5301 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
5304 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
5307 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
5308 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
5309 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
5310 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
5311 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
5313 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
5314 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
5315 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
5316 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
5318 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
5319 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
5320 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
5321 something that most users not do.
5323 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
5324 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
5325 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
5328 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
5331 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
5332 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
5333 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
5334 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
5337 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
5338 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
5339 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
5340 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
5341 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
5344 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
5345 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
5346 to be confused by TeX commands.
5348 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
5349 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
5350 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
5351 of various alternative replacements and actions.
5353 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
5354 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
5355 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
5356 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
5357 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
5359 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
5360 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
5362 ** Changes in input method usage.
5364 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
5365 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
5368 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
5370 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
5371 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
5373 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
5374 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
5376 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
5378 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
5380 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
5381 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
5383 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
5384 given in the following case:
5385 o When you are using a complex input method.
5386 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
5388 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
5389 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
5390 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
5391 setting it to t is helpful.
5393 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
5395 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
5397 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
5398 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
5399 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
5400 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
5403 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
5404 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
5405 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
5408 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
5410 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
5412 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
5413 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
5415 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
5416 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
5417 its owner and group.
5419 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
5420 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
5422 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
5423 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
5425 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
5426 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
5427 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
5428 by the left edge of the rectangle.
5430 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
5431 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
5432 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
5433 for writing keyboard macros.
5435 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
5436 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
5437 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
5438 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
5439 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
5442 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
5444 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
5445 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
5448 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
5449 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
5450 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
5451 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
5453 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
5454 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
5455 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
5457 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
5458 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
5459 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
5460 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
5462 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
5463 failure if the command produces no output.
5465 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
5466 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
5469 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
5470 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
5471 function and variable names.
5473 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
5474 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
5475 file-coding-system-alist.
5477 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
5478 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
5479 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
5480 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
5481 according to the current fontset.
5483 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
5485 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
5486 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
5487 nonascii-insert-offset.
5489 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
5490 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
5491 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
5492 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
5494 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
5495 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
5497 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
5498 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
5500 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
5501 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
5504 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
5505 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
5507 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
5508 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
5509 all variables that have documentation.
5511 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
5512 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
5513 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
5514 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
5515 it should show; the default is 20.
5517 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
5518 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
5521 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
5522 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
5523 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
5524 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
5525 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
5526 Newly added options are included as well.
5528 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
5529 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
5530 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
5532 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
5535 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
5536 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
5538 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
5539 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
5542 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
5543 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
5546 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
5547 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
5548 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
5549 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
5552 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
5554 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
5555 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
5556 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
5558 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
5559 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
5560 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
5565 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
5566 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
5568 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
5569 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
5571 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
5572 read and post multi-lingual articles.
5574 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
5575 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
5576 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
5577 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
5578 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
5579 made invisible again.
5581 ** Mail reading and sending changes
5583 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
5584 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
5585 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
5588 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
5589 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
5590 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
5591 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
5592 rmail-default-body-file.
5594 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
5595 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
5596 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
5598 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
5599 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
5600 is evaluated to insert the signature.
5602 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
5603 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
5604 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
5605 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
5606 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
5607 especially interested in trying feedmail.
5609 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
5610 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
5611 provided by feedmail are:
5613 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
5614 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
5615 there is also a queue for draft messages
5617 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
5618 be prompted for confirmation
5620 **** does smart filling of address headers
5622 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
5623 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
5624 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
5626 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
5627 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
5628 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
5629 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
5633 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
5634 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
5636 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
5637 run Dired on the directory name at point.
5639 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
5640 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
5641 for a specified regexp.
5645 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
5648 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
5649 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
5652 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
5653 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
5654 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
5655 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
5657 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
5658 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
5659 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
5660 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
5661 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
5663 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
5664 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
5665 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
5666 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
5667 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
5669 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
5670 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
5671 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
5672 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
5674 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
5675 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
5676 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
5678 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
5679 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
5680 session to resolve them.
5682 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
5683 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
5684 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
5687 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
5688 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
5689 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
5690 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
5691 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
5692 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
5695 ** Changes in Font Lock
5697 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
5698 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
5699 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
5700 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
5701 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
5703 ** Frame name display changes
5705 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
5706 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
5707 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
5708 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
5710 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
5711 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
5714 ** Comint (subshell) changes
5716 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
5717 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
5718 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
5720 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
5722 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
5723 that is, the line after the last line you got.
5724 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
5726 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
5727 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
5730 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
5731 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
5732 previously sent input.
5734 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
5735 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
5736 as the search string.
5738 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
5739 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
5743 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
5744 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
5745 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
5748 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
5749 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
5750 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
5751 style is still the default however.
5753 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
5755 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
5756 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
5757 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
5759 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
5760 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
5762 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
5763 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
5765 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
5766 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
5768 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
5769 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
5771 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
5772 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
5773 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
5774 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
5776 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
5778 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
5779 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
5780 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
5782 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
5783 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
5784 expanding dynamically.
5786 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
5787 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
5789 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
5790 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
5791 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
5792 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
5794 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
5796 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5798 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
5799 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
5800 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
5801 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
5802 against the first word in the title.
5804 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
5805 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
5806 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
5807 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
5808 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
5809 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
5811 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
5812 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
5813 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
5814 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
5816 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
5818 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
5819 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
5820 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
5821 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
5822 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
5823 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
5825 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
5826 Editing group once the package is loaded.
5828 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
5829 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
5830 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behavior.
5832 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
5833 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
5837 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
5838 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
5839 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
5841 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
5842 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
5843 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
5844 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
5847 o URLs are automatically skipped
5848 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
5850 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
5852 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5854 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
5855 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
5856 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
5857 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
5859 *** New recursive parser.
5861 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
5862 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
5863 recursive parser scans the individual files.
5865 *** Parsing only part of a document.
5867 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
5868 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
5869 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
5871 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
5873 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
5875 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
5877 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
5879 *** Using multiple selection buffers
5881 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
5882 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
5884 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
5886 *** References to external documents.
