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1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 5 Jan 2000
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
4
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS.
7
8 \f
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
12 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
13
14 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
15 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
16 to list them.
17
18 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
19 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if they these are available.
20
21 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
22 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
23
24 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
25 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
26 \f
27 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
28
29 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
30 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
31 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
32 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
33
34 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
35 a version-dependent component.
36
37 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
38 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
39 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
40 character is still bound as before.
41
42 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
43 using that menu.
44
45 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
46 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to executable-chmod.
47
48 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
49 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
50 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
51 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
52 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
53 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
54 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
55
56 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
57 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
58 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
59 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
60 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
61 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
62 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
63 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
64 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
65
66 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
67 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
68
69 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
70 point in a pop-up window.
71
72 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
73 displays all characters in that character set.
74
75 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
76 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
77
78 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
79 on the context.
80
81 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
82
83 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
84 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
85
86 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
87 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
88 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
89 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
90
91 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
92 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
93 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
94 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
95
96 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
97 on the display using several methods
98
99 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
100 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
101 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
102
103 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
104 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
105
106 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
107
108 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
109 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
110
111 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
112 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
113 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
114 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
115
116 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
117 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
118 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
119
120 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
121 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
122
123 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
124 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
125 this behavior.
126
127 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
128 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
129 Emacs dump core.
130
131 ** New X resources recognized
132
133 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
134 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
135 is useful for debugging X problems.
136
137 Example:
138
139 emacs.synchronous: true
140
141 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
142 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
143 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
144 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
145 visual class names are
146
147 TrueColor
148 PseudoColor
149 DirectColor
150 StaticColor
151 GrayScale
152 StaticGray
153
154 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
155 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
156 meaning.
157
158 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
159 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
160 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
161 visual.
162
163 Example:
164
165 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
166
167 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
168 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
169 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
170 resource values are `true' or `on'.
171
172 Example:
173
174 emacs.privateColormap: true
175
176 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
177 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
178 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
179
180 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
181 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
182 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
183 be customized.
184
185 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
186
187 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
188 all frames except the selected one.
189
190 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
191 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
192
193 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
194 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
195 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
196 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
197
198 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
199 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
200
201 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
202 read mail from the menu etc.
203
204 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
205 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
206
207 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
208
209 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
210 macros
211
212 Key binding Macro
213 -------------------------
214 C-c C-c C-s @strong
215 C-c C-c C-e @emph
216 C-c C-c u @url
217 C-c C-c q @quotation
218 C-c C-c m @email
219
220 ** Changes in Outline mode.
221
222 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
223 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
224 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
225
226 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
227 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
228
229 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either M-x clone-buffer
230 or C-u m <entry> RET. M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and
231 several other special buffers.
232
233 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
234 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
235 .emacs file.
236
237 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
238 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
239
240 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
241 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
242 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
243
244 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
245 is running in batch mode. For example,
246
247 (message "%s" (read t))
248
249 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
250 to standard output.
251
252 ** Faces and frame parameters.
253
254 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
255 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
256 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
257 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
258 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
259 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
260 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
261
262 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
263 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
264 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
265 `default' face and vice versa.
266
267 ** New face `menu'.
268
269 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
270 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
271 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
272
273 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
274
275 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
276 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
277 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
278 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
279
280 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
281 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
282 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
283
284 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
285 `ScreenGamma'.
286
287 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
288
289 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
290 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
291 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
292 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
293 the text.
294
295 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
296
297 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
298 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
299 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
300 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
301 specify a font.
302
303 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
304 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
305 under Lisp changes, below.
306
307 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
308
309 ** When using a windowing terminal, Emacs window now has a cursor of
310 its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid; otherwise,
311 it is hollow.
312
313 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
314 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
315 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
316 customizing face `fringe'.
317
318 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
319 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
320
321 ** LessTif support.
322
323 Emacs now runs with LessTif (see <http://www.lesstif.org>). You will
324 need a version 0.88.1 or later.
325
326 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
327
328 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
329 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
330 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
331 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
332 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
333 Emacs.
334
335 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
336 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
337 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
338 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
339 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
340 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
341
342 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
343 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
344 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
345 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
346 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
347 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
348
349 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
350 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
351 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
352 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
353 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
354
355 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
356
357 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
358 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
359 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
360
361 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
362
363 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
364 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
365 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
366 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
367 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
368 whitespace.
369
370 ** Busy-cursor.
371
372 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
373 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
374
375 ** Blinking cursor
376
377 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
378 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
379 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
380 the group `cursor'.
381
382 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
383
384 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
385 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
386 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
387 details.
388
389 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
390 have to do anything to activate it.
391
392 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
393
394 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
395 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
396 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
397 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
398
399 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
400
401 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
402
403 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
404
405 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
406 LessTif/Motif one.
407
408 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
409 LessTif and Motif.
410
411 ** Hscrolling in C code.
412
413 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
414 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
415 customized.
416
417 ** Tool bar support.
418
419 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
420 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
421
422 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
423
424 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
425 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
426 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
427 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
428 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
429
430 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
431
432 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
433 buffers.
434
435 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
436 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
437
438 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
439
440 - Mouse-2 on the read-only status in the mode line (`%' or `*')
441 toggles the read-only status.
442
443 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
444
445 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
446
447 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
448 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
449 non-nil.
450
451 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
452
453 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
454 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
455 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
456 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
457 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
458 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
459 on terminals.
460
461 ** Sound support
462
463 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
464 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
465 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
466
467 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
468 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
469 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
470 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
471 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
472 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
473
474 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
475
476 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
477
478 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
479 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
480 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
481
482 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
483 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
484
485 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
486 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
487 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
488
489 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
490
491 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
492 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
493 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
494 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
495
496 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
497 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
498 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
499 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
500
501 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
502 notably at the end of lines.
503
504 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
505 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
506
507 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
508
509 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
510 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
511 after each match to get the replacement text.
512
513 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
514 you edit the replacement string.
515
516 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', let's
517 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
518 lisp-complete-symbol.
519
520 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
521
522 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
523 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
524 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
525 window size by setting the following variable:
526
527 - User option: max-mini-window-height
528
529 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
530 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
531 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
532
533 Default is 0.25.
534
535 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
536
537 ** Changes to hideshow.el
538
539 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
540 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
541
542 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
543
544 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
545 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
546 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
547 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
548 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
549 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
550
551 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
552 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
553 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
554 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
555
556 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
557
558 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
559 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
560 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
561 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
562 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
563
564 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
565 something like this in your .emacs.
566
567 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
568 (lambda ()
569 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
570
571 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
572
573 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
574 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
575 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
576
577 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
578 buffer, fixing old-style date formats if necessary.
579
580 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
581 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
582
583 The search for a file's version number is performed based on regular
584 expressions from `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be
585 cutomized. Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of
586 a file.
587
588 ** Changes in Font Lock
589
590 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
591 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
592 mode.
593
594 ** Comint (subshell) changes
595
596 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
597 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
598
599 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
600 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
601 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
602
603 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
604 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
605 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
606
607 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and
608 scheme-interaction-mode now highlight user input, and support choosing
609 previous input with mouse-2. To control this feature, see the
610 user-option `comint-highlight-input'.
611
612 ** Changes to Rmail mode
613
614 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
615 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
616 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
617 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
618 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
619 as correspondent.
620
621 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
622 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
623 regexp matching your mail addresses.
624
625 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
626 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
627 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
628 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
629 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
630
631 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
632 like `j'.
633
634 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
635 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
636 digest message.
637
638 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
639 in which folder to put messages automatically.
640
641 ** Changes to TeX mode
642
643 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
644 `latex-mode'.
645
646 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
647
648 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
649 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
650 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
651 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
652 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
653 can be edited from that buffer.
654
655 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
656 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
657 `A' to use all marked entries).
658
659 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
660 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
661
662 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
663 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
664 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
665 been cited.
666
667 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
668 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
669 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
670 in column 1 are always made leaves.
671
672 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
673 has the following new features:
674
675 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
676 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
677 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
678 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
679
680 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
681 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
682 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
683 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
684 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
685 defaults to 1.
686
687 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
688 file names.
689
690 ** Tooltips.
691
692 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
693 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
694 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
695
696 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
697 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
698 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
699 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
700
701 ** Customize changes
702
703 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
704 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
705 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
706
707 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
708 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
709 default).
710
711 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
712 between custom options. Example:
713
714 (defcustom default-input-method nil
715 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
716 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
717 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
718 :group 'mule
719 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
720 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
721
722 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
723 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
724 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
725
726 ** New features in evaluation commands
727
728 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
729 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
730 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
731 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
732 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
733
734 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
735 code when called with a prefix argument.
736
737 ** Ispell changes
738
739 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
740 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
741 spell-checks the current buffer.
742
743 ** Dired changes
744
745 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
746 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
747 is, delete only empty directories.
748
749 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
750 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
751 copy directories recursively.
752
753 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
754 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
755 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
756
757 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
758 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
759 directory.
760
761 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
762 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
763 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
764 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
765 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
766
767 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
768 from ls switches.
769
770 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
771 use the -f option when sending mail.
772
773 ** CC mode changes.
774
775 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
776 current user setups (although it's believed that these
777 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
778 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
779 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
780 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
781 release.
782
783 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
784 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
785 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
786 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
787 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
788 have to bother.
789
790 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
791 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
792 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
793 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
794 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
795 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
796
797 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
798 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
799 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
800 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
801 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
802 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
803 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
804 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
805
806 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
807 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
808 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
809 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
810 above.
811
812 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
813 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
814 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
815 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
816 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
817 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
818 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
819 function documentation for more info.
820
821 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
822 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
823 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
824 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
825 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
826 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
827 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
828 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
829
830 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
831
832 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
833 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
834
835 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
836 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
837 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
838 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
839 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
840 style system.
841
842 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
843 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
844 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
845 as far as possible.
846
847 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
848 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
849 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
850 chapter about this in the manual.
851
852 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
853 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
854 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
855 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
856 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
857
858 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
859 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
860 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
861
862 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
863 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
864
865 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
866 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
867 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
868 inside CC Mode.
869
870 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
871 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
872 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
873 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
874 cc-mode/).
