1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-09-27
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables and also on Irix 6.5. This increases the
30 maximum buffer size. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
33 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
35 ** The new global minor mode `auto-image-file-mode' allows image files
36 to be visited as images.
38 ** The functions `keep-lines', `flush-lines' and `how-many' now
39 operate on the active region in Transient Mark mode.
41 ** The header line in an Info buffer is now displayed as an emacs header-line
42 (which is like a mode-line, but at the top of the window), so that it
43 remains visible even when the buffer has been scrolled. This behavior
44 may be disabled by customizing the option `Info-use-header-line'.
46 ** `gnus-user-agent' is a new possibility for `mail-user-agent'. It
47 is like `message-user-agent', but with all the Gnus paraphernalia.
50 ** The recommended way of using Iswitchb is via the new global minor
55 The Gnus NEWS entries are short, but they reflect sweeping changes in
56 four areas: Article display treatment, MIME treatment,
57 internationalization and mail-fetching.
59 *** The mail-fetching functions have changed. See the manual for the
60 many details. In particular, all procmail fetching variables are gone.
62 If you used procmail like in
64 (setq nnmail-use-procmail t)
65 (setq nnmail-spool-file 'procmail)
66 (setq nnmail-procmail-directory "~/mail/incoming/")
67 (setq nnmail-procmail-suffix "\\.in")
69 this now has changed to
72 '((directory :path "~/mail/incoming/"
75 More information is available in the info doc at Select Methods ->
76 Getting Mail -> Mail Sources
78 *** Gnus is now a MIME-capable reader. This affects many parts of
79 Gnus, and adds a slew of new commands. See the manual for details.
81 *** Gnus has also been multilingualized. This also affects too many
82 parts of Gnus to summarize here, and adds many new variables.
83 Separate MIME packages like SEMI will not work. There are built-in
84 facilities equivalent to those of gnus-mule.el, which is now just a
87 *** gnus-auto-select-first can now be a function to be
88 called to position point.
90 *** The user can now decide which extra headers should be included in
91 summary buffers and NOV files.
93 *** `gnus-article-display-hook' has been removed. Instead, a number
94 of variables starting with `gnus-treat-' have been added.
96 *** The Gnus posting styles have been redone again and now work in a
97 subtly different manner.
99 *** New web-based backends have been added: nnslashdot, nnwarchive
100 and nnultimate. nnweb has been revamped, again, to keep up with
101 ever-changing layouts.
103 *** Gnus can now read IMAP mail via nnimap.
105 *** There is image support.
107 ** When your terminal can't display characters from some of the ISO
108 8859 character sets but can display Latin-1, you can display
109 more-or-less mnemonic sequences of ASCII/Latin-1 characters instead of
110 empty boxes (under a window system) or question marks (not under a
111 window system). Customize the option `latin1-display' to turn this
114 ** The new user-option `find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings' can be
115 set to suppress warnings ``X and Y are the same file'' when visiting a
116 file that is already visited under a different name.
118 ** The new user-option `electric-help-shrink-window' can be set to
119 nil to prevent adjusting the help window size to the buffer size.
121 ** Emacs now checks for recursive loads of Lisp files. If the
122 recursion depth exceeds `recursive-load-depth-limit', an error is
125 ** The Strokes package has been updated. If your Emacs has XPM
126 support, you can use it for pictographic editing. In Strokes mode,
127 use C-mouse-2 to compose a complex stoke and insert it into the
128 buffer. You can encode or decode a strokes buffer with new commands
129 M-x strokes-encode-buffer and M-x strokes-decode-buffer. There is a
130 new command M-x strokes-list-strokes.
133 ** New command M-x describe-character-set reads a character set name
134 and displayes information about that.
136 ** When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
137 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
139 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
140 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
141 Postscript files are included.
143 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
146 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
147 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
149 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
150 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
151 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
152 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
153 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
154 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
157 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
158 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
159 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
160 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
162 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
163 a version-dependent component.
165 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
166 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
167 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
168 character is still bound as before.
170 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
173 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
174 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
177 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
178 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
179 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
180 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
181 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
182 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
183 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
186 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
187 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
188 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
189 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
190 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
191 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
192 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
193 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
194 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
196 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
197 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
200 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
201 point in a pop-up window.
204 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
205 displays all characters in that character set.
207 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
208 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
211 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
212 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
213 defined on newcomment.el.
216 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
218 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
219 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
222 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
223 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
224 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
225 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
228 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
229 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
230 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
231 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
234 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
235 on the display using several methods
238 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
239 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
240 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
243 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
244 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
246 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
248 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
249 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
252 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
253 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
254 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
255 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
258 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
259 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
260 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
262 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
263 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
266 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
267 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
270 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
271 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
275 ** New X resources recognized
277 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
278 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
279 is useful for debugging X problems.
283 emacs.synchronous: true
285 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
286 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
287 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
288 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
289 visual class names are
298 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
299 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
302 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
303 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
304 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
309 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
311 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
312 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
313 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
314 resource values are `true' or `on'.
318 emacs.privateColormap: true
320 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
321 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
322 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
324 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
325 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
326 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
330 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
333 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
334 all frames except the selected one.
336 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
337 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
339 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
340 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
341 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
342 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
345 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
346 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
348 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
349 read mail from the menu etc.
352 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
353 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
355 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
357 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
361 -------------------------
368 ** Changes in Outline mode.
370 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
371 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
372 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
374 ** Changes to Emacs Server
377 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
378 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
379 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
380 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
381 buffers to kill, as before.
383 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
384 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
387 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
389 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
390 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
391 use. Default is 1000.
394 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
395 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
398 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
399 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
400 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
404 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
405 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
408 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
409 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
411 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
412 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
413 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
415 ** Faces and frame parameters.
417 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
418 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
419 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
420 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
421 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
422 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
423 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
425 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
426 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
427 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
428 `default' face and vice versa.
433 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
434 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
435 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
438 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
440 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
441 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
442 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
443 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
445 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
446 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
447 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
449 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
452 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
454 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
455 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
456 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
457 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
460 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
462 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
463 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
464 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
465 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
468 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
469 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
470 under Lisp changes, below.
472 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
475 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
476 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
477 otherwise, it is hollow.
479 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
480 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
481 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
482 customizing face `fringe'.
484 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
485 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
489 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
490 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
492 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
494 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
495 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
496 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
497 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
498 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
501 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
502 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
503 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
504 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
505 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
506 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
508 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
509 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
510 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
511 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
512 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
513 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
515 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
516 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
517 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
518 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
519 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
521 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
523 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
524 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
525 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
528 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
530 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
531 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
532 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
533 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
534 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
540 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
541 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
546 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
547 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
548 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
551 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
553 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
554 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
555 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
558 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
559 have to do anything to activate it.
561 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
563 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
564 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
565 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
566 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
568 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
571 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
573 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
575 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
578 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
582 ** Hscrolling in C code.
584 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
585 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
590 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
591 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
592 Tool-bar global minor mode controls whether or not it is displayed.
593 To make the tool bar more useful, we need contributions of extra icons
594 for specific modes (with copyright assignments).
597 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
599 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
600 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
601 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
602 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
603 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
605 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
607 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
610 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
611 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
613 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
615 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
616 `*') toggles the status.
618 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
620 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
622 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
623 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
626 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
628 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
629 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
630 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
631 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
632 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
633 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
638 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
639 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
640 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
643 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
644 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
645 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
646 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
647 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
648 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
650 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
653 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
655 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
656 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
657 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
660 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
661 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
663 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
664 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
665 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
668 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
670 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
671 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
672 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
673 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
675 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
676 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
677 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
678 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
680 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
681 notably at the end of lines.
683 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
684 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
687 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
689 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
690 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
691 after each match to get the replacement text.
694 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
695 you edit the replacement string.
697 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
698 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
699 lisp-complete-symbol.
702 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
704 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
705 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
706 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
707 window size by setting the following variable:
709 - User option: max-mini-window-height
711 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
712 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
713 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
717 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
719 ** Changes to hideshow.el
721 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
722 selection and traversal, includes more isearch support, and has more
723 conventional keybindings.
725 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
727 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
728 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
729 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
730 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
731 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
732 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
734 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
735 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
736 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
737 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
739 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
741 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
742 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
743 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
744 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
745 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
747 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
748 something like this in your .emacs.
750 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
752 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
754 *** New customization var: `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function'
756 Normally, `hs-hide-all' hides everything, leaving only the
757 header lines of top-level forms (and comments, unless var
758 `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is non-nil). It does this by
759 moving point to each top-level block beginning and hiding the
760 block there. In some major modes (for example, Java), this
761 behavior results in few blocks left visible, which may not be so
764 You can now set var `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' to a
765 function to be called at each top-level block beginning, instead
766 of the normal block-hiding function. For example, the following
767 code defines a function to hide one level down and move point
768 appropriately, and then tells hideshow to use the new function.
770 (defun ttn-hs-hide-level-1 ()
773 (setq hs-hide-all-non-comment-function 'ttn-hs-hide-level-1)
775 The name `hs-hide-all-non-comment-function' was chosen to
776 emphasize that this function is not called for comment blocks,
777 only for code blocks.
779 *** Command deleted: `hs-show-region'
781 Historical Note: This command was added to handle "unbalanced
782 parentheses" emergencies back when hideshow.el used selective
783 display for implementation.
785 *** Commands rebound to more conventional keys
787 The hideshow commands used to be bound to keys of the form "C-c
788 LETTER". This is contrary to the Emacs keybinding convention,
789 which reserves that space for user modification. Here are the
790 new bindings (which includes the addition of `hs-toggle-hiding'):
792 hs-hide-block C-c C-h
793 hs-show-block C-c C-s
794 hs-hide-all C-c C-M-h
795 hs-show-all C-c C-M-s
796 hs-hide-level C-c C-l
797 hs-toggle-hiding C-c C-c
798 hs-mouse-toggle-hiding [(shift button-2)]
800 These were chosen to roughly imitate those used by Outline mode.
802 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
805 *** If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes
806 an entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
807 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
810 **** New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the
814 *** New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries
818 *** Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log
819 entries if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
822 *** Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
823 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
824 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
825 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
827 *** Change Log mode now defines its own faces for font-lock
830 ** Changes in Font Lock
832 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
833 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
836 ** Comint (subshell) changes
838 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
839 distinguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
840 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
841 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
842 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
843 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
844 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
845 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
847 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
848 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
850 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
851 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
852 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
854 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
855 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
856 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
858 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
859 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
860 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
861 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
863 ** Changes to Rmail mode
865 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
866 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
867 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
868 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
869 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
872 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
873 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
874 regexp matching your mail addresses.