5888 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
5889 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
5890 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
5891 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
5892 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
5893 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
5894 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
5896 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
5898 The built-in command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
5899 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
5901 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
5902 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
5904 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
5906 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
5907 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
5909 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
5911 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
5912 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
5913 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
5914 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
5915 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
5916 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
5919 *** Support for the varioref package
5921 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
5925 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
5926 and citations are created. These hooks are
5927 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
5928 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
5930 *** Citations outside LaTeX
5932 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
5933 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
5935 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
5937 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
5938 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
5941 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
5943 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
5944 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
5945 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
5946 directories that contain the same file name.
5948 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
5949 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
5950 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
5951 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
5952 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
5953 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
5954 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
5957 ** New modes and packages
5959 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
5960 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
5961 it, but some do not.
5963 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
5966 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
5967 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
5970 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
5972 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
5973 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
5974 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
5975 established system of notation similar to Chess.
5977 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
5978 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
5979 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
5981 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
5982 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
5983 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
5984 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
5985 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
5988 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
5989 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
5991 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
5992 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
5993 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
5994 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
5996 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
5998 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
5999 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
6000 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
6001 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
6002 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
6003 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
6004 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
6005 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
6006 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
6007 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
6008 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
6010 Platform-specific modes:
6012 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
6013 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
6014 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
6015 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
6016 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
6017 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
6018 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
6019 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
6020 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
6022 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
6024 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
6025 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
6026 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
6027 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
6029 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
6030 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
6031 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
6033 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
6034 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
6035 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
6036 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
6038 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
6039 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
6040 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
6043 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
6044 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
6045 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
6046 current input method for reading this one event.
6048 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
6049 now control whether to output certain characters as
6050 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
6051 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
6052 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
6053 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
6055 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
6057 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
6058 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
6060 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
6061 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
6062 always increases point by 1.
6064 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
6065 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
6067 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
6069 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
6070 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
6071 default value changed. For example,
6073 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
6078 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
6081 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
6082 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
6083 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
6084 `:version' in the top level group.
6086 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
6088 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
6089 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
6091 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
6092 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
6093 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
6096 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
6097 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
6100 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
6101 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
6102 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
6104 ** Frame-local variables.
6106 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
6107 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
6108 local bindings for that variable.
6110 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
6111 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
6112 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
6115 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
6116 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
6117 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
6118 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
6120 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
6121 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
6122 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
6123 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
6125 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
6126 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
6127 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
6128 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
6129 See the documentation in sregex.el.
6131 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
6132 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
6133 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
6134 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
6136 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
6137 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
6139 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
6140 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
6141 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
6143 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
6144 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
6145 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
6146 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
6148 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
6149 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
6152 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
6153 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
6154 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
6155 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
6156 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
6158 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
6159 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
6160 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
6161 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
6163 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
6164 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
6165 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
6166 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
6167 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
6169 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
6170 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
6171 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
6172 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
6174 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
6175 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
6176 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
6178 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
6179 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
6180 was directed to display this buffer.
6182 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
6183 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
6184 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
6185 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
6186 set-window-configuration.
6188 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
6189 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
6190 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
6191 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
6193 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
6194 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
6195 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
6197 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
6198 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
6199 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
6201 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
6202 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
6204 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
6205 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
6207 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
6208 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
6209 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
6211 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
6212 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
6213 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
6214 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
6218 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
6219 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
6222 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
6223 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
6224 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
6225 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
6226 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
6228 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
6230 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
6231 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
6232 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
6233 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
6236 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
6237 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
6238 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
6239 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
6240 The supported properties include
6242 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6244 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
6245 item should appear in the menu.
6247 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
6248 which will be REAL-BINDING.
6249 It should return a binding to use instead.
6251 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
6252 binding for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
6253 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
6254 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
6255 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
6258 This means that the command normally has no
6259 keyboard equivalent.
6260 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
6261 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
6262 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
6263 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
6264 value says whether this button is currently selected.
6266 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
6267 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
6269 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
6273 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
6274 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
6275 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
6276 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
6278 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
6280 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6281 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
6282 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
6283 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
6284 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
6285 forward, away from the user.
6287 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6289 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
6290 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
6291 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
6292 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
6293 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
6295 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
6297 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
6298 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
6299 that were dragged and dropped.
6301 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
6303 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
6305 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
6306 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
6307 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
6309 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
6310 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
6311 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
6313 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
6314 in Emacs 19 and before.
6316 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
6317 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
6319 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
6320 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
6321 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
6322 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
6324 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
6325 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
6326 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
6327 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
6328 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
6330 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
6331 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
6332 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
6333 consistent with the new representation.
6335 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
6336 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
6337 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
6338 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6340 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
6341 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
6342 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
6344 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
6345 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
6346 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
6348 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
6349 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
6350 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
6352 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6353 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
6355 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
6356 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
6358 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
6359 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
6360 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
6361 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
6363 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
6364 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
6366 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
6367 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
6368 buffer or string being searched.
6370 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
6371 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
6372 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
6373 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
6374 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
6375 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
6376 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
6378 *** Structure of coding system changed.
6380 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
6381 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
6382 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
6383 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
6384 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
6385 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
6386 define-coding-system-alias.
6388 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
6389 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
6390 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
6391 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
6392 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
6393 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
6394 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
6397 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
6398 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
6399 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
6400 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
6402 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
6403 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
6404 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
6405 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
6407 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
6408 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
6409 This function requires a user interaction.
6411 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
6412 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
6413 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
6414 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
6415 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
6416 select-safe-coding-system.
6418 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
6419 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
6420 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
6423 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
6424 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
6425 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
6427 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
6428 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
6429 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
6430 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
6432 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
6433 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
6434 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
6437 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
6438 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
6440 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
6441 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
6442 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
6443 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
6444 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
6445 range of characters.
6447 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
6448 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
6450 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
6451 in the current buffer at position POS.
6453 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
6454 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
6455 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
6456 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
6457 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
6458 binding input-method-function to nil.