875
876 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
877 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
878 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
879 literals.
880
881 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
882 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
883 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
884 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
885 this function.
886
887 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
888 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
889 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
890 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
891 Thanks to Eric Eide.
892
893 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
894 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
895 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
896
897 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
898
899 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
900 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
901 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
902 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
903
904 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
905 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
906 the column specified by comment-column.
907
908 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
909 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
910 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
911 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
912 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
913 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
914
915 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
916 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
917 arguments.
918
919 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
920
921 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
922 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
923 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
924 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
925 Provan).
926
927 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
928
929 ** Makefile mode changes
930
931 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
932
933 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
934 Fontlock mode is active.
935
936 ** Isearch changes
937
938 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
939 so that searches can be resumed.
940
941 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
942 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
943 that started the search.
944
945 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
946 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
947
948 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
949
950 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
951 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
952 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
953 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
954 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
955 `secondary-selection'.
956
957 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
958 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
959 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
960 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
961 usual snappy response.
962
963 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
964 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
965 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
966 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
967
968 ** Changes in sort.el
969
970 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
971 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
972 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
973 numeric base.
974
975 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
976
977 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
978 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
979 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
980
981 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
982 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
983
984 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
985 output ^M at the end of lines.
986
987 ** Shell script mode changes.
988
989 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
990 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
991 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
992
993 ** Etags changes.
994
995 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
996
997 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
998 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
999 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1000 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1001 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1002
1003 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1004 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1005
1006 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1007 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1008
1009 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1010 types.
1011
1012 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1013
1014 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1015
1016 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1017 are now tagged.
1018
1019 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1020 variables are tagged.
1021
1022 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1023
1024 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1025 for PSWrap.
1026
1027 ** Changes in etags.el
1028
1029 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1030 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1031 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1032
1033 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1034 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1035
1036 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1037 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1038 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1039 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1040
1041 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1042
1043 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1044 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1045
1046 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1047
1048 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1049 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1050 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1051
1052 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1053 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1054
1055 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1056 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1057
1058 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1059 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1060 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1061
1062 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1063 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1064 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1065 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1066
1067 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1068 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1069 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1070
1071 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1072
1073 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1074
1075 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1076 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1077 expression from that list, are not checked.
1078
1079 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1080 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1081 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1082 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1083
1084 ** New modes and packages
1085
1086 *** THe new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1087 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1088
1089 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1090
1091 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1092 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1093 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1094 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1095 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1096 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1097 corresponding file is read.
1098
1099 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1100 Emacs is idle.
1101
1102 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1103 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1104
1105 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1106 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1107 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1108
1109 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1110 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1111 separate Texinfo file.
1112
1113 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine
1114 or by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1115 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS.
1116 It comes with log-view-mode to view RCS and SCCS logs and log-edit-mode
1117 used to enter checkin log messages.
1118
1119 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1120 without invoking external programs.
1121
1122 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1123 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1124 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1125 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1126 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1127
1128 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1129 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1130
1131 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1132 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1133
1134 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1135 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1136 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1137 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1138 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1139 single step.
1140
1141 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1142 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1143 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1144 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1145
1146 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1147 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1148 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1149
1150 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1151 PostScript.
1152
1153 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1154
1155 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1156
1157 ; comment (until end of line)
1158 A non-terminal
1159 "C" terminal
1160 ?C? special
1161 $A default non-terminal
1162 $"C" default terminal
1163 $?C? default special
1164 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1165 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1166 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1167 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1168 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1169 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1170 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1171 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1172 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1173 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1174 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1175 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1176 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1177 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1178 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1179
1180 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1181
1182 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1183 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1184 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1185 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1186 equal signs of assignments.
1187
1188 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1189 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1190
1191 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1192 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1193 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1194 customize the package.
1195
1196 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1197
1198 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1199 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1200 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1201 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1202 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1203 which answers different needs.
1204
1205 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1206 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1207 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1208 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1209 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1210 to be enabled.
1211
1212 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1213 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1214
1215 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1216
1217 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1218
1219 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1220
1221 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1222 Pascal) language.
1223
1224 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1225 the text at point.
1226
1227 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1228
1229 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1230
1231 *** whitespace.el ???
1232
1233 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1234 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1235 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1236 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1237 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1238 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1239 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1240
1241 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1242
1243 Here is an example of columns:
1244
1245 horse apple bus
1246 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1247 porcupine strawberry airplane
1248
1249 Doing the following settings:
1250
1251 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1252 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1253 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1254 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1255
1256
1257 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1258
1259 M-x delimit-columns-region
1260
1261 It results:
1262
1263 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1264 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1265 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1266
1267 delim-col has the following options:
1268
1269 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1270 before all columns.
1271
1272 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1273 between each column.
1274
1275 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1276 after all columns.
1277
1278 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1279 each column.
1280
1281 delim-col has the following commands:
1282
1283 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1284 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1285
1286 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1287 were operated on recently.
1288
1289 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1290
1291 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1292 recentf at Emacs startup.
1293
1294 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1295 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1296 file list can be displayed:
1297
1298 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1299 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1300 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1301
1302 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1303 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1304
1305 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1306 text.
1307
1308 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1309 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1310 specific to Message mode.
1311
1312 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1313 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1314 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1315
1316 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1317 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1318 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1319
1320 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1321 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1322
1323 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1324
1325 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1326 minibuffer with completion.
1327
1328 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1329 with the diary features.
1330
1331 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1332 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1333
1334 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1335 Fill mode.
1336
1337 ** Withdrawn packages
1338
1339 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1340 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1341
1342 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1343
1344 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1345
1346 \f
1347 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1348 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1349
1350 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1351 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1352 frame or window.
1353
1354 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1355 were added
1356
1357 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1358
1359 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1360 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1361
1362 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1363
1364 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1365 comparison is done with `eq'.
1366
1367 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1368
1369 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1370 has been changed.
1371
1372 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1373 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1374 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1375
1376 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1377 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1378
1379 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1380 function was declared obsolete.
1381
1382 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1383 retained as an alias).
1384
1385 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1386 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1387 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1388
1389 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1390
1391 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1392
1393 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1394 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1395
1396 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1397
1398 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1399
1400 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1401
1402 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1403 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1404 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1405 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1406 returned.
1407
1408 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1409 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1410 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1411 minibuffer even if it is active.
1412
1413 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1414 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1415 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1416 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1417 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1418 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1419
1420 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1421 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1422 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1423 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1424 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1425 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1426 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1427
1428 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1429 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1430 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1431
1432 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1433 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1434 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1435 Default value is nil.
1436
1437 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1438 meaning no limit.
1439
1440 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1441 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1442 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1443
1444 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1445 of a primitive.
1446
1447 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1448 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1449 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1450 than replacing the local map.
1451
1452 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1453 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1454
1455 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1456
1457 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1458 promised long ago.
1459
1460 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1461 \f
1462 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1463
1464 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1465 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1466 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1467 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1468
1469 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1470 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1471 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1472 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1473
1474 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1475 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1476 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1477
1478 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1479 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1480 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1481 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1482 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1483 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1484 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1485 eight-bit-graphic.
1486
1487 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1488
1489 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1490 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1491 character set as previously.
1492
1493 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1494 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1495 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1496
1497 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1498 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1499 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1500 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1501
1502 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1503 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1504
1505 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1506 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1507 "fontset-default".
1508
1509 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1510 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1511
1512 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1513 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1514 buffers and strings.
1515
1516 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1517 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1518 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1519 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1520 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1521 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1522 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1523 also been deleted.
1524
1525 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1526 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1527 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1528
1529 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1530 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1531 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1532 may differ between buffer and string text.
1533
1534 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1535 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1536
1537 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1538 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1539 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1540 `composition' from STRING.
1541
1542 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1543 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1544
1545 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1546 obsolete.
1547
1548 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1549 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1550 character set is not used.
1551
1552 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1553 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1554 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1555
1556 +++
1557 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1558 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1559 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1560
1561 +++
1562 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1563 that offset in the file before writing.
1564
1565 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1566 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1567
1568 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1569 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1570 from which the command was issued.
1571
1572 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1573 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1574 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1575 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1576 operate on.
1577
1578 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1579 to `window-buffer-height'.
1580
1581 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1582
1583 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1584 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1585 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1586
1587 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1588 respectively.
1589
1590 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1591 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1592
1593 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1594 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1595 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1596
1597 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1598 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1599 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1600 is currently displayed in some window.
1601
1602 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1603 argument function's results.
1604
1605 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1606 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1607
1608 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1609 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1610
1611 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1612 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1613
1614 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1615 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1616 as follows:
1617
1618 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1619 nil don't display a cursor
1620 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1621 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1622 others display a box cursor.
1623
1624 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1625 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1626 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1627 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1628
1629 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1630 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1631 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1632 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1633
1634 Example:
1635
1636 (string-to-syntax "()")
1637 => (4 . 41)
1638
1639 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1640 other than 10.
1641
1642 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1643 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1644
1645 #b1111
1646 => 15
1647 #b-1111
1648 => -15
1649
1650 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1651
1652 #o666
1653 => 438
1654
1655 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1656
1657 #xbeef
1658 => 48815
1659
1660 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1661
1662 #2R-111
1663 => -7
1664 #25rah
1665 => 267
1666
1667 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1668 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1669 and isn't a string.
1670
1671 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1672 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1673 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1674 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1675
1676 +++
1677 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1678
1679 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1680 for a regexp in a string.
1681
1682 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1683 `mouse-position-function'.
1684
1685 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1686 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1687
1688 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1689 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1690
1691 +++
1692 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1693 returns it.
1694
1695 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1696 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1697
1698 +++
1699 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1700 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1701 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1702 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1703 mode.
1704
1705 +++
1706 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1707 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1708
1709 +++
1710 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1711 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1712 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1713 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1714 been performed."
1715
1716 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1717 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1718 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1719 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1720
1721 +++
1722 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1723 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1724 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1725
1726 +++
1727 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1728 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1729 specified table.
1730
1731 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1732
1733 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1734 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1735 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1736 what BODY returns.
1737
1738 +++
1739 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1740 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1741
1742 +++
1743 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1744 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1745
1746 +++
1747 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1748 instead of being optional.