876 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
877 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
878 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
879 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
880 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
882 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
885 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
886 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
889 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
890 in which folder to put messages automatically.
892 ** Changes to TeX mode
894 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
897 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
899 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
900 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
901 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
902 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
903 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
904 can be edited from that buffer.
906 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
907 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
908 `A' to use all marked entries).
910 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
911 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
913 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
914 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
915 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
918 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
919 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
920 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
921 in column 1 are always made leaves.
923 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
924 has the following new features:
926 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
927 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
928 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
929 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
931 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
932 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
933 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
934 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
935 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
938 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
944 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
945 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
946 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
948 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
949 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
950 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
951 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
956 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
957 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
958 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
960 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
961 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
964 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
965 between custom options. Example:
967 (defcustom default-input-method nil
968 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
969 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
970 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
972 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
973 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
975 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
976 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
977 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
979 ** New features in evaluation commands
981 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
982 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
983 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
984 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
985 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
987 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
988 code when called with a prefix argument.
993 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
994 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
995 spell-checks the current buffer.
998 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
1001 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
1002 correction is made and re-checked.
1004 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
1006 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
1009 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
1012 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
1017 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
1018 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
1019 is, delete only empty directories.
1021 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
1022 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
1023 copy directories recursively.
1025 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
1026 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
1027 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
1029 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
1030 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
1033 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
1034 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
1035 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
1036 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
1037 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
1039 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
1042 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
1043 use the -f option when sending mail.
1047 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
1048 current user setups (although it's believed that these
1049 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
1050 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
1051 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
1052 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
1055 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
1056 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
1057 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
1058 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
1059 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
1062 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
1063 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
1064 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
1065 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
1066 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
1067 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
1069 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
1070 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
1071 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
1072 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
1073 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
1074 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
1075 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
1076 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
1078 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
1079 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
1080 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
1081 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
1084 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
1085 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
1086 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
1087 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
1088 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
1089 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
1090 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
1091 function documentation for more info.
1093 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
1094 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
1095 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
1096 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
1097 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
1098 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
1099 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
1100 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
1102 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
1104 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
1105 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
1107 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
1108 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
1109 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
1110 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
1111 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
1114 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
1115 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
1116 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
1119 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
1120 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
1121 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
1122 chapter about this in the manual.
1124 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
1125 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
1126 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
1127 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
1128 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
1130 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
1131 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
1132 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
1134 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
1135 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
1137 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
1138 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
1139 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
1142 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
1143 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
1144 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
1145 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
1148 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
1149 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
1150 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
1153 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
1154 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
1155 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
1156 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1159 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1160 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1161 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1162 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1163 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1165 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1166 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1167 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1169 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1171 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1172 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1173 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1174 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1176 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1177 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1178 the column specified by comment-column.
1180 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1181 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1182 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1183 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1184 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1185 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1187 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1188 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1191 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1193 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1194 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1195 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1196 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1199 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1201 ** Makefile mode changes
1203 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1205 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1206 Fontlock mode is active.
1210 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1211 so that searches can be resumed.
1213 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1214 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1215 that started the search.
1217 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1218 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1221 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1223 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1224 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1225 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1226 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1227 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1228 `secondary-selection'.
1230 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1231 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1232 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1233 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1234 usual snappy response.
1236 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1237 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1238 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1239 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1242 ** Changes in sort.el
1244 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1245 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1246 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
1249 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1252 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1253 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1254 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1256 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1257 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1259 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1260 output ^M at the end of lines.
1262 ** Shell script mode changes.
1264 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1265 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1266 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1270 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1272 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1273 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1274 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1275 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1276 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1278 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1279 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1281 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1282 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1284 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1287 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1289 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1291 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1294 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1295 variables are tagged.
1297 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1299 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1303 ** Changes in etags.el
1305 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1306 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1307 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1309 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1310 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1312 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1313 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1314 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1315 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1317 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1319 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1320 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1322 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1324 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1325 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1326 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1328 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1329 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1331 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1332 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1335 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1336 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1337 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1340 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1341 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1342 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1343 GNU Intlfonts doesn't support these yet; there are basic 8859-14 and
1344 8859-15 fonts at <URL:http://czyborra.com/charsets/> and recent X
1345 releases have 8859-15. There are new Latin-8 and Latin-9 prefix
1346 (only) and Polish slash input methods in Leim.
1349 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1350 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1351 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1353 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1356 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1359 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignored-regexps'
1360 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1361 expression from that list, are not checked.
1363 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1364 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1365 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1366 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1368 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1371 ** When invoked with a prefix argument, the command `list-abbrevs' now
1372 displays local abbrevs, only.
1376 VC has been overhauled internally. It is now modular, making it
1377 easier to plug-in arbitrary version control backends. (See Lisp
1378 Changes for details on the new structure.) As a result, the mechanism
1379 to enable and disable support for particular version systems has
1380 changed: everything is now controlled by the new variable
1381 `vc-handled-backends'. Its value is a list of atoms that identify
1382 version systems; the default is '(RCS CVS SCCS). When finding a file,
1383 each of the backends in that list is tried in order to see whether the
1384 file is registered in that backend.
1386 When registering a new file, VC first tries each of the listed
1387 backends to see if any of them considers itself "responsible" for the
1388 directory of the file (e.g. because a corresponding subdirectory for
1389 master files exists). If none of the backends is responsible, then
1390 the first backend in the list that could register the file is chosen.
1391 As a consequence, the variable `vc-default-back-end' is now obsolete.
1393 The old variable `vc-master-templates' is also obsolete, although VC
1394 still supports it for backward compatibility. To define templates for
1395 RCS or SCCS, you should rather use the new variables
1396 vc-{rcs,sccs}-master-templates. (There is no such feature under CVS
1397 where it doesn't make sense.)
1399 The variables `vc-ignore-vc-files' and `vc-handle-cvs' are also
1400 obsolete now, you must set `vc-handled-backends' to nil or exclude
1401 `CVS' from the list, respectively, to achieve their effect now.
1405 The variable `vc-checkout-carefully' is obsolete: the corresponding
1406 checks are always done now.
1408 VC Dired buffers are now kept up-to-date during all version control
1413 There is a new user option, `vc-cvs-stay-local'. If it is `t' (the
1414 default), then VC avoids network queries for files registered in
1415 remote repositories. The state of such files is then only determined
1416 by heuristics and past information. `vc-cvs-stay-local' can also be a
1417 regexp to match against repository hostnames; only files from hosts
1418 that match it are treated locally. If the variable is nil, then VC
1419 queries the repository just as often as it does for local files.
1421 If `vc-cvs-stay-local' is on, and there have been changes in the
1422 repository, VC notifies you about it when you actually try to commit.
1423 If you want to check for updates from the repository without trying to
1424 commit, you can either use C-u C-x v m to perform an update on the
1425 current file, or you can use C-x v r RET to get an update for an
1426 entire directory tree.
1428 The new user option `vc-cvs-use-edit' indicates whether VC should call
1429 "cvs edit" to make files writeable; it defaults to `t'. (This option
1430 is only meaningful if the CVSREAD variable is set, or if files are
1431 "watched" by other developers.)
1433 *** Lisp Changes in VC
1435 VC has been restructured internally to make it modular. You can now
1436 add support for arbitrary version control backends by writing a
1437 library that provides a certain set of backend-specific functions, and
1438 then telling VC to use that library. For example, to add support for
1439 a version system named FOO, you write a library named vc-foo.el, which
1440 provides a number of functions vc-foo-... (see commentary at the end
1441 of vc.el for a detailed list of them). To make VC use that library,
1442 you need to put it somewhere into Emacs' load path and add the atom
1443 `FOO' to the list `vc-handled-backends'.
1445 ** New modes and packages
1448 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1449 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1450 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1451 on certain projects.
1454 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1455 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1457 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1459 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1460 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1461 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1462 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1463 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1464 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1465 corresponding file is read.
1468 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1471 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1472 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1474 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1475 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1476 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1479 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1480 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1481 separate Texinfo file.
1484 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1485 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1486 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1487 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1488 enter checkin log messages.
1491 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1492 without invoking external programs.
1494 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1495 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1496 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1497 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1498 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1500 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1501 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1504 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1505 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1507 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1508 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1509 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1510 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1511 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1514 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1515 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1516 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1517 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1520 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1521 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1522 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1524 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1527 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1529 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1531 ; comment (until end of line)
1535 $A default non-terminal
1536 $"C" default terminal
1537 $?C? default special
1538 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1539 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1540 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1541 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1542 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1543 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1544 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1545 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1546 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1547 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1548 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1549 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1550 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1551 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1552 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1554 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1556 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1557 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1558 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1559 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1560 equal signs of assignments.
1563 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1564 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1567 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1568 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1569 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1570 customize the package.
1572 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1574 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1575 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1576 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1577 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1578 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1579 which answers different needs.
1582 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1583 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1584 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1585 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1586 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1590 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1591 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1594 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1597 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1599 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1601 Please note: if `ansi-color-for-shell-mode' and
1602 `global-font-lock-mode' are non-nil, loading ansi-color.el will
1603 disable font-lock and add `ansi-color-apply' to
1604 `comint-preoutput-filter-functions' for all shell-mode buffers. This
1605 displays the output of "ls --color=yes" using the correct foreground
1606 and background colors.
1608 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1612 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1615 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1618 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1620 *** whitespace.el ???
1622 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1623 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1624 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1625 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1626 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1627 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1628 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1630 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1632 Here is an example of columns:
1635 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1636 porcupine strawberry airplane
1638 Doing the following settings:
1640 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1641 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1642 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1643 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1646 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1648 M-x delimit-columns-region
1652 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1653 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1654 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1656 delim-col has the following options:
1658 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1661 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1662 between each column.
1664 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1667 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1670 delim-col has the following commands:
1672 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1673 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1676 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1677 were operated on recently.
1679 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1681 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1682 recentf at Emacs startup.
1684 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1685 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1686 file list can be displayed:
1688 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1689 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1690 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1692 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1693 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1695 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1699 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1700 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1701 specific to Message mode.
1704 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1705 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1706 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1709 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1710 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1711 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1713 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1714 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1717 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1719 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1720 minibuffer with completion.
1722 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1723 with the diary features.
1725 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1726 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1728 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1731 *** gnus-mule.el is now just a compatibility layer over the built-in
1734 ** Withdrawn packages
1736 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1737 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1739 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1741 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1744 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1745 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1748 ** The new function `display-message-or-buffer' displays a message in
1749 the echo area or pops up a buffer, depending on the length of the
1752 ** The new macro `with-auto-compression-mode' allows evaluating an
1753 expression with auto-compression-mode enabled.