6460 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
6461 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
6462 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
6463 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
6464 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
6466 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
6467 subsequent events of a key sequence.
6469 *** You can customize any language environment by using
6470 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
6472 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
6473 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
6474 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
6475 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
6476 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
6478 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
6480 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
6481 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
6482 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
6485 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
6486 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
6488 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
6489 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
6490 in your .emacs file.)
6492 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
6493 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
6495 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
6496 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
6498 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
6499 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
6502 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
6503 delete the character before point, as usual.
6505 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
6506 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
6507 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
6509 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
6510 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
6511 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
6512 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
6513 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
6516 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
6517 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
6518 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
6519 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
6520 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
6522 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
6523 and is an alias for it.
6525 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
6526 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
6528 ** Scrolling changes
6530 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
6531 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
6533 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
6534 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
6537 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
6538 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
6539 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
6540 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
6542 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
6543 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
6544 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
6545 recenters the window.
6547 ** International character set support (MULE)
6549 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
6550 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
6551 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
6552 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
6553 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
6554 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
6556 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
6557 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
6558 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
6559 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
6560 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
6562 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
6563 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
6564 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
6565 language, to make it possible to type them.
6567 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
6568 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
6570 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
6571 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
6573 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
6575 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
6577 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
6578 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
6579 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
6580 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
6581 characters for their work until they want to change.
6585 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
6586 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
6587 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
6588 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
6589 support several input methods.
6591 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
6592 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
6595 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
6596 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
6597 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
6598 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
6599 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
6602 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
6603 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
6604 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
6605 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
6606 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
6608 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
6609 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
6610 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
6611 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
6613 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
6614 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
6615 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
6616 the first guess is wrong.
6618 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
6619 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
6621 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
6622 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
6623 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
6624 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
6626 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
6627 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
6628 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
6629 translate automatically to and from either one.
6631 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
6633 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
6634 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
6635 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
6638 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
6639 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
6640 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
6641 multibyte characters in that buffer.
6643 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
6644 character conversion as well.
6646 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
6648 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
6649 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
6650 requires using many fonts.
6652 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
6653 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
6655 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
6656 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
6657 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
6658 you would use a font.
6660 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
6661 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
6662 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
6664 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
6665 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
6666 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
6667 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
6668 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
6670 *** Defining fontsets.
6672 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
6673 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
6674 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
6676 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
6677 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
6678 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
6679 standard fontset are created automatically.
6681 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
6682 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
6683 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
6684 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
6685 name is `fontset-startup'.
6687 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
6688 The resource value should have this form:
6689 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
6690 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
6691 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
6692 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
6693 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
6694 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
6695 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
6696 CHARSET-NAME should be the name of a character set, and FONT-NAME
6697 should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
6699 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
6700 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
6701 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
6703 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
6704 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
6706 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
6707 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
6708 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
6709 Here is the substitution rule:
6710 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
6711 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
6712 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
6713 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
6714 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
6716 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
6717 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
6718 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
6720 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
6721 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
6722 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
6723 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
6726 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
6727 defaults for a particular choice of language.
6729 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
6730 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
6731 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
6732 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
6733 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
6734 system for new files that you create.
6736 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
6737 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
6738 whole Emacs session.
6740 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
6741 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
6742 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
6744 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
6745 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
6746 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
6747 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
6748 coding systems that Emacs supports.
6750 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
6751 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
6752 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
6753 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
6754 is used for *the immediately following command*.
6756 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
6757 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
6759 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
6760 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
6762 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
6763 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
6765 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
6766 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
6767 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
6768 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
6771 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
6772 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
6773 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
6774 translated into that character code.
6776 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
6777 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
6779 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
6781 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
6782 the coding system for keyboard input.
6784 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
6785 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
6786 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
6788 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
6790 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
6791 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
6792 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
6793 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
6794 designed to work with terminals.
6796 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
6797 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
6798 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
6799 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
6800 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
6801 in the corresponding buffer.
6803 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
6805 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
6806 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
6807 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
6809 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
6810 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
6811 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
6814 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
6815 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
6817 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
6818 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
6819 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
6820 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
6822 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
6823 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
6824 related information.
6826 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
6827 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
6830 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
6831 information about the support for a particular language.
6832 You specify the language as an argument.
6834 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
6835 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
6838 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
6839 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
6840 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
6841 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
6843 A alternativnyj (Russian)
6845 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
6846 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
6847 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
6848 E euc-japan (Japanese)
6849 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
6850 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
6851 K euc-korea (Korean)
6854 S shift_jis (Japanese)
6857 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
6858 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
6859 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
6863 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
6864 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
6865 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
6866 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
6868 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
6869 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
6871 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
6872 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
6873 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
6874 Rmail files themselves.
6876 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
6877 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
6879 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
6882 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
6883 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
6884 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
6885 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
6886 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
6888 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
6889 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
6890 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
6893 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
6894 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
6895 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
6896 without any conversion.
6898 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
6899 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
6900 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
6901 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
6903 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
6904 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
6906 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
6907 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
6909 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
6910 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
6912 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
6913 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
6914 in the buffer before point.
6916 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
6917 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
6920 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
6921 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
6923 ** File locking works with NFS now.
6925 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
6926 in the same directory as FILENAME.
6928 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
6929 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
6930 can become a bottleneck.
6932 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
6933 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
6934 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
6935 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
6936 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
6937 so useful that the change is worth while.
6939 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
6940 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
6941 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
6942 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
6944 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
6945 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
6948 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
6949 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
6950 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
6952 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
6953 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
6954 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
6956 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
6957 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
6958 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
6960 ** Changes in View mode.
6962 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
6963 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
6965 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
6966 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
6968 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
6971 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
6972 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
6974 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
6975 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
6976 not just the selected window.
6978 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
6979 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
6980 turns View mode on or off.
6982 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
6983 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
6984 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
6986 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
6987 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
6989 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
6990 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
6991 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
6992 which version to compare with.
6994 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
6995 blocks if a match is inside the block.