1749
1750 +++
1751 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1752 modify read-only text.
1753
1754 +++
1755 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1756
1757 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1758 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1759 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1760 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1761 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1762
1763 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1764 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1765 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1766 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1767 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1768 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1769 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1770
1771 +++
1772 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1773 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1774 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1775 start sequences.
1776
1777 +++
1778 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1779 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1780
1781 +++
1782 ** New function `propertize'
1783
1784 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1785 strings with text properties.
1786
1787 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1788
1789 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1790 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1791 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1792 specified value of that property. Example:
1793
1794 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1795
1796 +++
1797 ** push and pop macros.
1798
1799 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1800 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1801 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1802
1803 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1804 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1805 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1806
1807 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1808
1809 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1810 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1811
1812 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1813 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1814 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1815 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1816
1817 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1818 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1819 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1820 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1821
1822 +++
1823 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1824 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1825
1826 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1827 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1828 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1829 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1830 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1831 space, and DEL.
1832 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1833 and DEL.
1834 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1835 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1836 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1837 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1838 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1839 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1840 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1841 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1842 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1843 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1844 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1845 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1846 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1847 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1848 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1849
1850 +++
1851 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1852
1853 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1854
1855 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1856
1857 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1858 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1859
1860 :test TEST
1861
1862 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1863 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1864 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1865
1866 :size SIZE
1867
1868 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1869 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1870
1871 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
1872
1873 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
1874 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
1875 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
1876 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
1877 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
1878
1879 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
1880
1881 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
1882 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
1883 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
1884
1885 :weakness WEAK
1886
1887 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
1888 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
1889 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
1890 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
1891 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
1892
1893 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
1894
1895 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
1896
1897 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
1898
1899 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
1900
1901 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
1902
1903 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
1904 values are shared.
1905
1906 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
1907
1908 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
1909
1910 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1911
1912 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
1913
1914 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
1915
1916 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
1917
1918 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
1919
1920 Returns the size of TABLE.
1921
1922 - Function: hash-table-rehash-test TABLE
1923
1924 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
1925
1926 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
1927
1928 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
1929
1930 - Function: clrhash TABLE
1931
1932 Clear TABLE.
1933
1934 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
1935
1936 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
1937 not found.
1938
1939 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
1940
1941 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
1942 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
1943
1944 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
1945
1946 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
1947
1948 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
1949
1950 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
1951 arguments KEY and VALUE.
1952
1953 - Function: sxhash OBJ
1954
1955 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
1956
1957 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
1958
1959 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
1960 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
1961 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
1962 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
1963 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
1964
1965 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
1966
1967 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
1968 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
1969 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
1970
1971 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
1972 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
1973
1974 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
1975 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
1976
1977 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
1978 (sxhash (upcase a)))
1979
1980 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
1981 'case-fold-string-hash))
1982
1983 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
1984
1985 +++
1986 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
1987
1988 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
1989 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
1990 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
1991
1992 +++
1993 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
1994
1995 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
1996 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
1997
1998 +++
1999 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2000 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2001 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2002 is too short to reach that column.
2003
2004 +++
2005 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2006 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2007 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2008 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2009
2010 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2011 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2012 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2013
2014 +++
2015 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2016 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2017
2018 +++
2019 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2020 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2021
2022 +++
2023 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2024 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2025 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2026 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2027 temporary-file-directory instead.
2028
2029 +++
2030 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2031 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2032 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2033 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2034
2035 +++
2036 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2037 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2038
2039 +++
2040 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2041
2042 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2043 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2044 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2045
2046 +++
2047 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2048
2049 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2050 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2051 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2052 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2053 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2054 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2055
2056 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2057 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2058 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2059 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2060
2061 +++
2062 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2063
2064 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2065 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2066 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2067 result string.
2068
2069 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2070 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2071
2072 Example:
2073
2074 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2075 (s2 "world"))
2076 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2077 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2078 (format s1 s2))
2079
2080 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2081
2082 +++
2083 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2084
2085 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2086 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2087 argument in it.
2088
2089 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2090 (arg "world"))
2091 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2092 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2093 (message msg arg))
2094
2095 +++
2096 ** Sound support
2097
2098 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2099 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2100
2101 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2102 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2103 to enable sound support.
2104
2105 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2106 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2107 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2108 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2109 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2110
2111 The following sound properties are supported:
2112
2113 - `:file FILE'
2114
2115 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2116 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2117
2118 - `:data DATA'
2119
2120 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2121 may be present, but not both.
2122
2123 - `:volume VOLUME'
2124
2125 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2126 0..1. This property is optional.
2127
2128 Other properties are ignored.
2129
2130 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2131
2132 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2133 a keyword symbol.
2134
2135 ** Changes to garbage collection
2136
2137 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2138 of live and free strings.
2139
2140 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2141 strings that have been consed so far.
2142
2143 \f
2144 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2145 Lisp Manual
2146
2147 +++
2148 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2149
2150 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2151 image.
2152
2153 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2154
2155 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2156
2157 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2158 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2159 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2160 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2161 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2162
2163 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2164 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2165
2166 +++
2167 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2168 optional.
2169
2170 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2171
2172 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2173 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2174 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2175 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2176
2177 \f
2178 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2179
2180 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2181 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2182 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2183 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2184
2185 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2186 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2187
2188 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2189 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2190 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2191 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2192 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2193 just display it black instead.
2194
2195 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2196 a line like
2197
2198 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2199
2200 in your `.emacs'.
2201
2202 ** New face implementation.
2203
2204 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2205 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2206
2207 +++
2208 *** New faces.
2209
2210 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2211
2212 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2213
2214 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2215 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2216
2217 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2218
2219 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2220
2221 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2222
2223 6. Foreground color.
2224
2225 7. Background color.
2226
2227 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2228
2229 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2230
2231 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2232
2233 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2234
2235 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2236 color.
2237
2238 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2239 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2240
2241 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2242 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2243 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2244 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2245 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2246 attributes mentioned above.
2247
2248 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2249 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2250 created frames.
2251
2252 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2253 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2254 `fully-specified'.
2255
2256 +++
2257 *** Face merging.
2258
2259 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2260 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2261 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2262 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2263 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2264 results in a fully-specified face.
2265
2266 +++
2267 *** Face realization.
2268
2269 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2270 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2271 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2272 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2273 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2274 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2275
2276 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2277 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2278 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2279 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2280
2281 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2282 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2283 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2284 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2285 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2286
2287 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2288 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2289 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2290 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2291 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2292 Emacs.
2293
2294 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2295 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2296 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2297 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2298
2299 ++++
2300 **** Clearing face caches.
2301
2302 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2303 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2304 unused fonts.
2305
2306 +++
2307 *** Font selection.
2308
2309 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2310 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2311 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2312
2313 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2314 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2315 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2316 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2317 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2318
2319 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2320 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2321 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2322
2323 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2324
2325 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2326 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2327 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2328 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2329 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2330 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2331 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2332
2333 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2334 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2335 face doesn't exist.
2336
2337 +++
2338 **** Scalable fonts
2339
2340 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2341 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2342 servers.
2343
2344 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2345 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2346 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2347 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2348 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2349 that list. Example:
2350
2351 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2352
2353 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2354
2355 +++
2356 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2357
2358 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2359
2360 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2361 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2362 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2363
2364 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2365 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2366 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2367 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2368 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2369 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2370 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2371 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2372 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2373 of the face font sort order.
2374
2375 - Function: x-font-family-list
2376
2377 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2378 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2379 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2380 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2381
2382 - Variable: font-list-limit
2383
2384 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2385 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2386 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2387
2388 +++
2389 *** Setting face attributes.
2390
2391 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2392 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2393 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2394 `face-attribute'.
2395
2396 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2397 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2398
2399 The following attributes are recognized:
2400
2401 `:family'
2402
2403 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2404 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2405 and `?' are allowed.
2406
2407 `:width'
2408
2409 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2410 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2411 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2412 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2413
2414 `:height'
2415
2416 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2417 1/10 pt.
2418
2419 `:weight'
2420
2421 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2422 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2423 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2424
2425 `:slant'
2426
2427 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2428 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2429 `reverse-oblique'.
2430
2431 `:foreground', `:background'
2432
2433 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2434
2435 `:underline'
2436
2437 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2438 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2439 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2440 don't underline.
2441
2442 `:overline'
2443
2444 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2445 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2446 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2447 overline.
2448
2449 `:strike-through'
2450
2451 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2452 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2453 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2454 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2455
2456 `:box'
2457
2458 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2459 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2460 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2461 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2462 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2463 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2464 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2465 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2466 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2467 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2468 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2469 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2470 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2471 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2472 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2473 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2474 box.
2475
2476 `:inverse-video'
2477
2478 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2479 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2480
2481 `:stipple'
2482
2483 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2484 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2485 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2486 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2487 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2488 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2489
2490 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2491 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2492
2493 `:font'
2494
2495 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2496 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2497 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2498 versions of Emacs.
2499
2500 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2501 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2502 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2503
2504 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2505 `defface'.
2506
2507 *** Face attributes and X resources
2508
2509 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2510 from X resources:
2511
2512 Face attribute X resource class
2513 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2514 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2515 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2516 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2517 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2518 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2519 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2520 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2521 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2522 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2523 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2524 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2525 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2526 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2527 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2528 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2529 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2530 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2531 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2532 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2533
2534 +++
2535 *** Text property `face'.
2536
2537 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2538 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2539 specification can be
2540
2541 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2542
2543 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2544 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2545 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2546 for face attribute names.
2547
2548 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2549 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2550 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2551
2552 +++
2553 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2554
2555 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2556 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2557 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2558 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2559 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2560 used to clear the mapping table.
2561
2562 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2563
2564 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2565 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2566 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2567 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2568 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2569 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2570 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2571 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2572 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2573 modify their color-related behavior.
2574
2575 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2576 any frame type.
2577
2578 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2579
2580 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2581 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2582 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2583 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2584 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2585 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2586 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2587 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2588 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2589
2590 +++
2591 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2592
2593 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2594
2595 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2596 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2597 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2598
2599 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2600
2601 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2602 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2603 text-property.