1755 ** In image specifications, `:heuristic-mask' has been replaced
1756 with the more general `:mask' property.
1758 ** Image specifications accept more `:algorithm's.
1760 ** A `?' can be used in a symbol name without escaping it with a
1764 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1765 is running in batch mode. For example,
1767 (message "%s" (read t))
1769 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1773 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1774 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1776 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1777 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1781 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1784 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1786 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1787 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1789 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1791 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1792 comparison is done with `eq'.
1794 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1796 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1800 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1801 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1802 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1804 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1805 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1807 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1808 function was declared obsolete.
1810 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1811 retained as an alias).
1813 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1814 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1815 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1817 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1819 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1821 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1822 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1824 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1826 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1828 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1830 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1831 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1832 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1833 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1836 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1837 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1838 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1839 minibuffer even if it is active.
1841 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1842 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1843 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1844 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1845 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1846 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1848 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1849 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1850 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1851 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1852 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1853 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1854 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1856 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1857 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1858 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1860 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1861 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1862 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1863 Default value is nil.
1865 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1868 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1869 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1870 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1872 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1875 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1876 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1877 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1878 than replacing the local map.
1880 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1881 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1883 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1886 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1889 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1891 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1893 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1894 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1895 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1896 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1898 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1899 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1900 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1901 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1903 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1904 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1905 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1906 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1908 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1909 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1910 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1912 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1913 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1914 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1915 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1916 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1917 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1918 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1921 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1923 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1924 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1925 character set as previously.
1927 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1928 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1929 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1931 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1932 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1933 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1934 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1936 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1937 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1939 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1940 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1943 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1944 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1946 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1947 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1948 buffers and strings.
1950 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1951 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1952 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1953 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1954 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1955 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1956 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1959 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1960 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1961 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1963 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1964 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1965 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1966 may differ between buffer and string text.
1968 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1969 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1971 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1972 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1973 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1974 `composition' from STRING.
1976 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1977 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1979 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1982 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1983 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1984 character set is not used.
1986 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1987 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1988 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1991 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1992 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1993 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1996 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1997 that offset in the file before writing.
1999 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
2000 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
2002 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
2003 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
2004 from which the command was issued.
2006 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
2007 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
2008 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
2009 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
2012 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
2013 to `window-buffer-height'.
2015 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
2017 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
2018 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
2019 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
2021 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
2024 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
2025 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
2027 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
2028 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
2029 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
2031 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
2032 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
2033 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
2034 is currently displayed in some window.
2036 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
2037 argument function's results.
2039 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
2040 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
2042 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
2043 header in the list of headers passed to it.
2045 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
2046 ignores differences in case and text representation.
2048 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
2049 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
2052 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
2053 nil don't display a cursor
2054 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
2055 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
2056 others display a box cursor.
2058 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
2059 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
2060 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
2061 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
2063 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
2064 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
2065 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
2066 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
2070 (string-to-syntax "()")
2073 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
2076 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
2077 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
2084 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
2089 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
2094 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
2101 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
2102 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
2105 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
2106 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
2107 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
2108 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
2111 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
2113 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
2114 for a regexp in a string.
2116 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
2117 `mouse-position-function'.
2119 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
2120 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
2122 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
2123 Keywords are now always considered constants.
2126 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
2129 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
2130 returned by function `recent-keys'.
2133 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
2134 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
2135 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
2136 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
2140 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
2141 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
2144 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
2145 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
2146 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
2147 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
2150 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
2151 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
2152 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
2153 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
2156 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
2157 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
2158 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
2161 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
2162 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
2165 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
2167 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
2168 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
2169 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
2173 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
2174 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
2177 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
2178 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
2181 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
2182 instead of being optional.
2185 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
2186 modify read-only text.
2189 ** New functions and variables for locales.
2191 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
2192 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
2193 time functions like strftime. The new variables
2194 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
2195 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
2197 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
2198 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
2199 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
2200 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
2201 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
2202 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
2203 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
2206 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
2207 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
2208 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
2212 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
2213 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
2216 ** New function `propertize'
2218 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
2219 strings with text properties.
2221 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
2223 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
2224 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
2225 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
2226 specified value of that property. Example:
2228 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
2231 ** push and pop macros.
2233 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
2234 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
2235 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
2237 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
2238 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
2239 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
2241 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
2243 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
2244 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
2246 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
2247 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
2248 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
2249 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
2251 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
2252 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
2253 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
2254 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
2257 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
2258 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
2260 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
2261 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
2262 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
2263 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
2264 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
2266 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
2268 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
2269 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2270 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2271 [:alpha:] matches letters.
2272 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2273 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2274 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
2275 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
2276 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
2277 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
2278 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2279 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2280 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2281 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
2282 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2285 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2287 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2289 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2291 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2292 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2296 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2297 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2298 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2302 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2303 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2305 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2307 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2308 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2309 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2310 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2311 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2313 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2315 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2316 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2317 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2321 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2322 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2323 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2324 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2325 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2327 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2329 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2331 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2333 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2335 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2337 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2340 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2342 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2344 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2346 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2348 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2350 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2352 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2354 Returns the size of TABLE.
2356 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2358 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2360 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2362 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2364 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2368 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2370 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2373 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2375 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2376 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2378 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2380 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2382 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2384 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2385 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2387 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2389 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2391 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2393 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2394 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2395 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2396 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2397 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2399 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2401 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2402 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2403 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2405 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2406 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2408 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2409 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2411 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2412 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2414 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2415 'case-fold-string-hash))
2417 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2420 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2422 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2423 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2424 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2427 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2429 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2430 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2433 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2434 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2435 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2436 is too short to reach that column.
2439 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2440 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2441 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2442 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2444 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2445 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2446 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2449 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2450 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2453 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2454 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2457 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2458 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2459 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2460 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2461 temporary-file-directory instead.
2464 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2465 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2466 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2467 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2470 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2471 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2474 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2476 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2477 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2478 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2481 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2483 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2484 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2485 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2486 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2487 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2488 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2490 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2491 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2492 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2493 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2496 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2498 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2499 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2500 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2503 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2504 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2508 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2510 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2511 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2514 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2517 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2519 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2520 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2523 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2525 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2526 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2532 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2533 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2535 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2536 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2537 to enable sound support.
2539 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2540 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2541 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2542 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2543 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2545 The following sound properties are supported:
2549 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2550 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2554 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2555 may be present, but not both.
2559 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2560 0..1. This property is optional.
2562 Other properties are ignored.
2564 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2566 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2569 ** Changes to garbage collection
2571 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2572 of live and free strings.
2574 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2575 strings that have been consed so far.
2578 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2581 *** On window systems, `glyph-table' is no longer used.
2584 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2586 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2589 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2591 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2593 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2594 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2595 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2596 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2597 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2599 ** The function `image-mask-p' can be used to determine if an image
2602 - Function: image-mask-p SPEC &optional FRAME
2604 Return t if image SPEC has a mask bitmap.
2605 FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed. FRAME nil
2606 or omitted means use the selected frame.
2609 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2610 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2613 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2617 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center' (see
2621 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2623 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2624 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2625 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2626 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2628 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2629 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2631 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2632 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2633 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2634 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2635 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2636 just display it black instead.
2638 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2641 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2645 ** New face implementation.
2647 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2648 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2653 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2655 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2657 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2658 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2660 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2662 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2664 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2666 6. Foreground color.
2668 7. Background color.
2670 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2672 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2674 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2676 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2678 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2681 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2682 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2684 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2685 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2686 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2687 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2688 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2689 attributes mentioned above.
2691 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2692 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2695 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2696 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2702 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2703 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2704 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2705 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2706 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2707 results in a fully-specified face.
2710 *** Face realization.
2712 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2713 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2714 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2715 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2716 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2717 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2719 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2720 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2721 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2722 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2724 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2725 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2726 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2727 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2728 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2730 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2731 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2732 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2733 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2734 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2737 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2738 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2739 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2740 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2743 **** Clearing face caches.
2745 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2746 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2752 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2753 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2754 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2756 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2757 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2758 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2759 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2760 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2762 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2763 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2764 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2766 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2768 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2769 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2770 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2771 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2772 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2773 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2774 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2776 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2777 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2783 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2784 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2787 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2788 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2789 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2790 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2791 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2794 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2796 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2799 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2801 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2803 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2804 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2805 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2807 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2808 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2809 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2810 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2811 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2812 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2813 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2814 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2815 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2816 of the face font sort order.
2818 - Function: x-font-family-list
2820 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2821 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2822 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2823 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2825 - Variable: font-list-limit
2827 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2828 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2829 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2832 *** Setting face attributes.
2834 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2835 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2836 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2839 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2840 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2842 The following attributes are recognized:
2846 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2847 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2848 and `?' are allowed.
2852 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2853 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2854 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2855 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2859 VALUE must be either an integer specifying the height of the font to use
2860 in 1/10 pt, a floating point number specifying the amount by which to
2861 scale any underlying face, or a function, which is called with the old
2862 height (from the underlying face), and should return the new height.
2866 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2867 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2868 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2872 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2873 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2876 `:foreground', `:background'
2878 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2882 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2883 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2884 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2889 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2890 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2891 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2896 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2897 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2898 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2899 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2903 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2904 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2905 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2906 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2907 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2908 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2909 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2910 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2911 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2912 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2913 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2914 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2915 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2916 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2917 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2918 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2923 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2924 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2928 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2929 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2930 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2931 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2932 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2933 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2935 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2936 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2940 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2941 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2942 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2945 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2946 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2947 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2949 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2954 VALUE is the name of a face from which to inherit attributes, or a list
2955 of face names. Attributes from inherited faces are merged into the face
2956 like an underlying face would be, with higher priority than underlying faces.
2958 *** Face attributes and X resources
2960 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2963 Face attribute X resource class
2964 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2965 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2966 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2967 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2968 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2969 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2970 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2971 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2972 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2973 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2974 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2975 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2976 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2977 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2978 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2979 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2980 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2981 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2982 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2983 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2986 *** Text property `face'.
2988 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2989 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2990 specification can be
2992 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2994 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2995 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2996 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2997 for face attribute names.
2999 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
3000 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
3001 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
3004 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
3006 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
3007 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
3008 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
3009 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
3010 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
3011 used to clear the mapping table.
3013 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
3015 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
3016 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
3017 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
3018 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
3019 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
3020 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
3021 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
3022 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
3023 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
3024 modify their color-related behavior.