6997 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
6998 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
6999 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
7000 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
7002 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
7003 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
7004 blocks, all of them or none.
7006 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
7007 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
7010 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
7011 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
7012 However, the mode will not be changed if
7013 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
7014 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
7015 not suitable for ordinary files, or
7016 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
7018 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
7020 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
7021 these commands do not change the major mode.
7023 ** M-x occur changes.
7025 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
7026 it performs a case-sensitive search.
7028 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
7029 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
7030 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
7032 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
7033 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
7034 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
7035 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
7036 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
7038 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
7039 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
7040 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
7041 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
7043 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7044 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
7045 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
7047 ** Outline mode changes.
7049 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
7051 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
7053 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
7054 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
7055 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
7058 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
7059 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
7062 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
7063 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
7065 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
7067 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7068 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
7069 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
7070 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
7072 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
7073 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
7074 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
7076 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
7077 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
7080 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
7081 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
7082 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
7083 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
7085 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
7086 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
7087 can be. The default value is 30.
7089 ** Changes in Mail mode.
7091 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
7092 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
7093 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
7094 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
7095 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
7098 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
7099 compose-mail-other-frame.
7101 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
7102 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
7103 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
7104 buffer that shows the original message.
7106 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
7107 with separator lines around the contents.
7109 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
7110 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
7111 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
7112 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
7114 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
7116 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
7117 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
7118 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
7119 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
7121 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
7122 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
7125 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
7126 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
7129 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
7130 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
7131 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
7132 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
7134 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
7135 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
7136 be taken to be magic.
7138 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
7139 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
7140 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
7142 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
7143 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
7145 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
7146 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
7148 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
7150 new key dired.el binding old key
7151 ------- ---------------- -------
7152 * c dired-change-marks c
7154 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
7155 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
7156 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
7158 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
7159 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
7160 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
7161 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
7162 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
7163 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
7167 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
7168 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
7169 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
7170 each time you run it.
7172 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
7173 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
7175 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
7176 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
7177 means to move in the opposite direction.
7179 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
7180 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
7182 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
7183 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
7184 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
7185 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
7190 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
7192 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
7195 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
7196 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
7198 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
7201 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
7203 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
7205 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
7207 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
7208 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
7209 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
7211 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
7213 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
7215 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
7216 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
7218 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
7219 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
7220 used to pick articles.
7222 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
7223 another have been added.
7225 `M-x gnus-change-server'
7227 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
7228 generating lines in buffers.
7230 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
7233 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
7235 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
7237 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
7239 *** Scores can be decayed.
7241 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
7243 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
7244 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
7246 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
7249 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
7251 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
7252 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
7254 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
7256 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
7257 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
7259 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
7260 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
7262 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
7265 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
7266 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
7268 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
7270 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
7272 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
7274 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
7276 Use the `Y c' command.
7278 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
7280 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
7282 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
7284 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
7285 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
7287 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
7289 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
7291 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
7292 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
7294 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
7296 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
7297 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
7298 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
7299 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
7302 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
7303 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
7304 particular news group. This can be done by:
7306 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
7308 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
7309 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
7310 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
7311 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
7312 for reading and posting).
7314 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
7315 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
7316 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
7317 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
7320 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
7321 default. Here are some of these default settings:
7323 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
7324 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
7325 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
7326 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
7327 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
7329 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
7330 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
7334 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
7335 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
7336 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
7337 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
7338 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
7341 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
7342 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
7343 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
7344 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
7345 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
7346 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
7348 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
7349 of the current buffer.
7351 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
7352 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
7353 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
7355 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
7356 style that the Python developers like.
7358 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
7359 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
7360 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
7364 *** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
7365 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
7366 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
7368 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
7369 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
7372 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
7373 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
7375 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
7376 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
7377 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
7378 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
7380 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
7381 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
7383 ** Calendar changes.
7385 *** A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or
7386 subclasses of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow
7387 you do this for the year of the selected date, or the
7388 following/previous years.
7390 *** There is now support for the Baha'i calendar system. Use `pb' in
7391 the *Calendar* buffer to display the current Baha'i date. The Baha'i
7392 calendar, or "Badi calendar" is a system of 19 months with 19 days
7393 each, and 4 intercalary days (5 during a Gregorian leap year). The
7394 calendar begins May 23, 1844, with each of the months named after a
7395 supposed attribute of God.
7399 There are some new user variables and subgroups for customizing the page
7402 *** Headers & Footers (subgroup)
7404 Some printer systems print a header page and force the first page to
7405 be printed on the back of the header page when using duplex. If your
7406 printer system has this behavior, set variable
7407 `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' to t.
7409 If variable `ps-banner-page-when-duplexing' is non-nil, it prints a
7410 blank page as the very first printed page. So, it behaves as if the
7411 very first character of buffer (or region) were a form feed ^L (\014).
7413 The variable `ps-spool-config' specifies who is responsible for
7414 setting duplex mode and page size. Valid values are:
7416 lpr-switches duplex and page size are configured by `ps-lpr-switches'.
7417 Don't forget to set `ps-lpr-switches' to select duplex
7418 printing for your printer.
7420 setpagedevice duplex and page size are configured by ps-print using the
7421 setpagedevice PostScript operator.
7423 nil duplex and page size are configured by ps-print *not* using
7424 the setpagedevice PostScript operator.
7426 The variable `ps-spool-tumble' specifies how the page images on
7427 opposite sides of a sheet are oriented with respect to each other. If
7428 `ps-spool-tumble' is nil, ps-print produces output suitable for
7429 bindings on the left or right. If `ps-spool-tumble' is non-nil,
7430 ps-print produces output suitable for bindings at the top or bottom.
7431 This variable takes effect only if `ps-spool-duplex' is non-nil.
7432 The default value is nil.
7434 The variable `ps-header-frame-alist' specifies a header frame
7435 properties alist. Valid frame properties are:
7437 fore-color Specify the foreground frame color.