2604
2605 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2606 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2607 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2608 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2609 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2610 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2611 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2612 functions.
2613
2614 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2615 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2616 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2617
2618 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2619
2620 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE
2621
2622 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2623 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2624 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2625 constrained position if that is is different.
2626
2627 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2628 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2629 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2630 constrained to the field that has the same `field' text-property
2631 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2632 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2633 fields.
2634
2635 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2636 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2637 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2638 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2639 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2640
2641 - Function: erase-field &optional POS
2642
2643 Erases the field surrounding POS.
2644 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2645 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2646
2647 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2648
2649 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2650 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2651 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2652 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at beginning of an
2653 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2654
2655 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2656
2657 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2658 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2659 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2660 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is already at end of a field,
2661 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2662
2663 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2664
2665 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2666 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2667 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2668
2669 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2670
2671 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2672 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2673 If POS is nil, the position of the current buffer's point is used.
2674
2675 +++
2676 ** Image support.
2677
2678 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2679 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2680 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2681 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2682
2683 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2684 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2685 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2686 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2687 area.
2688
2689 IMAGE is an image specification.
2690
2691 *** Image specifications
2692
2693 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2694 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2695 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2696 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2697 described below are ignored.
2698
2699 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2700
2701 `:ascent ASCENT'
2702
2703 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2704 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2705 to use for its ascent.
2706
2707 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2708 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2709
2710 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2711 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2712 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2713 overlays that apply to the image.
2714
2715 `:margin MARGIN'
2716
2717 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2718 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2719
2720 `:relief RELIEF'
2721
2722 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2723 around an image.
2724
2725 `:algorithm ALGO'
2726
2727 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2728 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2729 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2730 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2731
2732 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2733
2734 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2735 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2736 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2737 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2738 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2739 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2740 background of the image.
2741
2742 `:file FILE'
2743
2744 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2745 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2746 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2747 may be present in the image specification.
2748
2749 `:data DATA'
2750
2751 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2752 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2753 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2754 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2755
2756 *** Supported image types
2757
2758 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2759
2760 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2761 properties supported are
2762
2763 `:foreground FG'
2764
2765 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2766 is the frame's foreground.
2767
2768 `:background FG'
2769
2770 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2771 the frame's background color.
2772
2773 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2774 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2775 instead of a `:file' property.
2776
2777 `:width WIDTH'
2778
2779 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2780
2781 `:height HEIGHT'
2782
2783 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2784
2785 `:data DATA'
2786
2787 DATA must be either
2788
2789 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2790 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2791
2792 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2793
2794 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2795 bitmap.
2796
2797 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2798 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2799 in the file.
2800
2801 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2802
2803 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2804 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2805 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2806 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2807
2808 Additional image properties supported are:
2809
2810 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2811
2812 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2813 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2814 name.
2815
2816 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2817 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2818
2819 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2820 to display compressed images.
2821
2822 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2823
2824 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2825 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2826 defined.
2827
2828 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2829
2830 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2831 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2832 are:
2833
2834 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2835
2836 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2837 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2838 properties defined.
2839
2840 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2841
2842 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2843 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2844
2845 Additional image properties supported are:
2846
2847 `:index INDEX'
2848
2849 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2850 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2851
2852 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2853 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2854 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2855 every 0.1 seconds.
2856
2857 (defun show-anim (file max)
2858 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2859 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2860
2861 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2862 (when (= idx max)
2863 (setq idx 0))
2864 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
2865 (save-excursion
2866 (set-buffer buffer)
2867 (goto-char (point-min))
2868 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
2869 (insert-image img "x"))
2870 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
2871
2872 **** PNG, image type `png'
2873
2874 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
2875 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2876 properties defined.
2877
2878 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
2879
2880 Additional image properties supported are:
2881
2882 `:pt-width WIDTH'
2883
2884 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
2885 integer. This is a required property.
2886
2887 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
2888
2889 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
2890 must be a integer. This is an required property.
2891
2892 `:bounding-box BOX'
2893
2894 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
2895 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
2896 files. This is an required property.
2897
2898 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
2899 lisp/gs.el.
2900
2901 *** Lisp interface.
2902
2903 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
2904 which are supported in the current configuration.
2905
2906 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
2907 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
2908 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
2909 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
2910 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
2911
2912 *** Simplified image API, image.el
2913
2914 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
2915 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
2916 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
2917 define an image based on available image types. The functions
2918 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
2919 buffer.
2920
2921 +++
2922 ** Display margins.
2923
2924 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
2925 and images.
2926
2927 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
2928 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
2929 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
2930 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
2931 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
2932 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
2933 of the display margins.
2934
2935 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
2936 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
2937 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
2938 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
2939 in this file).
2940
2941 +++
2942 ** Help display
2943
2944 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
2945 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
2946 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
2947 that have a `help-echo' property.
2948
2949 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
2950 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
2951 the window in which the help was found.
2952
2953 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
2954 `help-echo' text property was found.
2955
2956 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
2957 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
2958
2959 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
2960 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
2961 mouse.
2962
2963 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
2964 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
2965
2966 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
2967 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
2968 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
2969 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
2970 used as help string.
2971
2972 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
2973 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
2974 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
2975
2976 +++
2977 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
2978
2979 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
2980 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
2981
2982 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
2983 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
2984 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
2985 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
2986 used.
2987
2988 (global-set-key [A-down]
2989 #'(lambda ()
2990 (interactive)
2991 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2992 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
2993 (global-set-key [A-up]
2994 #'(lambda ()
2995 (interactive)
2996 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
2997 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
2998
2999 +++
3000 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3001
3002 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3003 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3004 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3005 is called with one argument, POS.
3006
3007 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3008 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3009 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3010 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3011 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3012
3013 +++
3014 ** Tool bar support.
3015
3016 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3017 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3018 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3019 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3020 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3021 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3022
3023 *** Tool bar item definitions
3024
3025 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3026 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3027 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3028
3029 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3030 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3031 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3032 property (see below).
3033
3034 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3035 binding are currently ignored.
3036
3037 The following properties are recognized:
3038
3039 `:enable FORM'.
3040
3041 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3042 or disabled.
3043
3044 `:visible FORM'
3045
3046 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3047
3048 `:filter FUNCTION'
3049
3050 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3051 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3052 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3053
3054 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3055
3056 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3057 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3058
3059 `:image IMAGES'
3060
3061 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3062 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3063 meaning of each of the four elements:
3064
3065 Index Use when item is
3066 ----------------------------------------
3067 0 enabled and selected
3068 1 enabled and deselected
3069 2 disabled and selected
3070 3 disabled and deselected
3071
3072 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3073 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3074
3075 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3076
3077 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3078 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3079
3080 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3081
3082 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3083 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3084 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3085
3086 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3087 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3088
3089 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3090 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3091 pixels. Default is 1.
3092
3093 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3094 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3095
3096 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3097
3098 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3099 a tool bar item. If
3100
3101 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3102 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3103 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3104
3105 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3106
3107 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3108
3109 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3110 item.
3111
3112 ** Mode line changes.
3113
3114 +++
3115 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3116
3117 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3118 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3119 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3120
3121 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3122 a `local-map' text property.
3123
3124 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3125 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3126
3127 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3128 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3129 `local-map' property.
3130
3131 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3132 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3133 example.
3134
3135 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3136 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3137
3138 +++
3139 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3140 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3141
3142 +++
3143 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3144
3145 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3146 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3147 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3148 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3149 line.
3150
3151 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3152 `header-line'.
3153
3154 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3155 position in the header-line.
3156
3157 +++
3158 ** Text property `display'
3159
3160 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3161 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3162 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3163 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3164
3165 *** Variable width and height spaces
3166
3167 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3168 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3169 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3170 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3171 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3172 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3173 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3174
3175 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3176 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3177 properties described below.
3178
3179 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3180 characters having the `display' property.
3181
3182 - :width WIDTH
3183
3184 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3185 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3186
3187 - :relative-width FACTOR
3188
3189 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3190 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3191 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3192 width of that character by FACTOR.
3193
3194 - :align-to HPOS
3195
3196 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3197 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3198
3199 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3200
3201 - :height HEIGHT
3202
3203 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3204 normal line height.
3205
3206 - :relative-height FACTOR
3207
3208 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3209 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3210
3211 - :ascent ASCENT
3212
3213 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3214 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3215 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3216 equal to 100.
3217
3218 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3219
3220 *** Images
3221
3222 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3223 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3224 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3225 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3226 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3227 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3228 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3229 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3230 as display specification.
3231
3232 *** Other display properties
3233
3234 - :space-width FACTOR
3235
3236 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3237 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3238 integer or float.
3239
3240 - :height HEIGHT
3241
3242 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3243
3244 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3245 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3246 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3247 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3248 a font is available counts as a step.
3249
3250 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3251 as tall as the frame's default font.
3252
3253 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3254 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3255
3256 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3257 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3258
3259 - :raise FACTOR
3260
3261 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3262 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3263 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3264 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3265 `:height' subproperty.
3266
3267 *** Conditional display properties
3268
3269 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3270 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3271 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3272 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3273 the text having the `display' property.
3274
3275 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3276 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3277
3278 +++
3279 ** New menu separator types.
3280
3281 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3282 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3283 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3284 to specify other menu separator types.
3285
3286 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3287
3288 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3289 separator occurs.
3290
3291 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3292
3293 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3294
3295 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3296
3297 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3298
3299 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3300
3301 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3302
3303 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3304
3305 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3306
3307 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3308
3309 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3310 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3311
3312 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3313
3314 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3315
3316 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3317
3318 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3319
3320 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3321
3322 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3323
3324 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3325
3326 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3327
3328 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3329
3330 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3331
3332 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3333
3334 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3335
3336 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3337
3338 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3339
3340 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3341 the corresponding single-line separators.
3342
3343 +++
3344 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3345
3346 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3347 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3348 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3349 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3350 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3351 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3352 default foreground is black.
3353
3354 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3355 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3356 `ScrollBarBackground').
3357
3358 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3359 settings for scroll bar colors.
3360
3361 +++
3362 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3363 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3364
3365 ---
3366 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3367 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3368 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3369 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3370 the original window start.