3026 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
3029 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
3031 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
3032 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
3033 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
3034 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
3035 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
3036 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
3037 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
3038 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
3039 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
3042 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
3044 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
3046 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
3047 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
3048 Otherwise, it returns zero.
3050 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
3052 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
3053 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
3054 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
3056 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
3057 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
3058 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
3059 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
3060 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
3061 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
3062 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
3065 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
3066 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
3067 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
3069 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
3071 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
3073 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
3075 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3076 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
3077 constrained position if that is is different.
3079 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
3080 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
3081 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
3082 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
3083 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3084 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
3085 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
3086 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
3087 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
3089 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
3090 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
3091 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
3092 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
3093 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
3095 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
3096 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
3098 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
3100 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
3102 Delete the field surrounding POS.
3103 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3104 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3106 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3108 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
3109 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3110 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3111 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
3112 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
3114 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
3116 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
3117 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3118 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3119 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
3120 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
3122 - Function: field-string &optional POS
3124 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
3125 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3126 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3128 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
3130 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
3131 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
3132 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
3137 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
3138 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
3139 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
3140 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
3142 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
3143 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
3144 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
3145 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
3148 IMAGE is an image specification.
3150 *** Image specifications
3152 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
3153 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
3154 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
3155 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
3156 described below are ignored.
3158 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
3162 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
3163 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
3164 to use for its ascent.
3166 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
3167 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
3169 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
3170 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
3171 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
3172 overlays that apply to the image.
3176 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
3177 margin around the image. Default is 0.
3181 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
3186 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it.
3188 ALGO `laplace' or `emboss' means apply a Laplace or ``emboss''
3189 edge-detection algorithm to the image.
3191 ALGO `(edge-detection :matrix MATRIX :color-adjust ADJUST)' means
3192 apply a general edge-detection algorithm. MATRIX must be either a
3193 nine-element list or a nine-element vector of numbers. A pixel at
3194 position x/y in the transformed image is computed from original pixels
3195 around that position. MATRIX specifies, for each pixel in the
3196 neighborhood of x/y, a factor with which that pixel will influence the
3197 transformed pixel; element 0 specifies the factor for the pixel at
3198 x-1/y-1, element 1 the factor for the pixel at x/y-1 etc. as shown
3201 (x-1/y-1 x/y-1 x+1/y-1
3203 x-1/y+1 x/y+1 x+1/y+1)
3205 The resulting pixel is computed from the color intensity of the color
3206 resulting from summing up the RGB values of surrounding pixels,
3207 multiplied by the specified factors, and dividing that sum by the sum
3208 of the factors' absolute values.
3210 Laplace edge-detection currently uses a matrix of
3216 Emboss edge-detection uses a matrix of
3222 ALGO `disabled' means transform the image so that it looks
3227 If MASK is `heuristic' or `(heuristic BG)', build a clipping mask for
3228 the image, so that the background of a frame is visible behind the
3229 image. If BG is not specified, or if BG is t, determine the
3230 background color of the image by looking at the 4 corners of the
3231 image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from the corners is
3232 the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must be a list `(RED
3233 GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the background of the
3236 If MASK is nil, remove a mask from the image, if it has one. Images
3237 in some formats include a mask which can be removed by specifying
3242 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
3243 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
3244 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
3245 may be present in the image specification.
3249 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
3250 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
3251 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
3252 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
3254 *** Supported image types
3256 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
3258 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
3259 properties supported are
3263 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
3264 is the frame's foreground.
3268 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
3269 the frame's background color.
3271 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
3272 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
3273 instead of a `:file' property.
3277 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
3281 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
3287 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
3288 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
3290 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
3292 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
3295 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
3296 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
3299 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
3301 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
3302 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
3303 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
3304 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
3306 Additional image properties supported are:
3308 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
3310 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
3311 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
3314 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
3315 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
3317 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
3318 to display compressed images.
3320 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
3322 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
3323 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
3326 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
3328 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3329 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
3332 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
3334 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
3335 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3338 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3340 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3341 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3343 Additional image properties supported are:
3347 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3348 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3350 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3351 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3352 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3355 (defun show-anim (file max)
3356 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3357 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3359 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3362 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3365 (goto-char (point-min))
3366 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3367 (insert-image img "x"))
3368 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3370 **** PNG, image type `png'
3372 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3373 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3376 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3378 Additional image properties supported are:
3382 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3383 integer. This is a required property.
3387 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3388 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3392 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3393 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3394 files. This is an required property.
3396 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3401 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3402 which are supported in the current configuration.
3404 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3405 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3406 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3407 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3408 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3410 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3412 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3413 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3414 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3415 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3416 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3422 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3425 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3426 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3427 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3428 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3429 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3430 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3431 of the display margins.
3433 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3434 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3435 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3436 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3442 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3443 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3444 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3445 that have a `help-echo' property.
3447 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3448 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3449 the window in which the help was found.
3451 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3452 `help-echo' text property was found.
3454 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3455 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3457 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3458 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3461 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3462 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3464 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3465 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3466 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3467 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3468 used as help string.
3470 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3471 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3472 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3475 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3477 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3478 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3480 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3481 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3482 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3483 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3486 (global-set-key [A-down]
3489 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3490 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3491 (global-set-key [A-up]
3494 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3495 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3498 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3500 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3501 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3502 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3503 is called with one argument, POS.
3505 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3506 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3507 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3508 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3509 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3512 ** Tool bar support.
3514 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3515 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3516 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3517 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3518 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3519 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3521 *** Tool bar item definitions
3523 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3524 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3525 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3527 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3528 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3529 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3530 property (see below).
3532 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3533 binding are currently ignored.
3535 The following properties are recognized:
3539 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3544 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3548 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3549 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3550 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3552 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3554 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3555 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3559 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3560 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3561 meaning of each of the four elements:
3563 Index Use when item is
3564 ----------------------------------------
3565 0 enabled and selected
3566 1 enabled and deselected
3567 2 disabled and selected
3568 3 disabled and deselected
3570 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3571 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3573 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3575 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3576 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3578 The function `toolbar-add-item' is a convenience function for adding
3579 toolbar items generally, and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' can be used
3580 to define a toolbar item with a binding copied from an item on the
3583 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3585 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3586 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3587 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3589 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3590 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3592 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3593 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3594 pixels. Default is 1.
3596 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3597 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3599 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3601 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3604 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3605 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3606 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3608 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3610 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3612 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3615 ** Mode line changes.
3618 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3620 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3621 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3622 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3624 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3625 a `local-map' text property.
3627 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3628 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3630 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3631 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3632 `local-map' property.
3634 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3635 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3638 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3639 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3642 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3643 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3646 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3648 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3649 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3650 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3651 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3654 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3657 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3658 position in the header-line.
3661 ** Text property `display'
3663 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text,
3664 replace text with other text, display text in marginal area, and it is
3665 also used to control other aspects of how text displays. The value of
3666 the `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3667 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3669 *** Replacing text, displaying text in marginal areas
3671 To replace the text having the `display' property with some other
3672 text, use a display specification of the form `(LOCATION STRING)'.
3674 If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)', STRING is displayed in the left
3675 marginal area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in
3676 the right marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' STRING
3677 is displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3678 simpler form STRING as property value.
3680 *** Variable width and height spaces
3682 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3683 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3684 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3685 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3686 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3687 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3688 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3690 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3691 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3692 properties described below.
3694 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3695 characters having the `display' property.
3699 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3700 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3702 - :relative-width FACTOR
3704 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3705 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3706 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3707 width of that character by FACTOR.
3711 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3712 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3714 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3718 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3721 - :relative-height FACTOR
3723 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3724 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3728 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3729 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3730 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3733 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3737 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3738 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3739 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3740 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3741 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3742 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3743 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3744 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3745 as display specification.
3747 *** Other display properties
3749 - :space-width FACTOR
3751 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3752 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3757 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3759 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3760 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3761 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3762 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3763 a font is available counts as a step.
3765 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3766 as tall as the frame's default font.
3768 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3769 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3771 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3772 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3776 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3777 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3778 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3779 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3780 `:height' subproperty.
3782 *** Conditional display properties
3784 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3785 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3786 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3787 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3788 the text having the `display' property.
3790 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3794 ** New menu separator types.
3796 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3797 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3798 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3799 to specify other menu separator types.
3801 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3803 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3806 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3808 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3810 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3812 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3814 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3816 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3818 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3820 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3822 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3824 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3825 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3827 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3829 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3831 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3833 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3835 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3837 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3839 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3841 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3843 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3845 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3847 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3849 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3851 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3853 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3855 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3856 the corresponding single-line separators.
3859 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3861 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3862 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3863 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3864 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3865 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3866 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3867 default foreground is black.
3869 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3870 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3871 `ScrollBarBackground').
3873 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3874 settings for scroll bar colors.
3877 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3878 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3881 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3882 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3883 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3884 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3885 the original window start.
3888 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3889 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3890 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3893 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3895 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3896 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3897 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3898 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3900 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3901 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3903 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3905 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3906 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3907 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3908 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3909 temporarily to nil, for example
3911 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3912 (enlarge-window 10))
3914 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3915 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3917 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3918 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3919 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3920 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3921 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3922 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3926 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3928 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3931 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3933 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3935 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3936 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3937 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3938 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3939 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3941 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3945 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3947 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3950 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3952 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3953 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3955 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3957 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3959 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3960 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3961 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3963 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3964 is the one that is used.
3966 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3967 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3968 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3969 separate from the command's regular output.
3970 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3971 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3972 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3975 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3976 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3977 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3978 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3980 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3981 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3982 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3983 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3985 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3986 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3987 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3988 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3990 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3991 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3992 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3993 they never ignore case.
3995 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3996 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3997 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3998 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3999 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
4000 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
4001 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
4003 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
4004 the same format that was used in the file before.
4006 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
4007 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
4009 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
4010 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
4011 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
4013 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
4014 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
4015 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
4016 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
4017 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
4018 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
4019 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
4021 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
4022 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
4023 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
4024 format. You can now customize these variables.
4026 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
4027 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
4028 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
4029 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
4031 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
4032 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
4033 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
4035 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
4036 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
4037 doesn't have any effect.
4039 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
4042 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
4043 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
4044 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
4046 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
4047 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
4048 `auto-show-mode' command.
4050 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
4051 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
4052 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
4053 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
4054 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
4056 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
4057 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
4059 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
4060 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
4061 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
4063 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
4064 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
4065 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
4066 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
4068 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
4070 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
4071 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
4072 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
4073 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
4074 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
4076 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
4077 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
4079 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
4080 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
4081 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
4082 `?' on other systems.