7438 Value should be a float number between 0.0 (black
7439 color) and 1.0 (white color), or a string which is a
7440 color name, or a list of 3 float numbers which
7441 correspond to the Red Green Blue color scale, each
7442 float number between 0.0 (dark color) and 1.0 (bright
7443 color). The default is 0 ("black").
7445 back-color Specify the background frame color (similar to fore-color).
7446 The default is 0.9 ("gray90").
7448 shadow-color Specify the shadow color (similar to fore-color).
7449 The default is 0 ("black").
7451 border-color Specify the border color (similar to fore-color).
7452 The default is 0 ("black").
7454 border-width Specify the border width.
7457 Any other property is ignored.
7459 Don't change this alist directly; instead use Custom, or the
7460 `ps-value', `ps-get', `ps-put' and `ps-del' functions (see there for
7463 Ps-print can also print footers. The footer variables are:
7464 `ps-print-footer', `ps-footer-offset', `ps-print-footer-frame',
7465 `ps-footer-font-family', `ps-footer-font-size', `ps-footer-line-pad',
7466 `ps-footer-lines', `ps-left-footer', `ps-right-footer' and
7467 `ps-footer-frame-alist'. These variables are similar to those
7468 controlling headers.
7470 *** Color management (subgroup)
7472 If `ps-print-color-p' is non-nil, the buffer's text will be printed in
7475 *** Face Management (subgroup)
7477 If you need to print without worrying about face background colors,
7478 set the variable `ps-use-face-background' which specifies if face
7479 background should be used. Valid values are:
7481 t always use face background color.
7482 nil never use face background color.
7483 (face...) list of faces whose background color will be used.
7485 *** N-up printing (subgroup)
7487 The variable `ps-n-up-printing' specifies the number of pages per
7490 The variable `ps-n-up-margin' specifies the margin in points (pt)
7491 between the sheet border and the n-up printing.
7493 If variable `ps-n-up-border-p' is non-nil, a border is drawn around
7496 The variable `ps-n-up-filling' specifies how the page matrix is filled
7497 on each sheet of paper. Following are the valid values for
7498 `ps-n-up-filling' with a filling example using a 3x4 page matrix:
7500 `left-top' 1 2 3 4 `left-bottom' 9 10 11 12
7504 `right-top' 4 3 2 1 `right-bottom' 12 11 10 9
7508 `top-left' 1 4 7 10 `bottom-left' 3 6 9 12
7512 `top-right' 10 7 4 1 `bottom-right' 12 9 6 3
7516 Any other value is treated as `left-top'.
7518 *** Zebra stripes (subgroup)
7520 The variable `ps-zebra-color' controls the zebra stripes grayscale or
7523 The variable `ps-zebra-stripe-follow' specifies how zebra stripes
7524 continue on next page. Visually, valid values are (the character `+'
7525 to the right of each column indicates that a line is printed):
7527 `nil' `follow' `full' `full-follow'
7528 Current Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7529 1 XXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXX + 1 XXXXXX + 1 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7530 2 XXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXX + 2 XXXXXX + 2 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7531 3 XXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXX + 3 XXXXXX + 3 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7535 7 XXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXX + 7 XXXXXX + 7 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7536 8 XXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXX + 8 XXXXXX + 8 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7537 9 XXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXX + 9 XXXXXX + 9 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7540 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7541 Next Page -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7542 12 XXXXX + 12 + 10 XXXXXX + 10 +
7543 13 XXXXX + 13 XXXXXXXX + 11 XXXXXX + 11 +
7544 14 XXXXX + 14 XXXXXXXX + 12 XXXXXX + 12 +
7545 15 + 15 XXXXXXXX + 13 + 13 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7546 16 + 16 + 14 + 14 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7547 17 + 17 + 15 + 15 XXXXXXXXXXXXX +
7548 18 XXXXX + 18 + 16 XXXXXX + 16 +
7549 19 XXXXX + 19 XXXXXXXX + 17 XXXXXX + 17 +
7550 20 XXXXX + 20 XXXXXXXX + 18 XXXXXX + 18 +
7553 -------- ----------- --------- ----------------
7555 Any other value is treated as `nil'.
7558 *** Printer management (subgroup)
7560 The variable `ps-printer-name-option' determines the option used by
7561 some utilities to indicate the printer name; it's used only when
7562 `ps-printer-name' is a non-empty string. If you're using the lpr
7563 utility to print, for example, `ps-printer-name-option' should be set
7566 The variable `ps-manual-feed' indicates if the printer requires manual
7567 paper feeding. If it's nil, automatic feeding takes place. If it's
7568 non-nil, manual feeding takes place.
7570 The variable `ps-end-with-control-d' specifies whether C-d (\x04)
7571 should be inserted at end of the generated PostScript. Non-nil means
7574 *** Page settings (subgroup)
7576 If variable `ps-warn-paper-type' is nil, it's *not* treated as an
7577 error if the PostScript printer doesn't have a paper with the size
7578 indicated by `ps-paper-type'; the default paper size will be used
7579 instead. If `ps-warn-paper-type' is non-nil, an error is signaled if
7580 the PostScript printer doesn't support a paper with the size indicated
7581 by `ps-paper-type'. This is used when `ps-spool-config' is set to
7584 The variable `ps-print-upside-down' determines the orientation for
7585 printing pages: nil means `normal' printing, non-nil means
7586 `upside-down' printing (that is, the page is rotated by 180 degrees).
7588 The variable `ps-selected-pages' specifies which pages to print. If
7589 it's nil, all pages are printed. If it's a list, list elements may be
7590 integers specifying a single page to print, or cons cells (FROM . TO)
7591 specifying to print from page FROM to TO. Invalid list elements, that
7592 is integers smaller than one, or elements whose FROM is greater than
7593 its TO, are ignored.
7595 The variable `ps-even-or-odd-pages' specifies how to print even/odd
7596 pages. Valid values are:
7598 nil print all pages.
7600 `even-page' print only even pages.
7602 `odd-page' print only odd pages.
7604 `even-sheet' print only even sheets.
7605 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
7606 `even-page', but for values greater than 1, it'll
7607 print only the even sheet of paper.