3371
3372 ---
3373 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3374 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3375 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3376
3377 +++
3378 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3379
3380 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3381 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3382 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3383 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3384
3385 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3386 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3387
3388 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3389
3390 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3391 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3392 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3393 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3394 temporarily to nil, for example
3395
3396 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3397 (enlarge-window 10))
3398
3399 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3400 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3401
3402 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3403 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3404 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3405 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3406 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3407 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3408 ^L
3409 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3410
3411 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3412 input.
3413
3414 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3415
3416 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3417
3418 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3419 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3420 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3421 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3422 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3423
3424 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3425 been added.
3426
3427 ^L
3428 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3429
3430 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3431
3432 ^L
3433 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3434
3435 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3436 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3437 \f
3438 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3439
3440 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3441
3442 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3443 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3444 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3445
3446 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3447 is the one that is used.
3448
3449 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3450 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3451 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3452 separate from the command's regular output.
3453 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3454 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3455 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3456 the buffer name.
3457
3458 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3459 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3460 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3461 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3462
3463 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3464 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3465 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3466 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3467
3468 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3469 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3470 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3471 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3472
3473 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3474 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3475 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3476 they never ignore case.
3477
3478 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3479 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3480 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3481 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3482 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3483 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3484 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3485
3486 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3487 the same format that was used in the file before.
3488
3489 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3490 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3491
3492 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3493 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3494 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3495
3496 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3497 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3498 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3499 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3500 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3501 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3502 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3503
3504 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3505 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3506 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3507 format. You can now customize these variables.
3508
3509 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3510 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3511 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3512 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3513
3514 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3515 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3516 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3517
3518 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3519 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3520 doesn't have any effect.
3521
3522 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3523 not one per buffer.
3524
3525 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3526 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3527 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3528
3529 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3530 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3531 `auto-show-mode' command.
3532
3533 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3534 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3535 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3536 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3537 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3538
3539 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3540 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3541
3542 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3543 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3544 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3545
3546 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3547 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3548 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3549 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3550
3551 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3552
3553 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3554 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3555 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3556 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3557 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3558
3559 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3560 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3561
3562 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3563 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3564 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3565 `?' on other systems.
3566
3567 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3568 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3569 Unix.
3570
3571 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3572 current codepage when it starts.
3573
3574 ** Mail changes
3575
3576 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3577 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3578 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3579 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3580 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3581 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3582 latin-1:
3583
3584 MIME-version: 1.0
3585 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3586 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3587
3588 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3589 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3590 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3591 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3592 buffer-file-coding-system.
3593
3594 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3595 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3596 mail.
3597
3598 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3599 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3600 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3601 list of possible coding systems.
3602
3603 ** CC Mode changes
3604
3605 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3606 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3607 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3608 docstring for details.
3609
3610 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3611 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3612 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3613 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3614 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3615
3616 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3617 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3618
3619 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3620 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3621
3622 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3623 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3624 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3625 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3626 anonymous classes.
3627
3628 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3629 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3630
3631 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3632 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3633 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3634 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3635
3636 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3637 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3638 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3639 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3640 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3641
3642 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3643
3644 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3645
3646 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3647 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3648
3649 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3650
3651 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3652 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3653 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3654 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3655 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3656
3657 ** Gnus changes.
3658
3659 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3660 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3661 Gnus manual for the full story.
3662
3663 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3664 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3665 group, which is created automatically.
3666
3667 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3668 values.
3669
3670 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3671
3672 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3673 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3674
3675 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3676 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3677
3678 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3679
3680 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3681 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3682
3683 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3684
3685 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3686 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3687
3688 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3689 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3690
3691 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3692 control over simplification.
3693
3694 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3695
3696 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3697 limit.
3698
3699 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3700
3701 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3702
3703 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3704 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3705 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3706
3707 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3708 `a' forces normal posting method.
3709
3710 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3711 -- `W d'.
3712
3713 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3714 to a non-nil value.
3715
3716 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3717 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3718
3719 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3720 has been added.
3721
3722 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3723
3724 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3725
3726 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3727 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3728
3729 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3730 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3731
3732 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3733
3734 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3735 been added.
3736
3737 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3738 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3739
3740 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3741 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3742
3743 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3744
3745 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3746
3747 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3748
3749 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3750
3751 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3752 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3753 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3754
3755 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3756 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3757 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3758 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3759 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3760
3761 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3762 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3763 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3764 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3765
3766 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3767 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3768 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3769 mismatch.
3770
3771 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3772
3773 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3774 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3775
3776 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3777 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3778 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3779 removed from the label.
3780
3781 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3782 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3783
3784 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3785 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3786
3787 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3788 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3789 expressions.
3790
3791 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3792
3793 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3794
3795 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3796 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3797
3798 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3799 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3800 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3801
3802 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3803 changes with a special face.
3804
3805 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3806 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3807 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3808 \f
3809 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3810
3811 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3812 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3813 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3814 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3815 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3816
3817 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3818 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3819 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3820
3821 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3822 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3823 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3824 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3825 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3826 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3827 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3828 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3829 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3830
3831 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3832 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3833 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3834 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3835 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3836 program.
3837
3838 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3839 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3840 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3841 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3842 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3843 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3844
3845 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3846 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3847 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3848 was not documented clearly before.
3849
3850 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3851 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3852 \f
3853 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3854
3855 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3856 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3857 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3858 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3859
3860 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3861 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
3862 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
3863
3864 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
3865
3866 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
3867 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
3868
3869 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
3870 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
3871 integers.
3872
3873 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
3874 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
3875 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
3876 file names and attributes are returned.
3877
3878 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
3879 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
3880 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
3881 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
3882 returns the result.
3883
3884 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
3885 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
3886
3887 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
3888
3889 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
3890 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
3891 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
3892 optionally.
3893
3894 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
3895 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
3896
3897 **
3898 The new function process-running-child-p
3899 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
3900 terminal to its own child process.
3901
3902 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
3903 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
3904 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
3905 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
3906
3907 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
3908 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
3909
3910 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
3911 :included is an alias for :visible.
3912
3913 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
3914 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
3915 to move or copy menu entries.
3916
3917 ** Multibyte editing changes
3918
3919 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
3920 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
3921 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
3922 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
3923 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
3924 (setq char (sref str idx)
3925 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
3926 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
3927
3928 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
3929 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
3930 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
3931
3932 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
3933 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
3934 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
3935
3936 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
3937
3938 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
3939 across the boundary.
3940
3941 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
3942 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
3943 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
3944 contains 8-bit characters.
3945 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
3946 contains invalid characters.
3947
3948 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
3949 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
3950 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
3951 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
3952 way.
3953
3954 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
3955 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
3956 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
3957 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
3958
3959 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
3960 compose Thai characters in a string.
3961
3962 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
3963 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
3964 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
3965 menus should always use the third argument.
3966
3967 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
3968 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
3969 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
3970 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
3971
3972 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
3973 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
3974 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
3975 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
3976
3977 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
3978 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
3979 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
3980 echo area contents.
3981
3982 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
3983
3984 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
3985 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
3986 requested feature cannot be loaded.
3987
3988 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
3989 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
3990 means to clear out that attribute.
3991
3992 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
3993 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
3994
3995 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
3996 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
3997 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
3998 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
3999
4000 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4001 the gap of the current buffer.
4002
4003 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4004 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4005 current buffer.
4006
4007 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4008 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4009 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4010 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4011 \f
4012 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4013
4014 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4015 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4016 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4017 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4018 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4019
4020 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4021 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4022 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4023 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4024 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4025
4026 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4027 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4028 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4029
4030 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4031 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4032 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4033 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4034 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4035 results.
4036
4037 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4038 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4039 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4040 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4041 \f
4042 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4043
4044 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4045 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4046 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4047 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4048
4049 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4050 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4051 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4052 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4053 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4054 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4055 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4056 region.
4057
4058 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4059 selective undo.
4060
4061 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4062 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4063 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4064 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4065 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4066
4067 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4068 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4069 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4070 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4071
4072 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4073 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4074 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4075 something that most users not do.
4076
4077 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4078 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4079 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4080 applications.
4081
4082 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4083 pasting operations.
4084
4085 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4086 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4087 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4088 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4089 `ps-printer-name'.
4090
4091 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4092 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4093 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4094 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4095 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4096 hits a new word.
4097
4098 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4099 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4100 to be confused by TeX commands.
4101
4102 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4103 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4104 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4105 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4106
4107 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4108 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4109 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4110 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4111 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4112
4113 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4114 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4115
4116 ** Changes in input method usage.
4117
4118 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4119 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4120 respectively.
4121
4122 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4123
4124 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4125 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4126
4127 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4128 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4129
4130 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4131
4132 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4133
4134 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4135 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4136
4137 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4138 given in the following case:
4139 o When you are using a complex input method.
4140 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4141
4142 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4143 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4144 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4145 setting it to t is helpful.
4146
4147 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4148
4149 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4150 keys:
4151 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4152 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4153 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4154 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4155 environment.
4156
4157 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4158 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4159 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4160 get
4161
4162 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4163
4164 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4165
4166 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4167 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4168
4169 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4170 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4171 its owner and group.
4172
4173 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4174 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4175
4176 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4177 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4178
4179 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4180 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4181 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4182 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4183
4184 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4185 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4186 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4187 for writing keyboard macros.
4188
4189 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4190 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4191 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4192 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4193 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4194 info.
4195
4196 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4197
4198 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4199 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4200 contents only.
4201
4202 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4203 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4204 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4205 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4206
4207 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4208 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4209 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4210
4211 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4212 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4213 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4214 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4215
4216 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4217 failure if the command produces no output.
4218
4219 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4220 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4221 the mouse.
4222
4223 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4224 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4225 function and variable names.
4226
4227 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4228 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4229 file-coding-system-alist.
4230
4231 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4232 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4233 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4234 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4235 according to the current fontset.
4236
4237 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4238
4239 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4240 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4241 nonascii-insert-offset.
4242
4243 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4244 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4245 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4246 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4247
4248 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4249 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4250
4251 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4252 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4253
4254 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4255 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4256 command keys.