4084 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
4085 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
4088 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
4089 current codepage when it starts.
4093 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
4094 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
4095 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
4096 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
4097 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
4098 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
4102 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
4103 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
4105 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
4106 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
4107 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
4108 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
4109 buffer-file-coding-system.
4111 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
4112 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
4115 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
4116 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
4117 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
4118 list of possible coding systems.
4122 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
4123 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
4124 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
4125 docstring for details.
4127 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
4128 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
4129 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
4130 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
4131 lineup functions use this feature currently.
4133 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
4134 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
4136 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
4137 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
4139 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
4140 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
4141 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
4142 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
4145 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
4146 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
4148 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
4149 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
4150 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
4151 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
4153 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
4154 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
4155 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
4156 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
4157 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
4159 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
4161 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
4163 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
4164 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
4166 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
4168 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
4169 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
4170 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
4171 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
4172 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
4176 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
4177 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
4178 Gnus manual for the full story.
4180 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
4181 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
4182 group, which is created automatically.
4184 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
4187 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
4189 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
4190 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
4192 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
4195 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
4197 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
4198 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
4200 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
4202 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
4203 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
4205 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
4206 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
4208 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
4209 control over simplification.
4211 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
4213 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
4216 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
4218 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
4220 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
4221 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
4222 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
4224 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
4225 `a' forces normal posting method.
4227 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
4230 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
4233 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
4234 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
4236 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
4239 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
4241 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
4243 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
4244 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
4246 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
4247 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
4249 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
4251 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
4254 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
4255 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
4257 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
4258 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
4260 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
4262 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
4264 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
4266 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
4268 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
4269 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
4270 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
4272 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
4273 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
4274 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
4275 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
4276 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
4278 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
4279 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
4280 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
4281 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
4283 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
4284 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
4285 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
4288 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4290 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
4291 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
4293 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
4294 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
4295 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
4296 removed from the label.
4298 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
4299 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
4301 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
4302 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
4304 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
4305 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
4308 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
4310 ** New/deleted modes and packages
4312 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
4313 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
4315 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
4316 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
4317 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
4319 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
4320 changes with a special face.
4322 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
4323 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
4324 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
4326 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
4328 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
4329 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
4330 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
4331 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
4332 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
4334 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
4335 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
4336 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
4338 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
4339 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
4340 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
4341 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
4342 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
4343 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
4344 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
4345 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
4346 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
4348 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
4349 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
4350 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
4351 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
4352 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
4355 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
4356 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
4357 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
4358 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4359 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4360 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4362 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4363 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4364 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4365 was not documented clearly before.
4367 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4368 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4370 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4372 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4373 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4374 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4375 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4377 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4378 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4379 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4381 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4383 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4384 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4386 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4387 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4390 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4391 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4392 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4393 file names and attributes are returned.
4395 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4396 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4397 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4398 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4401 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4402 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4404 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4406 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4407 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4408 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4411 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4412 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4415 The new function process-running-child-p
4416 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4417 terminal to its own child process.
4419 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4420 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4421 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4422 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4424 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4425 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4427 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4428 :included is an alias for :visible.
4430 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4431 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4432 to move or copy menu entries.
4434 ** Multibyte editing changes
4436 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4437 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4438 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4439 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4440 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4441 (setq char (sref str idx)
4442 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4443 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4445 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4446 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4447 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4449 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4450 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4451 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4453 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4455 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4456 across the boundary.
4458 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4459 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4460 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4461 contains 8-bit characters.
4462 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4463 contains invalid characters.
4465 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4466 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4467 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4468 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4471 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4472 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4473 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4474 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4476 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4477 compose Thai characters in a string.
4479 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4480 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4481 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4482 menus should always use the third argument.
4484 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4485 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4486 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4487 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4489 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4490 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4491 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4492 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4494 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4495 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4496 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4499 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4501 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4502 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4503 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4505 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4506 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4507 means to clear out that attribute.
4509 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4510 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4512 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4513 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4514 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4515 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4517 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4518 the gap of the current buffer.
4520 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4521 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4524 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4525 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4526 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4527 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4529 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4531 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4532 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4533 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4534 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4535 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4537 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4538 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4539 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4540 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4541 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4543 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4544 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4545 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4547 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4548 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4549 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4550 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4551 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4554 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4555 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4556 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4557 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4559 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4561 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4562 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4563 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4564 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4566 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4567 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4568 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4569 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4570 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4571 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4572 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4575 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4578 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4579 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4580 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4581 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4582 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4584 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4585 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4586 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4587 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4589 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4590 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4591 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4592 something that most users not do.
4594 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4595 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4596 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4599 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4602 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4603 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4604 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4605 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4608 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4609 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4610 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4611 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4612 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4615 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4616 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4617 to be confused by TeX commands.
4619 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4620 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4621 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4622 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4624 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4625 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4626 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4627 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4628 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4630 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4631 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4633 ** Changes in input method usage.
4635 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4636 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4639 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4641 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4642 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4644 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4645 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4647 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4649 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4651 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4652 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4654 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4655 given in the following case:
4656 o When you are using a complex input method.
4657 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4659 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4660 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4661 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4662 setting it to t is helpful.
4664 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4666 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4668 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4669 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4670 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4671 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4674 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4675 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4676 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4679 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4681 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4683 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4684 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4686 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4687 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4688 its owner and group.
4690 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4691 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4693 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4694 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4696 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4697 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4698 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4699 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4701 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4702 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4703 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4704 for writing keyboard macros.
4706 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4707 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4708 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4709 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4710 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4713 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4715 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4716 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4719 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4720 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4721 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4722 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4724 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4725 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4726 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4728 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4729 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4730 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4731 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4733 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4734 failure if the command produces no output.
4736 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4737 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4740 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4741 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4742 function and variable names.
4744 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4745 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4746 file-coding-system-alist.
4748 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4749 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4750 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4751 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4752 according to the current fontset.
4754 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4756 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4757 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4758 nonascii-insert-offset.
4760 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4761 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4762 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4763 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4765 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4766 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4768 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4769 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4771 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4772 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4775 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4776 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4778 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4779 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4780 all variables that have documentation.
4782 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4783 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4784 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4785 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4786 it should show; the default is 20.
4788 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4789 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4792 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4793 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4794 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4795 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4796 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4797 Newly added options are included as well.
4799 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4800 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4801 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4803 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4806 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4807 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4809 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4810 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4813 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4814 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4817 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4818 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4819 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4820 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4823 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4825 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4826 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4827 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4829 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4830 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4831 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4836 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4837 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4839 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4840 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4842 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4843 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4845 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4846 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4847 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4848 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4849 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4850 made invisible again.
4852 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4854 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4855 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4856 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4859 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4860 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4861 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4862 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4863 rmail-default-body-file.
4865 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4866 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4867 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4869 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4870 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4871 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4873 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4874 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4875 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4876 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4877 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4878 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4880 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4881 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4882 provided by feedmail are:
4884 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4885 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4886 there is also a queue for draft messages
4888 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4889 be prompted for confirmation
4891 **** does smart filling of address headers
4893 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4894 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4895 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4897 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4898 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4899 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4900 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4904 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4905 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4907 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4908 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4910 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4911 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4912 for a specified regexp.
4916 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4919 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4920 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4923 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4924 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4925 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4926 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4928 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4929 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4930 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4931 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4932 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4934 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4935 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4936 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4937 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4938 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4940 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4941 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4942 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4943 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4945 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4946 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4947 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4949 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4950 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4951 session to resolve them.
4953 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4954 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4955 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4958 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4959 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4960 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4961 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4962 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4963 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4966 ** Changes in Font Lock
4968 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4969 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4970 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4971 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4972 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4974 ** Frame name display changes
4976 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4977 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4978 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4979 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4981 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4982 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4985 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4987 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4988 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4989 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4991 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4993 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4994 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4995 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4997 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4998 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
5001 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
5002 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
5003 previously sent input.
5005 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
5006 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
5007 as the search string.
5009 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
5010 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
5014 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
5015 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
5016 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
5019 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
5020 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
5021 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
5022 style is still the default however.
5024 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
5026 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
5027 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
5028 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
5030 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
5031 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
5033 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
5034 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
5036 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
5037 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
5039 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
5040 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
5042 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
5043 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
5044 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
5045 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
5047 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
5049 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
5050 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
5051 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
5053 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
5054 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
5055 expanding dynamically.
5057 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
5058 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
5060 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
5061 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
5062 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
5063 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
5065 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
5067 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
5069 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
5070 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
5071 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
5072 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
5073 against the first word in the title.
5075 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
5076 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
5077 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
5078 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
5079 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
5080 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
5082 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
5083 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
5084 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
5085 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
5087 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
5089 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
5090 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
5091 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
5092 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
5093 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
5094 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
5096 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
5097 Editing group once the package is loaded.
5099 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
5100 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
5101 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
5103 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
5104 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
5108 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
5109 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
5110 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
5112 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
5113 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
5114 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
5115 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
5118 o URLs are automatically skipped
5119 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
5121 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
5123 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
5125 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
5126 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
5127 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
5128 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
5130 *** New recursive parser.
5132 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
5133 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
5134 recursive parser scans the individual files.
5136 *** Parsing only part of a document.
5138 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
5139 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
5140 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
5142 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
5144 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
5146 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
5148 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
5150 *** Using multiple selection buffers
5152 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
5153 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
5155 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
5157 *** References to external documents.
5159 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
5160 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
5161 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
5162 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
5163 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
5164 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
5165 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
5167 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
5169 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
5170 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
5172 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
5173 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
5175 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
5177 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
5178 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
5180 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
5182 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
5183 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
5184 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
5185 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
5186 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
5187 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
5190 *** Support for the varioref package
5192 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
5196 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
5197 and citations are created. These hooks are
5198 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
5199 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
5201 *** Citations outside LaTeX
5203 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
5204 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
5206 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
5208 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
5209 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
5212 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
5214 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
5215 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
5216 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
5217 directories that contain the same file name.
5219 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
5220 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
5221 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
5222 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
5223 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
5224 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
5225 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
5228 ** New modes and packages
5230 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
5231 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
5232 it, but some do not.
5234 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
5237 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
5238 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
5241 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
5243 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
5244 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
5245 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
5246 established system of notation similar to Chess.