7609 `odd-sheet' print only odd sheets.
7610 That is, if `ps-n-up-printing' is 1, it behaves like
7611 `odd-page'; but for values greater than 1, it'll print
7612 only the odd sheet of paper.
7614 Any other value is treated as nil.
7616 If you set `ps-selected-pages' (see there for documentation), pages
7617 are filtered by `ps-selected-pages', and then by
7618 `ps-even-or-odd-pages'. For example, if we have:
7620 (setq ps-selected-pages '(1 4 (6 . 10) (12 . 16) 20))
7622 and we combine this with `ps-even-or-odd-pages' and
7623 `ps-n-up-printing', we get:
7625 `ps-n-up-printing' = 1:
7626 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
7627 nil 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20
7628 even-page 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
7629 odd-page 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
7630 even-sheet 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
7631 odd-sheet 1, 7, 9, 13, 15
7633 `ps-n-up-printing' = 2:
7634 `ps-even-or-odd-pages' PAGES PRINTED
7635 nil 1/4, 6/7, 8/9, 10/12, 13/14, 15/16, 20
7636 even-page 4/6, 8/10, 12/14, 16/20
7637 odd-page 1/7, 9/13, 15
7638 even-sheet 6/7, 10/12, 15/16
7639 odd-sheet 1/4, 8/9, 13/14, 20
7641 *** Miscellany (subgroup)
7643 The variable `ps-error-handler-message' specifies where error handler
7644 messages should be sent.
7646 It is also possible to add a user-defined PostScript prologue code in
7647 front of all generated prologue code by setting the variable
7648 `ps-user-defined-prologue'.
7650 The variable `ps-line-number-font' specifies the font for line numbers.
7652 The variable `ps-line-number-font-size' specifies the font size in
7653 points for line numbers.
7655 The variable `ps-line-number-color' specifies the color for line
7656 numbers. See `ps-zebra-color' for documentation.
7658 The variable `ps-line-number-step' specifies the interval in which
7659 line numbers are printed. For example, if `ps-line-number-step' is set
7660 to 2, the printing will look like:
7672 integer an integer specifying the interval in which line numbers are
7673 printed. If it's smaller than or equal to zero, 1
7676 `zebra' specifies that only the line number of the first line in a
7677 zebra stripe is to be printed.
7679 Any other value is treated as `zebra'.
7681 The variable `ps-line-number-start' specifies the starting point in
7682 the interval given by `ps-line-number-step'. For example, if
7683 `ps-line-number-step' is set to 3, and `ps-line-number-start' is set to
7684 3, the output will look like:
7698 The variable `ps-postscript-code-directory' specifies the directory
7699 where the PostScript prologue file used by ps-print is found.
7701 The variable `ps-line-spacing' determines the line spacing in points,
7702 for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
7705 The variable `ps-paragraph-spacing' determines the paragraph spacing,
7706 in points, for ordinary text, when generating PostScript (similar to
7709 The variable `ps-paragraph-regexp' specifies the paragraph delimiter.
7711 The variable `ps-begin-cut-regexp' and `ps-end-cut-regexp' specify the
7712 start and end of a region to cut out when printing.
7714 ** hideshow changes.
7716 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
7719 *** Support for java-mode added.
7721 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
7722 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
7724 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the comments at
7725 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
7726 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
7728 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
7729 robust and a lot faster.
7731 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
7733 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
7734 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
7735 documentation for more details.
7737 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
7739 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
7740 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
7741 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
7742 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
7743 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
7745 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
7746 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
7747 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
7748 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
7754 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
7755 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
7756 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
7757 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
7758 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
7759 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
7761 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
7763 *** Maximum decoration
7765 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
7766 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
7767 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
7768 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
7769 to get the old behavior.
7773 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
7775 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
7776 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
7778 *** Configurable support
7780 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
7781 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
7782 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
7783 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
7784 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
7785 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
7786 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
7788 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
7789 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
7790 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
7792 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
7794 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
7795 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
7798 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
7800 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
7806 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
7807 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
7808 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
7809 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
7811 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
7813 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
7814 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
7815 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
7817 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
7819 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
7820 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
7821 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
7822 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
7823 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
7824 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
7825 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
7827 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
7828 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
7829 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
7830 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
7831 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
7832 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
7834 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
7836 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
7837 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
7838 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
7839 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
7841 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
7844 ** Ada mode changes.
7846 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
7847 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
7848 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
7849 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
7852 *** There are two new commands:
7853 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
7854 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
7856 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
7857 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
7858 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
7860 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
7861 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
7862 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
7864 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
7865 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
7866 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
7867 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
7869 ** Scheme mode changes.
7871 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
7872 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
7873 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
7874 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
7877 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
7878 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
7879 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
7880 variables as buffer-local variables.
7882 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
7885 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
7887 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
7888 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
7889 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
7890 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
7892 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
7893 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
7896 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
7897 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
7898 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
7899 option takes precedence.
7901 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
7902 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
7903 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
7905 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
7906 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
7909 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
7910 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
7912 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
7913 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
7916 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
7917 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
7918 these register values no longer become completely useless.
7919 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
7920 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
7921 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
7923 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
7924 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
7925 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
7926 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
7928 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
7929 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
7930 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
7931 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
7932 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
7934 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
7935 since it applies only to the current frame.
7937 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
7938 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
7939 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
7941 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
7942 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
7943 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
7944 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
7945 instead of just the file you are editing.
7949 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
7950 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
7951 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
7952 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
7953 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
7956 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
7957 knows which kind of label is needed.
7959 C-c ) reftex-reference
7960 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
7961 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
7963 C-c [ reftex-citation
7964 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
7965 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
7967 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
7968 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
7971 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
7972 can quickly jump to every section.
7974 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
7975 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
7976 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
7977 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
7978 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
7980 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7982 *** Info documentation is now available.
7984 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
7985 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
7987 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
7988 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
7990 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
7991 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
7993 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
7994 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
7995 appropriate functions.