4257
4258 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4259 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4260
4261 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4262 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4263 all variables that have documentation.
4264
4265 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4266 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4267 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4268 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4269 it should show; the default is 20.
4270
4271 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4272 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4273 of your input.
4274
4275 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4276 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4277 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4278 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4279 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4280 Newly added options are included as well.
4281
4282 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4283 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4284 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4285
4286 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4287 Customize menu.
4288
4289 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4290 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4291
4292 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4293 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4294 invoked.
4295
4296 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4297 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4298 The default is 1.
4299
4300 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4301 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4302 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4303 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4304 sensibly.
4305
4306 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4307
4308 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4309 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4310 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4311
4312 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4313 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4314 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4315 every night.
4316
4317 ** Desktop changes
4318
4319 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4320 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4321
4322 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4323 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4324
4325 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4326 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4327
4328 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4329 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4330 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4331 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4332 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4333 made invisible again.
4334
4335 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4336
4337 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4338 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4339 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4340 toggle.
4341
4342 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4343 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4344 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4345 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4346 rmail-default-body-file.
4347
4348 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4349 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4350 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4351
4352 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4353 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4354 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4355
4356 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4357 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4358 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4359 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4360 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4361 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4362
4363 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4364 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4365 provided by feedmail are:
4366
4367 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4368 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4369 there is also a queue for draft messages
4370
4371 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4372 be prompted for confirmation
4373
4374 **** does smart filling of address headers
4375
4376 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4377 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4378 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4379
4380 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4381 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4382 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4383 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4384
4385 ** Dired changes
4386
4387 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4388 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4389
4390 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4391 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4392
4393 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4394 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4395 for a specified regexp.
4396
4397 ** VC Changes
4398
4399 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4400 conveniently.
4401
4402 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4403 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4404 Dired.
4405
4406 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4407 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4408 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4409 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4410
4411 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4412 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4413 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4414 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4415 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4416
4417 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4418 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4419 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4420 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4421 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4422
4423 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4424 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4425 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4426 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4427
4428 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4429 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4430 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4431
4432 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4433 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4434 session to resolve them.
4435
4436 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4437 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4438 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4439 uses as well).
4440
4441 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4442 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4443 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4444 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4445 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4446 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4447 using ediff.
4448
4449 ** Changes in Font Lock
4450
4451 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4452 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4453 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4454 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4455 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4456
4457 ** Frame name display changes
4458
4459 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4460 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4461 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4462 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4463
4464 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4465 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4466 menu.
4467
4468 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4469
4470 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4471 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4472 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4473
4474 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4475
4476 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4477 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4478 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4479
4480 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4481 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4482 the following line.
4483
4484 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4485 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4486 previously sent input.
4487
4488 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4489 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4490 as the search string.
4491
4492 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4493 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4494
4495 ** C mode changes
4496
4497 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4498 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4499 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4500 definition.
4501
4502 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4503 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4504 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4505 style is still the default however.
4506
4507 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4508
4509 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4510 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4511 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4512
4513 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4514 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4515
4516 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4517 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4518
4519 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4520 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4521
4522 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4523 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4524
4525 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4526 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4527 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4528 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4529
4530 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4531
4532 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4533 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4534 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4535
4536 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4537 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4538 expanding dynamically.
4539
4540 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4541 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4542
4543 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4544 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4545 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4546 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4547
4548 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4549
4550 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4551
4552 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4553 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4554 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4555 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4556 against the first word in the title.
4557
4558 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4559 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4560 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4561 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4562 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4563 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4564
4565 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4566 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4567 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4568 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4569
4570 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4571
4572 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4573 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4574 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4575 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4576 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4577 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4578
4579 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4580 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4581
4582 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4583 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4584 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4585
4586 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4587 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4588
4589 ** Ispell changes.
4590
4591 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4592 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4593 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4594
4595 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4596 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4597 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4598 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4599 include:
4600
4601 o URLs are automatically skipped
4602 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4603
4604 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4605
4606 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4607
4608 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4609 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4610 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4611 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4612
4613 *** New recursive parser.
4614
4615 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4616 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4617 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4618
4619 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4620
4621 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4622 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4623 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4624
4625 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4626
4627 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4628
4629 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4630
4631 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4632
4633 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4634
4635 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4636 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4637
4638 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4639
4640 *** References to external documents.
4641
4642 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4643 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4644 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4645 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4646 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4647 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4648 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4649
4650 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4651
4652 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4653 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4654
4655 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4656 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4657
4658 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4659
4660 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4661 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4662
4663 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4664
4665 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4666 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4667 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4668 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4669 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4670 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4671 more.
4672
4673 *** Support for the varioref package
4674
4675 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4676
4677 *** New hooks
4678
4679 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4680 and citations are created. These hooks are
4681 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4682 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4683
4684 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4685
4686 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4687 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4688
4689 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4690
4691 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4692 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4693 fontified, use
4694
4695 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4696
4697 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4698 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4699 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4700 directories that contain the same file name.
4701
4702 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4703 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4704 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4705 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4706 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4707 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4708 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4709 directory.
4710
4711 ** New modes and packages
4712
4713 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4714 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4715 it, but some do not.
4716
4717 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4718 code.
4719
4720 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4721 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4722 around in a buffer.
4723
4724 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4725
4726 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4727 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4728 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4729 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4730
4731 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4732 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4733 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4734
4735 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4736 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4737 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4738 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4739 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4740 the like.
4741
4742 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4743 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4744
4745 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4746 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4747 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4748 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4749
4750 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4751
4752 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4753 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4754 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4755 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4756 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4757 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4758 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4759 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4760 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4761 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4762 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4763
4764 Platform-specific modes:
4765
4766 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4767 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4768 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4769 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4770 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4771 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4772 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4773 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4774 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4775 \f
4776 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4777
4778 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4779 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4780 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4781 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4782
4783 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4784 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4785 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4786
4787 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4788 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4789 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4790 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4791
4792 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4793 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4794 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4795 environment.
4796
4797 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4798 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4799 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4800 current input method for reading this one event.
4801
4802 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4803 now control whether to output certain characters as
4804 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4805 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4806 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4807 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4808 \f
4809 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4810
4811 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4812 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4813
4814 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4815 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4816 always increases point by 1.
4817
4818 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4819 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4820
4821 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4822
4823 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4824 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4825 default value changed. For example,
4826
4827 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4828 :type 'integer
4829 :group 'foo
4830 :version "20.3")
4831
4832 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4833 :version "20.3")
4834
4835 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4836 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4837 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4838 `:version' in the top level group.
4839
4840 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4841
4842 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4843 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4844
4845 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4846 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4847 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4848 to themselves.
4849
4850 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4851 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4852 values whatever.
4853
4854 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4855 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4856 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4857
4858 ** Frame-local variables.
4859
4860 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4861 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
4862 local bindings for that variable.
4863
4864 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
4865 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
4866 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
4867 parameter name.
4868
4869 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
4870 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
4871 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
4872 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
4873
4874 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
4875 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
4876 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
4877 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
4878
4879 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
4880 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
4881 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
4882 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
4883 See the documentation in sregex.el.
4884
4885 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
4886 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
4887 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
4888 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
4889
4890 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
4891 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
4892
4893 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
4894 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
4895 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
4896
4897 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
4898 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
4899 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
4900 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
4901
4902 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
4903 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
4904 empty input.
4905
4906 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
4907 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
4908 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
4909 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
4910 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
4911
4912 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
4913 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
4914 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
4915 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
4916
4917 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
4918 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
4919 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
4920 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
4921 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
4922
4923 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
4924 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
4925 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
4926 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
4927
4928 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
4929 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
4930 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
4931
4932 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
4933 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
4934 was directed to display this buffer.
4935
4936 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
4937 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
4938 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
4939 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
4940 set-window-configuration.
4941
4942 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
4943 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
4944 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
4945 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
4946
4947 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
4948 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
4949 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
4950
4951 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
4952 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
4953 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
4954
4955 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
4956 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
4957
4958 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
4959 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
4960
4961 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
4962 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
4963 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
4964
4965 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
4966 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
4967 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
4968 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
4969
4970 ** Menu changes
4971
4972 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
4973 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
4974 better supported.
4975
4976 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
4977 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
4978 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
4979 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
4980 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
4981
4982 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
4983
4984 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
4985 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
4986 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
4987 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
4988
4989 The format is:
4990 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
4991 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
4992 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
4993 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
4994 The supported properties include
4995
4996 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4997 item is enabled.
4998 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
4999 item should appear in the menu.
5000 :filter FILTER-FN
5001 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5002 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5003 It should return a binding to use instead.
5004 :keys DESCRIPTION
5005 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5006 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5007 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5008 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5009 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5010 keyboard binding.
5011 :key-sequence nil
5012 This means that the command normally has no
5013 keyboard equivalent.
5014 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5015 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5016 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5017 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5018 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5019
5020 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5021 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5022
5023 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5024
5025 ** New event types
5026
5027 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5028 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5029 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5030 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5031
5032 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5033
5034 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5035 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5036 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5037 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5038 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5039 forward, away from the user.
5040
5041 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5042
5043 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5044 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5045 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5046 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5047 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5048
5049 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5050
5051 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5052 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5053 that were dragged and dropped.
5054
5055 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5056
5057 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5058
5059 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5060 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5061 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5062
5063 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5064 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5065 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5066
5067 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5068 in Emacs 19 and before.
5069
5070 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5071 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5072
5073 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5074 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5075 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5076 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5077
5078 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5079 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5080 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5081 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5082 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5083
5084 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5085 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5086 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5087 consistent with the new representation.
5088
5089 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5090 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5091 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5092 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5093
5094 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5095 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5096 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5097
5098 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5099 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5100 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5101
5102 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5103 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5104 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5105
5106 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5107 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5108
5109 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5110 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5111
5112 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5113 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5114 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5115 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5116
5117 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5118 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5119
5120 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5121 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5122 buffer or string being searched.
5123
5124 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5125 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5126 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5127 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5128 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5129 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5130 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5131
5132 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5133
5134 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5135 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5136 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5137 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5138 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5139 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5140 define-coding-system-alias.
5141
5142 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5143 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5144 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5145 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5146 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5147 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5148 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5149 `iso-8859-1'.