5248 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
5249 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
5250 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
5252 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
5253 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
5254 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
5255 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
5256 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
5259 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
5260 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
5262 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
5263 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
5264 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
5265 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
5267 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
5269 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
5270 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
5271 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
5272 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
5273 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
5274 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
5275 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
5276 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
5277 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
5278 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
5279 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
5281 Platform-specific modes:
5283 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
5284 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
5285 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
5286 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
5287 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
5288 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
5289 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
5290 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
5291 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
5293 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
5295 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
5296 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
5297 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
5298 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
5300 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
5301 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
5302 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
5304 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
5305 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
5306 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
5307 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
5309 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
5310 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
5311 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
5314 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
5315 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
5316 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
5317 current input method for reading this one event.
5319 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
5320 now control whether to output certain characters as
5321 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
5322 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
5323 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
5324 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
5326 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
5328 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
5329 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
5331 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
5332 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
5333 always increases point by 1.
5335 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
5336 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
5338 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
5340 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
5341 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
5342 default value changed. For example,
5344 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
5349 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
5352 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
5353 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
5354 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
5355 `:version' in the top level group.
5357 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5359 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5360 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5362 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5363 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5364 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5367 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5368 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5371 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5372 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5373 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5375 ** Frame-local variables.
5377 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5378 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5379 local bindings for that variable.
5381 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5382 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5383 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5386 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5387 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5388 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5389 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5391 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5392 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5393 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5394 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5396 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5397 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5398 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5399 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5400 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5402 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5403 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5404 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5405 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5407 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5408 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5410 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5411 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5412 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5414 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5415 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5416 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5417 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5419 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5420 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5423 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5424 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5425 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5426 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5427 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5429 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5430 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5431 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5432 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5434 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5435 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5436 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5437 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5438 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5440 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5441 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5442 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5443 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5445 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5446 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5447 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5449 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5450 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5451 was directed to display this buffer.
5453 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5454 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5455 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5456 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5457 set-window-configuration.
5459 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5460 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5461 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5462 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5464 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5465 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5466 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5468 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5469 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5470 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5472 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5473 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5475 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5476 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5478 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5479 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5480 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5482 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5483 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5484 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5485 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5489 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5490 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5493 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5494 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5495 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5496 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5497 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5499 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5501 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5502 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5503 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5504 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5507 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5508 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5509 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5510 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5511 The supported properties include
5513 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5515 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5516 item should appear in the menu.
5518 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5519 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5520 It should return a binding to use instead.
5522 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5523 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5524 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5525 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5526 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5529 This means that the command normally has no
5530 keyboard equivalent.
5531 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5532 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5533 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5534 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5535 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5537 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5538 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5540 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5544 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5545 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5546 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5547 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5549 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5551 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5552 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5553 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5554 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5555 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5556 forward, away from the user.
5558 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5560 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5561 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5562 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5563 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5564 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5566 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5568 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5569 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5570 that were dragged and dropped.
5572 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5574 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5576 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5577 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5578 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5580 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5581 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5582 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5584 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5585 in Emacs 19 and before.
5587 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5588 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5590 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5591 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5592 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5593 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5595 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5596 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5597 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5598 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5599 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5601 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5602 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5603 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5604 consistent with the new representation.
5606 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5607 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5608 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5609 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5611 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5612 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5613 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5615 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5616 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5617 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5619 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5620 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5621 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5623 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5624 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5626 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5627 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5629 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5630 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5631 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5632 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5634 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5635 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5637 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5638 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5639 buffer or string being searched.
5641 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5642 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5643 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5644 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5645 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5646 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5647 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5649 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5651 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5652 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5653 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5654 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5655 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5656 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5657 define-coding-system-alias.
5659 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5660 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5661 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5662 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5663 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5664 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5665 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5668 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5669 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5670 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5671 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5673 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5674 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5675 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5676 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5678 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5679 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5680 This function requires a user interaction.
5682 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5683 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5684 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5685 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5686 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5687 select-safe-coding-system.
5689 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5690 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5691 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5694 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5695 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5696 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5698 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5699 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5700 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5701 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5703 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5704 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5705 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5708 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5709 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5711 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5712 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5713 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5714 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5715 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5716 range of characters.
5718 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5719 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5721 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5722 in the current buffer at position POS.
5724 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5725 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5726 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5727 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5728 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5729 binding input-method-function to nil.
5731 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5732 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5733 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5734 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5735 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5737 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5738 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5740 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5741 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5743 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5744 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5745 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5746 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5747 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5749 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5751 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5752 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5753 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5756 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5757 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5759 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5760 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5761 in your .emacs file.)
5763 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5764 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5766 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5767 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5769 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5770 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5773 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5774 delete the character before point, as usual.
5776 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5777 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5778 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5780 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5781 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5782 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5783 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5784 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5787 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5788 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5789 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5790 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5791 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5793 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5794 and is an alias for it.
5796 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5797 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5799 ** Scrolling changes
5801 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5802 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5804 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5805 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5808 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5809 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5810 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5811 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5813 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5814 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5815 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5816 recenters the window.
5818 ** International character set support (MULE)
5820 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5821 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5822 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5823 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5824 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5825 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5827 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5828 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5829 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5830 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5831 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5833 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5834 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5835 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5836 language, to make it possible to type them.
5838 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5839 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5841 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5842 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5844 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5846 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5848 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5849 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5850 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5851 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5852 characters for their work until they want to change.
5856 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5857 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5858 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5859 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5860 support several input methods.
5862 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5863 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5866 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5867 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5868 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5869 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5870 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5873 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5874 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5875 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5876 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5877 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5879 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5880 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5881 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5882 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5884 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5885 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5886 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5887 the first guess is wrong.
5889 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5890 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5892 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5893 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5894 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5895 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5897 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5898 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5899 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5900 translate automatically to and from either one.
5902 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5904 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5905 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5906 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5909 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5910 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5911 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5912 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5914 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5915 character conversion as well.
5917 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5919 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5920 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5921 requires using many fonts.
5923 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5924 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5926 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5927 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5928 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5929 you would use a font.
5931 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5932 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5933 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5935 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5936 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5937 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5938 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5939 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5941 *** Defining fontsets.
5943 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5944 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5945 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5947 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5948 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5949 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5950 standard fontset are created automatically.
5952 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5953 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5954 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5955 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5956 name is `fontset-startup'.
5958 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5959 The resource value should have this form:
5960 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5961 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5962 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5963 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5964 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5965 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5966 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5967 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5968 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5970 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5971 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5972 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5974 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5975 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5977 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5978 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5979 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5980 Here is the substitution rule:
5981 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5982 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5983 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5984 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5985 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5987 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5988 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5989 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5991 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5992 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5993 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5994 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5997 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5998 defaults for a particular choice of language.
6000 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
6001 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
6002 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
6003 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
6004 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
6005 system for new files that you create.
6007 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
6008 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
6009 whole Emacs session.
6011 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
6012 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
6013 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
6015 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
6016 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
6017 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
6018 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
6019 coding systems that Emacs supports.
6021 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
6022 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
6023 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
6024 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
6025 is used for *the immediately following command*.
6027 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
6028 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
6030 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
6031 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
6033 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
6034 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
6036 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
6037 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
6038 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
6039 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
6042 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
6043 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
6044 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
6045 translated into that character code.
6047 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
6048 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
6050 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
6052 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
6053 the coding system for keyboard input.
6055 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
6056 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
6057 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
6059 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
6061 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
6062 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
6063 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
6064 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
6065 designed to work with terminals.
6067 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
6068 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
6069 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
6070 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
6071 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
6072 in the corresponding buffer.
6074 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
6076 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
6077 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
6078 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
6080 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
6081 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
6082 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
6085 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
6086 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
6088 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
6089 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
6090 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
6091 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
6093 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
6094 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
6095 related information.
6097 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
6098 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
6101 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
6102 information about the support for a particular language.
6103 You specify the language as an argument.
6105 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
6106 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
6109 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
6110 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
6111 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
6112 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
6114 A alternativnyj (Russian)
6116 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
6117 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
6118 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
6119 E euc-japan (Japanese)
6120 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
6121 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
6122 K euc-korea (Korean)
6125 S shift_jis (Japanese)
6128 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
6129 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
6130 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
6134 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
6135 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
6136 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
6137 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
6139 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
6140 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
6142 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
6143 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
6144 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
6145 Rmail files themselves.
6147 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
6148 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
6150 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
6153 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
6154 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
6155 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
6156 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
6157 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
6159 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
6160 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
6161 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
6164 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
6165 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
6166 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
6167 without any conversion.
6169 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
6170 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
6171 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
6172 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
6174 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
6175 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
6177 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
6178 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
6180 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
6181 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
6183 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
6184 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
6185 in the buffer before point.
6187 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
6188 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
6191 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
6192 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
6194 ** File locking works with NFS now.
6196 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
6197 in the same directory as FILENAME.
6199 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
6200 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
6201 can become a bottleneck.
6203 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
6204 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
6205 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
6206 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
6207 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
6208 so useful that the change is worth while.
6210 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
6211 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
6212 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
6213 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
6215 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
6216 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
6219 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
6220 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
6221 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
6223 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
6224 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
6225 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
6227 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
6228 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
6229 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
6231 ** Changes in View mode.
6233 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
6234 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
6236 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
6237 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
6239 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
6242 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
6243 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
6245 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
6246 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
6247 not just the selected window.
6249 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
6250 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
6251 turns View mode on or off.
6253 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
6254 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
6255 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
6257 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
6258 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
6260 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
6261 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
6262 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
6263 which version to compare with.
6265 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
6266 blocks if a match is inside the block.
6268 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
6269 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
6270 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
6271 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
6273 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
6274 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
6275 blocks, all of them or none.
6277 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
6278 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
6281 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
6282 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
6283 However, the mode will not be changed if
6284 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
6285 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
6286 not suitable for ordinary files, or
6287 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
6289 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
6291 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
6292 these commands do not change the major mode.
6294 ** M-x occur changes.
6296 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
6297 it performs a case-sensitive search.
6299 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
6300 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
6301 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
6303 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
6304 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
6305 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
6306 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
6307 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
6309 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
6310 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
6311 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
6312 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
6314 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
6315 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
6316 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
6318 ** Outline mode changes.
6320 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
6322 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
6324 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
6325 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
6326 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
6329 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
6330 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
6333 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
6334 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
6336 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
6338 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6339 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
6340 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
6341 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
6343 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
6344 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
6345 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
6347 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
6348 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
6351 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
6352 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
6353 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
6354 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
6356 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
6357 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
6358 can be. The default value is 30.
6360 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6362 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6363 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6364 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6365 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6366 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6369 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6370 compose-mail-other-frame.
6372 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6373 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6374 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6375 buffer that shows the original message.
6377 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6378 with separator lines around the contents.
6380 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6381 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6382 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6383 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6385 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6387 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6388 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6389 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6390 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6392 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6393 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6396 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6397 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6400 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6401 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6402 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6403 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6405 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6406 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6407 be taken to be magic.