7997 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
7998 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
8000 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
8003 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
8004 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
8006 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
8009 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
8010 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
8011 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
8013 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
8014 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
8015 prefixed with `ALT'.
8017 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
8018 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
8019 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
8022 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
8023 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
8024 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
8026 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
8027 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
8029 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
8030 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
8031 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
8033 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
8035 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
8037 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
8040 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
8041 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
8044 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
8047 *** Added support for imenu.
8049 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
8050 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
8051 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
8052 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
8054 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
8055 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
8057 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
8059 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
8061 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
8062 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
8063 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
8066 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
8067 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
8069 ** browse-url changes
8071 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
8072 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
8073 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
8074 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
8075 customization variables.
8077 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
8079 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
8080 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
8081 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
8085 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
8086 pops up the Info file for this command.
8088 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
8089 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
8090 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
8093 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
8094 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
8095 files in the same directory.
8097 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
8098 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
8099 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
8103 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
8104 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
8106 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
8107 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
8108 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
8109 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
8110 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
8111 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
8112 color when Viper is in insert state.
8113 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
8114 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
8115 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
8119 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
8120 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
8121 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
8122 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
8123 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
8125 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
8127 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
8128 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
8130 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
8131 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
8132 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
8134 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
8135 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
8136 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
8137 methods and protocols.
8139 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
8140 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
8141 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
8144 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
8145 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
8146 at least M times and as many as N times.
8148 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
8149 in files has changed slightly.
8151 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
8152 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
8153 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
8154 with old time-stamp-format values.
8156 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
8157 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
8158 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
8161 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
8162 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
8163 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
8164 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
8165 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
8166 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
8168 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
8169 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
8170 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
8172 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
8173 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
8174 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
8175 recommended now will continue to work then.
8177 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
8180 ** There are some additional major modes:
8182 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
8183 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
8184 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
8186 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
8187 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
8190 ** New Lisp packages include:
8192 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
8194 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
8195 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
8197 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
8199 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
8202 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
8203 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
8206 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
8207 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
8208 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
8209 strings or comments.
8211 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
8212 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
8213 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
8214 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
8217 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
8218 can visit them by short forms of their names.
8220 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
8221 Emacs Lisp function at point.
8223 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
8225 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
8226 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
8228 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
8230 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
8232 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
8234 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
8235 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
8237 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
8238 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
8239 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
8240 original place after inserting the copy.
8242 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
8245 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
8246 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
8247 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
8249 Enable mouse-drag with:
8250 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
8252 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
8254 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
8255 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
8257 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
8258 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
8262 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
8263 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
8264 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
8265 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
8266 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
8267 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
8268 instance) and vice versa.
8270 To use this package load it using
8271 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
8272 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
8273 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
8274 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
8275 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
8276 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
8278 *** Interface to ph.
8280 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
8282 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
8283 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
8286 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
8288 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
8289 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
8290 while the real cursor does not move.
8292 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
8293 for visiting your favorite web sites.
8295 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
8296 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
8300 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
8301 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
8302 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
8303 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
8305 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
8307 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
8309 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
8311 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
8312 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
8313 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
8314 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
8315 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
8317 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
8318 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
8319 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
8320 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
8321 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
8322 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
8324 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
8326 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
8327 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
8328 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
8329 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
8331 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
8332 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
8334 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
8335 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
8338 ** Basic Lisp changes
8340 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
8341 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
8343 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
8344 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
8347 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
8349 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
8351 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
8352 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
8354 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
8355 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
8358 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
8360 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
8362 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
8364 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
8365 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
8366 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
8369 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
8370 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
8371 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
8373 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
8374 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
8375 adding one of these suffixes.
8377 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
8378 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
8379 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
8381 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
8382 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
8384 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
8386 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
8387 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
8389 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
8390 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
8392 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
8394 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
8395 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
8397 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
8398 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
8399 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
8400 works using `save-current-buffer'.
8402 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
8403 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
8406 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
8407 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
8408 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
8411 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
8412 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
8415 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
8417 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
8418 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
8419 Then it returns that string.
8421 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
8423 (with-output-to-string
8424 (princ "The buffer is ")
8425 (princ (buffer-name)))
8427 returns "The buffer is foo".
8429 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
8432 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
8433 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
8434 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
8436 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
8437 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
8439 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
8440 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
8441 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
8442 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
8443 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
8444 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
8446 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
8447 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
8448 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
8451 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
8452 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
8453 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
8454 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
8455 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
8457 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
8458 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
8459 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
8460 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
8462 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
8463 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
8465 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
8467 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
8468 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
8469 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
8470 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
8473 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
8474 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
8477 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
8479 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
8480 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
8481 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
8482 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
8483 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
8485 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
8487 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
8488 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
8489 more than the number of characters.
8491 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
8492 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
8493 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
8494 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
8495 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
8496 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
8498 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
8499 and returns a string containing those characters.
8501 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
8502 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
8503 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
8504 character, sref signals an error.
8506 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
8507 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
8508 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
8510 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
8511 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
8512 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
8514 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
8515 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
8516 to a vector of the characters in it.
8518 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
8519 of a string. You call it as follows:
8521 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
8523 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
8524 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
8525 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
8526 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
8527 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
8529 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
8530 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
8532 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
8533 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
8535 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
8536 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
8537 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
8538 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
8540 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
8542 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
8544 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
8545 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
8546 are not included in the resulting value.
8548 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
8549 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
8550 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
8551 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
8553 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
8554 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
8555 character extends across that column), then the padding character
8556 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
8557 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
8558 column START-COLUMN.
8560 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
8561 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
8562 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
8563 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
8564 changed text, before the change.
8566 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
8567 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
8568 one character set for each script, not for each language.
8570 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
8572 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
8574 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
8575 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
8577 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
8578 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
8579 which identify the character within that character set.
8581 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
8582 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
8583 opposite of split-char.
8585 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
8586 of all the characters between BEG and END.
8588 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
8589 of all the characters in a string.
8591 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
8592 and specifying coding systems.