5150
5151 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5152 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5153 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5154 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5155
5156 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5157 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5158 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5159 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5160
5161 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5162 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5163 This function requires a user interaction.
5164
5165 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5166 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5167 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5168 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5169 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5170 select-safe-coding-system.
5171
5172 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5173 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5174 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5175 was done.
5176
5177 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5178 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5179 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5180
5181 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5182 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5183 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5184 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5185
5186 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5187 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5188 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5189 converted.
5190
5191 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5192 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5193
5194 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5195 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5196 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5197 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5198 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5199 range of characters.
5200
5201 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5202 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5203
5204 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5205 in the current buffer at position POS.
5206
5207 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5208 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5209 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5210 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5211 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5212 binding input-method-function to nil.
5213
5214 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5215 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5216 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5217 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5218 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5219
5220 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5221 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5222
5223 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5224 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5225
5226 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5227 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5228 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5229 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5230 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5231 \f
5232 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5233
5234 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5235 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5236 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5237 tree structure.
5238
5239 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5240 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5241
5242 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5243 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5244 in your .emacs file.)
5245
5246 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5247 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5248
5249 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5250 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5251
5252 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5253 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5254 kills the region.
5255
5256 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5257 delete the character before point, as usual.
5258
5259 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5260 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5261 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5262
5263 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5264 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5265 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5266 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5267 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5268 past.)
5269
5270 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5271 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5272 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5273 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5274 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5275
5276 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5277 and is an alias for it.
5278
5279 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5280 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5281
5282 ** Scrolling changes
5283
5284 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5285 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5286
5287 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5288 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5289 where it started.
5290
5291 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5292 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5293 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5294 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5295
5296 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5297 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5298 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5299 recenters the window.
5300
5301 ** International character set support (MULE)
5302
5303 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5304 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5305 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5306 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5307 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5308 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5309
5310 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5311 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5312 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5313 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5314 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5315
5316 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5317 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5318 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5319 language, to make it possible to type them.
5320
5321 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5322 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5323
5324 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5325 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5326
5327 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5328
5329 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5330
5331 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5332 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5333 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5334 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5335 characters for their work until they want to change.
5336
5337 *** Input methods
5338
5339 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5340 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5341 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5342 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5343 support several input methods.
5344
5345 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5346 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5347 work.
5348
5349 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5350 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5351 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5352 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5353 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5354 letter.
5355
5356 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5357 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5358 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5359 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5360 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5361
5362 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5363 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5364 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5365 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5366
5367 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5368 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5369 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5370 the first guess is wrong.
5371
5372 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5373 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5374
5375 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5376 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5377 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5378 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5379
5380 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5381 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5382 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5383 translate automatically to and from either one.
5384
5385 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5386
5387 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5388 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5389 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5390 what you want.
5391
5392 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5393 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5394 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5395 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5396
5397 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5398 character conversion as well.
5399
5400 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5401
5402 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5403 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5404 requires using many fonts.
5405
5406 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5407 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5408
5409 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5410 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5411 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5412 you would use a font.
5413
5414 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5415 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5416 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5417
5418 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5419 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5420 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5421 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5422 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5423
5424 *** Defining fontsets.
5425
5426 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5427 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5428 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5429
5430 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5431 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5432 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5433 standard fontset are created automatically.
5434
5435 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5436 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5437 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5438 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5439 name is `fontset-startup'.
5440
5441 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5442 The resource value should have this form:
5443 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5444 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5445 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5446 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5447 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5448 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5449 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5450 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5451 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5452
5453 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5454 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5455 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5456
5457 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5458 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5459 following resource,
5460 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5461 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5462 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5463 Here is the substitution rule:
5464 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5465 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5466 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5467 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5468 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5469
5470 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5471 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5472 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5473
5474 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5475 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5476 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5477 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5478 fontsets.
5479
5480 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5481 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5482
5483 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5484 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5485 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5486 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5487 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5488 system for new files that you create.
5489
5490 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5491 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5492 whole Emacs session.
5493
5494 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5495 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5496 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5497
5498 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5499 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5500 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5501 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5502 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5503
5504 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5505 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5506 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5507 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5508 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5509
5510 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5511 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5512
5513 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5514 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5515
5516 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5517 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5518
5519 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5520 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5521 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5522 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5523 of the file.
5524
5525 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5526 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5527 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5528 translated into that character code.
5529
5530 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5531 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5532
5533 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5534
5535 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5536 the coding system for keyboard input.
5537
5538 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5539 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5540 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5541
5542 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5543
5544 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5545 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5546 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5547 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5548 designed to work with terminals.
5549
5550 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5551 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5552 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5553 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5554 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5555 in the corresponding buffer.
5556
5557 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5558
5559 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5560 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5561 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5562
5563 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5564 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5565 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5566 want to use.
5567
5568 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5569 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5570
5571 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5572 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5573 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5574 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5575
5576 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5577 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5578 related information.
5579
5580 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5581 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5582 scripts.
5583
5584 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5585 information about the support for a particular language.
5586 You specify the language as an argument.
5587
5588 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5589 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5590 first dash.
5591
5592 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5593 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5594 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5595 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5596
5597 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5598 B big5 (Chinese)
5599 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5600 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5601 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5602 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5603 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5604 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5605 K euc-korea (Korean)
5606 R koi8 (Russian)
5607 Q tibetan
5608 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5609 T lao
5610 T tis620 (Thai)
5611 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5612 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5613 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5614 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5615 z hz (Chinese)
5616
5617 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5618 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5619 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5620 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5621
5622 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5623 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5624
5625 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5626 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5627 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5628 Rmail files themselves.
5629
5630 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5631 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5632
5633 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5634 for sending mail:
5635
5636 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5637 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5638 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5639 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5640 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5641
5642 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5643 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5644 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5645 translations.
5646
5647 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5648 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5649 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5650 without any conversion.
5651
5652 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5653 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5654 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5655 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5656
5657 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5658 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5659
5660 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5661 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5662
5663 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5664 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5665
5666 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5667 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5668 in the buffer before point.
5669
5670 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5671 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5672 you are using.
5673
5674 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5675 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5676
5677 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5678
5679 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5680 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5681
5682 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5683 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5684 can become a bottleneck.
5685
5686 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5687 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5688 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5689 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5690 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5691 so useful that the change is worth while.
5692
5693 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5694 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5695 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5696 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5697
5698 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5699 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5700 show-paren-mode.
5701
5702 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5703 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5704 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5705
5706 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5707 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5708 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5709
5710 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5711 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5712 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5713
5714 ** Changes in View mode.
5715
5716 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5717 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5718
5719 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5720 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5721
5722 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5723 previous state.
5724
5725 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5726 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5727
5728 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5729 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5730 not just the selected window.
5731
5732 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5733 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5734 turns View mode on or off.
5735
5736 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5737 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5738 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5739
5740 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5741 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5742
5743 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5744 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5745 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5746 which version to compare with.
5747
5748 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5749 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5750
5751 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5752 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5753 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5754 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5755
5756 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5757 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5758 blocks, all of them or none.
5759
5760 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5761 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5762 confirmation first.
5763
5764 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5765 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5766 However, the mode will not be changed if
5767 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5768 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5769 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5770 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5771
5772 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5773
5774 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5775 these commands do not change the major mode.
5776
5777 ** M-x occur changes.
5778
5779 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5780 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5781
5782 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5783 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5784 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5785
5786 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5787 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5788 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5789 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5790 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5791
5792 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5793 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5794 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5795 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5796
5797 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5798 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5799 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5800
5801 ** Outline mode changes.
5802
5803 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5804
5805 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5806
5807 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5808 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5809 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5810 was already active.
5811
5812 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5813 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5814 get confused by it.
5815
5816 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5817 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5818
5819 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5820
5821 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5822 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5823 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5824 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5825
5826 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5827 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5828 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5829
5830 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5831 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5832 values.
5833
5834 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5835 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5836 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5837 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5838
5839 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5840 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5841 can be. The default value is 30.
5842
5843 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5844
5845 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5846 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5847 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5848 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5849 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5850 behavior.
5851
5852 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5853 compose-mail-other-frame.
5854
5855 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5856 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5857 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5858 buffer that shows the original message.
5859
5860 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5861 with separator lines around the contents.
5862
5863 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
5864 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
5865 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
5866 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
5867
5868 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
5869
5870 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
5871 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
5872 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
5873 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
5874
5875 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
5876 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
5877 /etc/passwd.
5878
5879 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
5880 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
5881 /etc/passwd.
5882
5883 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
5884 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
5885 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
5886 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
5887
5888 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
5889 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
5890 be taken to be magic.
5891
5892 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
5893 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
5894 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
5895
5896 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
5897 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
5898
5899 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
5900 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
5901
5902 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
5903
5904 new key dired.el binding old key
5905 ------- ---------------- -------
5906 * c dired-change-marks c
5907 * m dired-mark m
5908 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
5909 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
5910 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
5911 * u dired-unmark u
5912 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
5913 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
5914 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
5915 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
5916 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
5917 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
5918
5919 ** Rmail changes.
5920
5921 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
5922 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
5923 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
5924 each time you run it.
5925
5926 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
5927 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
5928
5929 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
5930 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
5931 means to move in the opposite direction.
5932
5933 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
5934 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
5935
5936 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
5937 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
5938 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
5939 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
5940 for output.
5941
5942 ** Gnus changes.
5943
5944 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
5945
5946 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
5947 Gnus.
5948
5949 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
5950 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
5951
5952 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
5953 article mode line.
5954
5955 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
5956
5957 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
5958
5959 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
5960
5961 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
5962 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
5963 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
5964
5965 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
5966
5967 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
5968
5969 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
5970 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
5971
5972 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
5973 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
5974 used to pick articles.
5975
5976 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
5977 another have been added.
5978
5979 `M-x gnus-change-server'
5980
5981 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
5982 generating lines in buffers.
5983
5984 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
5985 `M-C-_'.
5986
5987 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
5988
5989 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
5990
5991 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
5992
5993 *** Scores can be decayed.
5994
5995 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
5996
5997 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
5998 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
5999
6000 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6001 the native server.