6409 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6410 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6411 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6413 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6414 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6416 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6417 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6419 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6421 new key dired.el binding old key
6422 ------- ---------------- -------
6423 * c dired-change-marks c
6425 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6426 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6427 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6429 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6430 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6431 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6432 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6433 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6434 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6438 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6439 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6440 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6441 each time you run it.
6443 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6444 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6446 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6447 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6448 means to move in the opposite direction.
6450 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6451 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6453 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6454 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6455 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6456 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6461 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6463 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6466 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6467 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6469 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6472 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6474 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6476 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6478 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6479 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6480 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6482 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6484 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6486 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6487 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6489 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6490 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6491 used to pick articles.
6493 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6494 another have been added.
6496 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6498 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6499 generating lines in buffers.
6501 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6504 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6506 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6508 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6510 *** Scores can be decayed.
6512 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6514 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6515 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6517 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6520 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6522 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6523 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6525 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6527 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6528 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6530 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6531 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6533 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6536 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6537 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6539 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6541 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6543 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6545 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6547 Use the `Y c' command.
6549 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6551 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6553 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6555 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6556 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6558 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6560 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6562 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6563 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6565 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6567 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6568 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6569 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6570 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6573 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6574 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6575 particular news group. This can be done by:
6577 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6579 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6580 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6581 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6582 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6583 for reading and posting).
6585 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6586 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6587 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6588 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6591 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6592 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6594 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6595 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6596 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6597 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6598 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6600 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6601 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6605 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6606 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6607 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6608 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6609 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6612 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6613 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6614 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6615 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6616 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6617 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6619 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6620 of the current buffer.
6622 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6623 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6624 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6626 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6627 style that the Python developers like.
6629 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6630 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6631 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6635 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6636 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6637 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6639 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6640 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6643 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6644 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6646 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6647 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6648 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6649 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6651 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6652 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6654 ** Calendar changes.
6656 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6657 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6658 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6662 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6664 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6666 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6667 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6668 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6669 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6670 It defaults to `letter'.
6671 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6673 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6674 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6675 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6677 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6678 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6681 *** Horizontal layout
6683 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6684 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6685 All are measured in points.
6689 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6690 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6691 All are measured in points.
6695 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6696 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6697 margin above the text.
6699 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6700 framing box is printed around the header.
6702 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6703 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6705 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6706 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6707 `ps-header-font-size'.
6711 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6712 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6713 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6714 elements to this alist.
6716 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6717 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6719 ** hideshow changes.
6721 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6724 *** Support for java-mode added.
6726 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6727 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6729 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6730 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6731 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6733 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6734 robust and a lot faster.
6736 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6738 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6739 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6740 documentation for more details.
6742 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6744 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6745 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6746 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6747 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6748 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6750 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6751 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6752 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6753 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6759 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6760 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6761 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6762 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6763 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6764 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6766 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6768 *** Maximum decoration
6770 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6771 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6772 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6773 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6774 to get the old behavior.
6778 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6780 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6781 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6783 *** Configurable support
6785 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6786 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6787 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6788 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6789 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6790 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6791 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6793 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6794 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6795 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6797 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6799 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6800 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6803 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6805 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6811 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6812 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6813 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6814 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6816 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6818 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6819 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6820 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6822 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6824 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6825 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6826 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6827 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6828 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6829 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6830 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6832 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6833 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6834 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6835 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6836 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6837 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6839 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6841 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6842 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6843 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6844 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6846 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6849 ** Ada mode changes.
6851 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6852 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6853 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6854 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6857 *** There are two new commands:
6858 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6859 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6861 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6862 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6863 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6865 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6866 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6867 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6869 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6870 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6871 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6872 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6874 ** Scheme mode changes.
6876 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6877 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6878 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6879 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6882 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6883 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6884 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6885 variables as buffer-local variables.
6887 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6890 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6892 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6893 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6894 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6895 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6897 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6898 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6901 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6902 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6903 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6904 option takes precedence.
6906 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6907 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6908 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6910 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6911 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6914 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6915 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6917 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6918 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6921 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6922 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6923 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6924 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6925 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6926 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6928 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6929 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6930 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6931 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6933 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6934 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6935 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6936 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6937 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6939 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6940 since it applies only to the current frame.
6942 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6943 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6944 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6946 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6947 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6948 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6949 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6950 instead of just the file you are editing.
6954 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6955 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6956 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6957 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6958 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6961 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6962 knows which kind of label is needed.
6964 C-c ) reftex-reference
6965 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6966 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6968 C-c [ reftex-citation
6969 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6970 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6972 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6973 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6976 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6977 can quickly jump to every section.
6979 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6980 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6981 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6982 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6983 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6985 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6987 *** Info documentation is now available.
6989 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6990 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6992 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6993 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6995 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6996 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6998 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6999 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
7000 appropriate functions.
7002 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
7003 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
7005 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
7008 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
7009 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
7011 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
7014 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
7015 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
7016 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
7018 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
7019 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
7020 prefixed with `ALT'.
7022 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
7023 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
7024 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
7027 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
7028 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
7029 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
7031 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
7032 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
7034 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
7035 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
7036 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
7038 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
7040 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
7042 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
7045 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
7046 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
7049 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
7052 *** Added support for imenu.
7054 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
7055 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
7056 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
7057 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
7059 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
7060 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
7062 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
7064 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
7066 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
7067 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
7068 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
7071 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
7072 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
7074 ** browse-url changes
7076 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
7077 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
7078 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
7079 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
7080 customization variables.
7082 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
7084 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
7085 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
7086 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
7090 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
7091 pops up the Info file for this command.
7093 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
7094 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
7095 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
7098 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
7099 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
7100 files in the same directory.
7102 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
7103 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
7104 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
7108 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
7109 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
7111 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
7112 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
7113 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
7114 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
7115 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
7116 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
7117 color when Viper is in insert state.
7118 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
7119 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
7120 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
7124 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
7125 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
7126 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
7127 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
7128 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
7130 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
7132 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
7133 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
7135 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
7136 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
7137 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
7139 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
7140 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
7141 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
7142 methods and protocols.
7144 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
7145 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
7146 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
7149 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
7150 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
7151 at least M times and as many as N times.
7153 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
7154 in files has changed slightly.
7156 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
7157 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
7158 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
7159 with old time-stamp-format values.
7161 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
7162 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
7163 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
7166 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
7167 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
7168 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
7169 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
7170 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
7171 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
7173 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
7174 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
7175 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
7177 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
7178 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
7179 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
7180 recommended now will continue to work then.
7182 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
7185 ** There are some additional major modes:
7187 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
7188 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
7189 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
7191 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
7192 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
7195 ** New Lisp packages include:
7197 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
7199 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
7200 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
7202 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
7204 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
7207 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
7208 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
7211 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
7212 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
7213 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
7214 strings or comments.
7216 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
7217 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
7218 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
7219 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
7222 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
7223 can visit them by short forms of their names.
7225 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
7226 Emacs Lisp function at point.
7228 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
7230 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
7231 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
7233 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
7235 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
7237 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
7239 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
7240 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
7242 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
7243 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
7244 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
7245 original place after inserting the copy.
7247 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
7250 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
7251 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
7252 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
7254 Enable mouse-drag with:
7255 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
7257 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
7259 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
7260 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
7262 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
7263 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
7267 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
7268 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
7269 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
7270 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
7271 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
7272 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
7273 instance) and vice versa.
7275 To use this package load it using
7276 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
7277 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
7278 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
7279 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
7280 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
7281 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
7283 *** Interface to ph.
7285 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
7287 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
7288 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
7291 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
7293 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
7294 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
7295 while the real cursor does not move.
7297 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
7298 for visiting your favorite web sites.
7300 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
7301 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
7305 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
7306 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
7307 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
7308 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
7310 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
7312 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
7314 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
7316 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
7317 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
7318 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
7319 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
7320 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
7322 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
7323 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
7324 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
7325 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
7326 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
7327 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
7329 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
7331 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
7332 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
7333 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
7334 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
7336 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
7337 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
7339 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
7340 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
7343 ** Basic Lisp changes
7345 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
7346 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
7348 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
7349 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
7352 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
7354 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
7356 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7357 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7359 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7360 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7363 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7365 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7367 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7369 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7370 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7371 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7374 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7375 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7376 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7378 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7379 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7380 adding one of these suffixes.
7382 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7383 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7384 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7386 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7387 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7389 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7391 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7392 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7394 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7395 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7397 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7399 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7400 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7402 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7403 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7404 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7405 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7407 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7408 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7411 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7412 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7413 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7416 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7417 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7420 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7422 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7423 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7424 Then it returns that string.
7426 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7428 (with-output-to-string
7429 (princ "The buffer is ")
7430 (princ (buffer-name)))
7432 returns "The buffer is foo".
7434 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7437 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7438 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7439 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7441 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7442 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7444 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7445 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7446 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7447 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7448 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7449 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7451 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7452 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7453 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7456 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7457 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7458 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7459 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7460 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7462 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7463 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7464 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7465 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7467 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7468 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7470 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7472 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7473 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7474 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7475 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7478 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7479 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7482 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7484 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7485 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7486 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7487 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7488 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7490 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7492 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7493 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7494 more than the number of characters.
7496 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7497 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7498 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7499 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7500 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7501 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7503 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7504 and returns a string containing those characters.
7506 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7507 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7508 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7509 character, sref signals an error.
7511 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7512 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7513 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7515 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7516 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7517 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7519 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7520 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7521 to a vector of the characters in it.
7523 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7524 of a string. You call it as follows:
7526 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7528 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7529 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7530 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7531 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7532 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7534 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7535 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7537 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7538 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7540 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7541 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7542 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7543 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7545 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7547 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7549 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7550 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7551 are not included in the resulting value.
7553 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7554 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7555 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7556 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7558 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7559 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7560 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7561 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7562 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7563 column START-COLUMN.
7565 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7566 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7567 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7568 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7569 changed text, before the change.
7571 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7572 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7573 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7575 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7577 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7579 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7580 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7582 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7583 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7584 which identify the character within that character set.
7586 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7587 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7588 opposite of split-char.
7590 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7591 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7593 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7594 of all the characters in a string.
7596 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7597 and specifying coding systems.
7599 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7600 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7601 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7602 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7603 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7604 as what to do about code conversion.)
7606 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7607 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7609 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7610 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7611 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7613 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7614 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7615 to match against a file name.