8594 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
8595 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
8596 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
8597 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
8598 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
8599 as what to do about code conversion.)
8601 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
8602 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
8604 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
8605 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
8606 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
8608 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
8609 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
8610 to match against a file name.
8612 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
8613 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
8614 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
8615 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
8616 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
8617 specifies the coding system for encoding.
8619 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
8620 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
8622 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
8623 the coding system to use for network sockets.
8625 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
8626 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
8627 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
8630 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
8631 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
8632 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
8633 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
8634 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
8635 specifies the coding system for encoding.
8637 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
8638 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
8640 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
8641 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
8642 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
8643 start the subprocess.
8645 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
8646 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
8647 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
8648 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
8649 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
8651 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
8652 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
8655 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
8656 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
8657 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
8658 connection permanently or until overridden.
8660 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
8661 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
8662 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
8663 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
8664 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
8665 system for one operation at a time.
8667 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
8668 files, subprocesses or network connections.
8670 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
8671 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
8672 The value is a cons cell,
8673 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
8674 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
8675 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
8676 input to the subprocess.
8678 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
8679 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
8681 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
8682 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
8683 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
8685 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
8686 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
8687 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
8688 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
8691 Thus, instead of writing
8693 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
8694 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
8696 you would now write this:
8698 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
8699 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
8703 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
8704 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
8705 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
8706 for a description of them.
8708 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
8709 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
8711 (defgroup ispell nil
8712 "Spell checking using Ispell."
8715 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
8716 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
8717 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
8718 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
8719 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
8721 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
8722 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
8723 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
8724 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
8725 first-level subgroups.
8727 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
8729 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
8730 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
8734 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
8735 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
8736 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
8737 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
8738 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
8739 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
8741 ** Text property changes
8743 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
8746 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
8747 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
8748 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
8749 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
8750 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
8752 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
8753 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
8754 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
8755 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
8757 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
8758 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
8759 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
8761 ** Changes in invisibility features
8763 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
8764 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
8765 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
8766 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
8767 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
8768 make the overlay visible.
8770 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
8771 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
8772 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
8773 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
8774 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
8775 t when it should hide it.
8777 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
8779 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
8780 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
8781 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
8782 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
8783 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
8784 Here is an example of how to do this:
8786 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
8787 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
8788 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
8789 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
8792 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
8795 ;; When done with the overlays:
8796 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
8798 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
8800 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
8802 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
8803 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
8804 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
8805 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
8807 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
8808 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
8809 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
8811 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
8812 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
8814 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
8815 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
8817 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
8818 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
8819 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
8821 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
8822 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
8823 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
8824 determine the syntax type of the character.
8826 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
8827 of the current buffer.
8829 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
8830 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
8831 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
8833 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
8834 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
8835 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
8836 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
8837 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
8839 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
8842 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
8843 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
8844 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
8846 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
8847 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
8848 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
8849 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
8850 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
8852 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
8853 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
8854 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
8856 ** Changes in face features
8858 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
8859 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
8861 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
8862 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
8864 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
8865 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
8867 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
8868 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
8870 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
8871 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
8872 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
8873 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
8876 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
8877 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
8879 ** Changes in file-handling functions
8881 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
8882 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
8883 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
8884 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
8886 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
8889 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
8890 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
8892 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
8893 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
8895 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
8896 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
8898 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
8899 character code conversion as well as other things.
8901 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
8902 (formerly it did not).
8904 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
8905 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
8907 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
8908 instead of constant strings.
8910 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
8911 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
8912 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
8914 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
8915 in the same way as before.
8917 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
8918 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
8919 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
8921 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
8922 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
8923 else, and returns nil.
8925 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
8926 directory cannot be listed.
8928 ** Changes in minibuffer input
8930 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
8931 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
8932 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
8933 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
8936 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
8937 It is available through the history command M-n.
8939 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
8940 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
8941 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
8942 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
8943 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
8945 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
8946 argument in this way.
8948 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
8949 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
8950 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
8952 ** Echo area features
8954 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
8955 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
8956 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
8957 after the echo area is cleared.
8959 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
8960 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
8962 ** Keyboard input features
8964 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
8965 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
8967 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
8968 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
8971 ** Frame-related changes
8973 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
8974 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
8975 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
8977 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
8978 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
8979 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
8981 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
8982 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
8983 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
8984 in the selected frame.
8986 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
8987 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
8988 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
8990 ** X Windows features
8992 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
8993 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
8994 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
8996 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
8997 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
8999 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
9000 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
9001 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
9003 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
9004 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
9006 ** Subprocess features
9008 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
9009 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
9012 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
9013 and returns the output from the command as a string.
9015 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
9016 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
9018 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
9019 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
9021 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
9022 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
9023 goes after the other menu items.
9025 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
9026 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
9027 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
9030 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
9031 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
9033 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
9034 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
9037 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
9038 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
9039 but its hook is still run.
9041 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
9042 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
9044 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
9045 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
9046 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
9048 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
9049 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
9050 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
9053 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
9054 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
9056 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
9057 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
9058 functions like display-time.
9060 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
9061 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
9063 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
9064 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
9065 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
9067 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
9068 if there is an error in compilation.
9070 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
9071 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
9072 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
9073 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
9075 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
9076 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
9077 the *scratch* buffer.
9079 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
9080 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
9081 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
9082 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
9084 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
9085 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
9086 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
9088 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
9089 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
9090 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
9091 and compose-mail-other-frame.
9093 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
9094 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
9095 full name of the specified user will be returned.
9097 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
9098 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
9099 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
9100 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
9101 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
9104 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
9105 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
9106 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
9107 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
9109 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
9110 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
9111 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
9112 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
9114 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
9116 ** imenu.el changes.
9118 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
9119 item from menu created by imenu.
9121 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
9122 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
9123 select one of those items.
9125 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
9127 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
9128 Copyright information:
9130 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
9132 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
9133 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
9134 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
9135 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
9137 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
9138 of this document, or of portions of it,
9139 under the above conditions, provided also that they
9140 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
9144 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"