7617 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7618 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7619 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7620 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7621 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7622 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7624 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7625 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7627 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7628 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7630 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7631 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7632 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7635 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7636 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7637 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7638 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7639 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7640 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7642 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7643 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7645 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7646 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7647 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7648 start the subprocess.
7650 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7651 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7652 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7653 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7654 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7656 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7657 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7660 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7661 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7662 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7663 connection permanently or until overridden.
7665 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7666 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7667 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7668 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7669 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7670 system for one operation at a time.
7672 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7673 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7675 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7676 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7677 The value is a cons cell,
7678 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7679 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7680 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7681 input to the subprocess.
7683 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7684 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7686 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7687 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7688 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7690 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7691 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7692 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7693 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7696 Thus, instead of writing
7698 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7699 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7701 you would now write this:
7703 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7704 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7708 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7709 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7710 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7711 for a description of them.
7713 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7714 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7716 (defgroup ispell nil
7717 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7720 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7721 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7722 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7723 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7724 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7726 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7727 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7728 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7729 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7730 first-level subgroups.
7732 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7734 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7735 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7739 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7740 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7741 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7742 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7743 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7744 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7746 ** Text property changes
7748 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7751 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7752 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7753 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7754 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7755 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7757 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7758 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7759 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7760 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7762 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7763 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7764 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7766 ** Changes in invisibility features
7768 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7769 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7770 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7771 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7772 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7773 make the overlay visible.
7775 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7776 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7777 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7778 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7779 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7780 t when it should hide it.
7782 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7784 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7785 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7786 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7787 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7788 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7789 Here is an example of how to do this:
7791 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7792 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7793 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7794 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7797 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7800 ;; When done with the overlays:
7801 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7803 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7805 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7807 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7808 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7809 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7810 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7812 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7813 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7814 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7816 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7817 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7819 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7820 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7822 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7823 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7824 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7826 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7827 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7828 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7829 determine the syntax type of the character.
7831 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7832 of the current buffer.
7834 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7835 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7836 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7838 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7839 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7840 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7841 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7842 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7844 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7847 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7848 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7849 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7851 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7852 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7853 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7854 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7855 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7857 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7858 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7859 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7861 ** Changes in face features
7863 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7864 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7866 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7867 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7869 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7870 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7872 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7873 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7875 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7876 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7877 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7878 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7881 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7882 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7884 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7886 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7887 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7888 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7889 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7891 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7894 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7895 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7897 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7898 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7900 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7901 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7903 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7904 character code conversion as well as other things.
7906 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7907 (formerly it did not).
7909 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7910 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7912 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7913 instead of constant strings.
7915 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7916 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7917 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7919 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7920 in the same way as before.
7922 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7923 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7924 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7926 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7927 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7928 else, and returns nil.
7930 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7931 directory cannot be listed.
7933 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7935 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7936 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7937 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7938 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7941 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7942 It is available through the history command M-n.
7944 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7945 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7946 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7947 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7948 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7950 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7951 argument in this way.
7953 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7954 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7955 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7957 ** Echo area features
7959 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7960 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7961 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7962 after the echo area is cleared.
7964 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7965 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7967 ** Keyboard input features
7969 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7970 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7972 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7973 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7976 ** Frame-related changes
7978 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7979 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7980 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7982 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7983 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7984 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7986 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7987 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7988 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7989 in the selected frame.
7991 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7992 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7993 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7995 ** X Windows features
7997 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7998 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7999 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
8001 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
8002 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
8004 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
8005 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
8006 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
8008 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
8009 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
8011 ** Subprocess features
8013 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
8014 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
8017 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
8018 and returns the output from the command as a string.
8020 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
8021 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
8023 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
8024 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
8026 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
8027 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
8028 goes after the other menu items.
8030 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
8031 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
8032 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
8035 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
8036 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
8038 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
8039 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
8042 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
8043 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
8044 but its hook is still run.
8046 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
8047 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
8049 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
8050 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
8051 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
8053 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
8054 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
8055 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
8058 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
8059 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
8061 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
8062 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
8063 functions like display-time.
8065 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
8066 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
8068 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
8069 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
8070 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
8072 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
8073 if there is an error in compilation.
8075 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
8076 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
8077 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
8078 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
8080 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
8081 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
8082 the *scratch* buffer.
8084 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
8085 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
8086 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
8087 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
8089 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
8090 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
8091 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
8093 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
8094 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
8095 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
8096 and compose-mail-other-frame.
8098 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
8099 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
8100 full name of the specified user will be returned.
8102 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
8103 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
8104 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
8105 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
8106 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
8109 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
8110 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
8111 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
8112 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
8114 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
8115 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
8116 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
8117 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
8119 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
8121 ** imenu.el changes.
8123 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
8124 item from menu created by imenu.
8126 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
8127 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
8128 select one of those items.
8130 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
8132 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
8134 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
8135 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
8137 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
8138 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
8139 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
8141 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
8143 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
8144 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
8146 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
8147 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
8148 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
8149 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
8150 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
8153 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
8154 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
8156 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
8157 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
8158 as in previous Emacs versions.
8160 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
8161 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
8162 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
8165 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
8166 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
8167 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
8168 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
8171 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
8172 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
8173 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
8174 line and then executing the macro.
8176 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
8178 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
8179 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
8180 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
8185 *** Font Lock support modes
8187 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
8188 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
8189 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
8190 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
8191 Font Lock mode is enabled.
8193 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
8195 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
8201 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
8202 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
8203 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
8204 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
8205 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
8206 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
8207 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
8209 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
8211 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
8213 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
8215 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8217 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
8220 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
8225 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
8226 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
8227 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
8228 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
8230 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
8231 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
8233 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
8234 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
8237 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
8238 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
8240 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
8242 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
8244 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
8246 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
8249 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
8251 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
8253 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
8255 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
8257 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
8260 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
8262 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
8264 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
8266 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
8268 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
8270 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
8272 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
8274 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
8277 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
8279 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
8282 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
8284 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
8285 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
8287 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
8289 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
8291 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
8293 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
8295 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
8298 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
8300 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
8301 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
8303 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
8304 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
8305 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
8307 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
8308 articles with the `*' command.
8310 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
8312 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
8314 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
8316 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
8318 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
8319 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
8321 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
8324 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
8326 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
8328 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
8330 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
8332 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
8334 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
8336 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
8338 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
8340 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
8342 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
8343 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
8345 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
8348 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
8350 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
8351 buffer to allow easier treatment.
8353 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
8355 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
8357 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8359 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8362 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8364 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8366 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8367 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8369 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8371 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8373 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8375 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8377 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8379 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8382 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8384 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8385 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8386 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8389 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8392 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8395 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8396 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8399 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8400 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8401 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8402 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8403 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8406 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8408 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8410 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8411 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8412 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8413 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8414 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8416 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8417 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8418 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8420 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8422 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8423 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8424 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8425 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8426 chapter of the manual for details.
8428 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8429 customization variables take effect.
8431 ** Marking with the mouse.
8433 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8434 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8435 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8437 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8439 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8441 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8442 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8444 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8445 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8446 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8447 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8448 applications, these problems are significant.
8450 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8451 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8452 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8453 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8454 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8456 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8457 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8459 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8460 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8461 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8462 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8463 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8464 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8466 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8468 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8469 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8470 minibuffer contains.
8472 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8474 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8475 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8476 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8477 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8479 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8480 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8481 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8482 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8484 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8485 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8487 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8488 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8489 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8491 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8492 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8493 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8494 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8496 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8498 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8499 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8501 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8503 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8504 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8505 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8506 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8507 immediately after the selected one.
8509 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8510 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8512 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8514 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8515 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8516 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8517 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8520 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8521 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8524 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8525 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8526 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8527 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8528 now that the bug is fixed.
8530 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8532 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8533 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8534 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8535 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8537 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8538 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8539 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8540 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8542 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8543 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8544 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8546 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8547 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8548 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8549 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8552 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8553 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8555 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8556 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8557 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8558 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8560 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8561 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8562 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8563 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8564 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8565 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8567 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8568 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8569 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8570 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8572 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8573 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8574 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8576 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8577 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8578 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8579 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8580 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8581 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8582 to a limitation in font-lock).
8584 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8586 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8587 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8588 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8591 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8592 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8594 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8596 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8598 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8600 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8602 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8603 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8604 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8605 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8606 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8607 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8609 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8612 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8613 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8615 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8620 *** Global Font Lock mode
8622 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8623 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8624 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8625 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8626 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8628 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8630 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8634 *** Local Refontification
8636 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8637 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8638 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8639 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8641 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8642 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8643 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8644 above and below point.
8646 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8650 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8651 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8652 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8653 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8654 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8657 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8659 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8660 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8662 ** hide-show changes.
8664 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8665 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8668 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8669 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8671 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8672 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8673 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8677 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8678 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8680 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8681 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8683 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8685 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8686 pressing both mouse buttons.
8688 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8689 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8692 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8695 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8697 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8698 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8700 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8702 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8704 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8706 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8708 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8710 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8712 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8713 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8714 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8715 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8716 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8718 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8720 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8721 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8722 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8725 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8728 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8730 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8731 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8733 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8734 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8736 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8737 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8738 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8740 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8741 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8744 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8746 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8747 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8748 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8750 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8751 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8752 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8754 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8755 up if too much time passes.
8757 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8759 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8760 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8761 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8764 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8765 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8766 call looks like this:
8768 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8770 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8771 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8772 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8775 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8776 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8779 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8780 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8781 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8782 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8784 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8785 idle for SECS seconds.
8787 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8788 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8789 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8792 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8793 there is no answer within a certain time.
8795 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8797 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8798 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8799 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8801 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8802 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8803 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8804 arguments in between are ignored.
8806 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8807 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8809 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8810 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8811 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8812 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8815 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8816 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8817 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8818 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8819 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8820 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8822 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8823 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8824 systems with limited file name syntax.
8826 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8827 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8828 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8831 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8832 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8833 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8835 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8836 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8837 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8838 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8839 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8841 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8842 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8843 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8845 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8846 marker from its buffer position.
8848 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8849 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8850 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8852 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8853 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8854 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8855 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8856 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8857 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8859 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8860 errors that happen often during editing.
8862 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8863 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8864 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8866 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8867 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8869 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8870 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8871 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8872 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8873 and not get-buffer-window.
8875 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8876 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8877 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8879 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8880 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8881 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8882 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8883 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8884 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8885 over and over for the same text.
8887 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8889 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8890 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8892 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8895 in addition to the normal
8899 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8900 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8901 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8905 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8907 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8908 Copyright information:
8910 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8912 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8913 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8914 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8915 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8917 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8918 of this document, or of portions of it,
8919 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8920 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8924 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"