6002
6003 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6004
6005 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6006 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6007
6008 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6009
6010 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6011 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6012
6013 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6014 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6015
6016 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6017 a group.
6018
6019 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6020 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6021
6022 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6023
6024 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6025
6026 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6027
6028 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6029
6030 Use the `Y c' command.
6031
6032 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6033
6034 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6035
6036 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6037
6038 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6039 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6040
6041 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6042
6043 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6044
6045 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6046 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6047
6048 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6049
6050 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6051 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6052 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6053 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6054 this issue.)
6055
6056 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6057 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6058 particular news group. This can be done by:
6059
6060 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6061
6062 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6063 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6064 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6065 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6066 for reading and posting).
6067
6068 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6069 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6070 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6071 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6072 there.
6073
6074 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6075 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6076
6077 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6078 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6079 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6080 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6081 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6082
6083 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6084 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6085
6086 ** CC mode changes.
6087
6088 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6089 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6090 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6091 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6092 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6093 loaded.
6094
6095 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6096 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6097 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6098 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6099 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6100 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6101
6102 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6103 of the current buffer.
6104
6105 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6106 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6107 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6108
6109 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6110 style that the Python developers like.
6111
6112 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6113 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6114 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6115
6116 ** VC Changes [new]
6117
6118 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6119 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6120 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6121
6122 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6123 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6124 developers.
6125
6126 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6127 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6128
6129 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6130 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6131 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6132 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6133
6134 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6135 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6136
6137 ** Calendar changes.
6138
6139 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6140 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6141 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6142
6143 ** ps-print changes
6144
6145 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6146
6147 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6148
6149 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6150 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6151 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6152 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6153 It defaults to `letter'.
6154 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6155
6156 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6157 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6158 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6159
6160 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6161 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6162 It defaults to 1.
6163
6164 *** Horizontal layout
6165
6166 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6167 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6168 All are measured in points.
6169
6170 *** Vertical layout
6171
6172 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6173 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6174 All are measured in points.
6175
6176 *** Headers
6177
6178 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6179 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6180 margin above the text.
6181
6182 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6183 framing box is printed around the header.
6184
6185 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6186 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6187
6188 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6189 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6190 `ps-header-font-size'.
6191
6192 *** Font managing
6193
6194 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6195 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6196 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6197 elements to this alist.
6198
6199 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6200 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6201
6202 ** hideshow changes.
6203
6204 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6205 C++, ; for lisp).
6206
6207 *** Support for java-mode added.
6208
6209 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6210 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6211
6212 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6213 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6214 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6215
6216 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6217 robust and a lot faster.
6218
6219 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6220
6221 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6222 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6223 documentation for more details.
6224
6225 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6226
6227 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6228 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6229 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6230 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6231 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6232
6233 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6234 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6235 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6236 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6237
6238 ** Font Lock mode
6239
6240 *** Custom support
6241
6242 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6243 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6244 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6245 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6246 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6247 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6248
6249 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6250
6251 *** Maximum decoration
6252
6253 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6254 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6255 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6256 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6257 to get the old behavior.
6258
6259 *** New support
6260
6261 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6262
6263 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6264 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6265
6266 *** Configurable support
6267
6268 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6269 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6270 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6271 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6272 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6273 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6274 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6275
6276 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6277 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6278 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6279
6280 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6281
6282 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6283 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6284 for any mode.
6285
6286 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6287
6288 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6289
6290 in your ~/.emacs.
6291
6292 *** New faces
6293
6294 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6295 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6296 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6297 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6298
6299 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6300
6301 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6302 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6303 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6304
6305 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6306
6307 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6308 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6309 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6310 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6311 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6312 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6313 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6314
6315 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6316 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6317 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6318 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6319 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6320 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6321
6322 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6323
6324 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6325 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6326 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6327 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6328
6329 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6330 settings.
6331
6332 ** Ada mode changes.
6333
6334 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6335 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6336 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6337 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6338 stubs.
6339
6340 *** There are two new commands:
6341 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6342 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6343
6344 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6345 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6346 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6347
6348 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6349 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6350 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6351
6352 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6353 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6354 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6355 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6356
6357 ** Scheme mode changes.
6358
6359 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6360 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6361 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6362 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6363 have any effect.
6364
6365 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6366 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6367 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6368 variables as buffer-local variables.
6369
6370 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6371 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6372
6373 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6374
6375 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6376 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6377 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6378 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6379
6380 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6381 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6382 buffer in Emacs.
6383
6384 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6385 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6386 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6387 option takes precedence.
6388
6389 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6390 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6391 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6392
6393 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6394 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6395 the current defun.
6396
6397 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6398 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6399
6400 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6401 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6402 necessary).
6403
6404 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6405 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6406 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6407 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6408 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6409 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6410
6411 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6412 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6413 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6414 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6415
6416 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6417 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6418 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6419 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6420 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6421
6422 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6423 since it applies only to the current frame.
6424
6425 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6426 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6427 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6428
6429 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6430 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6431 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6432 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6433 instead of just the file you are editing.
6434
6435 ** RefTeX mode
6436
6437 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6438 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6439 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6440 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6441 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6442
6443 C-c ( reftex-label
6444 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6445 knows which kind of label is needed.
6446
6447 C-c ) reftex-reference
6448 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6449 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6450
6451 C-c [ reftex-citation
6452 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6453 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6454
6455 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6456 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6457
6458 C-c = reftex-toc
6459 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6460 can quickly jump to every section.
6461
6462 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6463 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6464 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6465 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6466 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6467
6468 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6469
6470 *** Info documentation is now available.
6471
6472 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6473 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6474
6475 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6476 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6477
6478 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6479 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6480
6481 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6482 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6483 appropriate functions.
6484
6485 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6486 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6487
6488 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6489 been cleaned.
6490
6491 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6492 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6493
6494 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6495 shall be delimited.
6496
6497 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6498 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6499 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6500
6501 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6502 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6503 prefixed with `ALT'.
6504
6505 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6506 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6507 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6508 documentation).
6509
6510 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6511 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6512 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6513
6514 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6515 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6516
6517 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6518 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6519 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6520
6521 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6522
6523 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6524
6525 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6526 from alien sources.
6527
6528 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6529 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6530 crossref entries.
6531
6532 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6533 region.
6534
6535 *** Added support for imenu.
6536
6537 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6538 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6539 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6540 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6541
6542 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6543 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6544
6545 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6546
6547 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6548
6549 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6550 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6551 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6552 as an argument.
6553
6554 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6555 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6556
6557 ** browse-url changes
6558
6559 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6560 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6561 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6562 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6563 customization variables.
6564
6565 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6566
6567 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6568 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6569 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6570
6571 ** Changes in Ediff
6572
6573 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6574 pops up the Info file for this command.
6575
6576 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6577 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6578 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6579 directories).
6580
6581 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6582 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6583 files in the same directory.
6584
6585 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6586 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6587 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6588
6589 ** Changes in Viper
6590
6591 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6592 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6593 instead of vip-.
6594 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6595 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6596 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6597 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6598 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6599 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6600 color when Viper is in insert state.
6601 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6602 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6603 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6604
6605 ** Etags changes.
6606
6607 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6608 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6609 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6610 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6611 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6612
6613 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6614
6615 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6616 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6617
6618 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6619 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6620 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6621
6622 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6623 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6624 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6625 methods and protocols.
6626
6627 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6628 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6629 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6630 paragraph name.
6631
6632 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6633 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6634 at least M times and as many as N times.
6635
6636 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6637 in files has changed slightly.
6638
6639 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6640 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6641 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6642 with old time-stamp-format values.
6643
6644 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6645 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6646 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6647 reasons.
6648
6649 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6650 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6651 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6652 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6653 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6654 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6655
6656 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6657 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6658 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6659
6660 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6661 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6662 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6663 recommended now will continue to work then.
6664
6665 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6666 details.
6667
6668 ** There are some additional major modes:
6669
6670 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6671 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6672 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6673
6674 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6675 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6676 into Emacs.
6677
6678 ** New Lisp packages include:
6679
6680 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6681
6682 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6683 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6684
6685 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6686
6687 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6688 in shell buffers.
6689
6690 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6691 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6692 and `elint-defun'.
6693
6694 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6695 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6696 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6697 strings or comments.
6698
6699 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6700 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6701 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6702 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6703 at these points.
6704
6705 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6706 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6707
6708 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6709 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6710
6711 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6712
6713 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6714 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6715
6716 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6717
6718 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6719
6720 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6721
6722 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6723 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6724
6725 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6726 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6727 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6728 original place after inserting the copy.
6729
6730 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6731 on the buffer.
6732
6733 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6734 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6735 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6736
6737 Enable mouse-drag with:
6738 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6739 -or-
6740 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6741
6742 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6743 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6744
6745 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6746 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6747
6748 *** ogonek
6749
6750 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6751 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6752 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6753 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6754 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6755 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6756 instance) and vice versa.
6757
6758 To use this package load it using
6759 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6760 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6761 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6762 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6763 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6764 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6765
6766 *** Interface to ph.
6767
6768 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6769
6770 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6771 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6772 these servers.
6773
6774 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6775
6776 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6777 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6778 while the real cursor does not move.
6779
6780 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6781 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6782
6783 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6784 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6785
6786 ** movemail change
6787
6788 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6789 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6790 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6791 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6792
6793 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6794 \f
6795 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6796
6797 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6798
6799 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6800 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6801 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6802 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6803 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6804
6805 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6806 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6807 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6808 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6809 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6810 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6811 \f
6812 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6813
6814 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6815 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6816 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6817 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6818
6819 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6820 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6821
6822 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6823 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6824 "win".
6825
6826 ** Basic Lisp changes
6827
6828 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6829 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6830
6831 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6832 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6833 or by the user.
6834
6835 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6836
6837 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6838
6839 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6840 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6841
6842 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6843 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6844 its argument.
6845
6846 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6847
6848 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6849
6850 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6851
6852 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6853 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6854 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6855 `format' function.
6856
6857 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6858 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6859 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6860
6861 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
6862 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
6863 adding one of these suffixes.
6864
6865 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
6866 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
6867 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
6868
6869 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
6870 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
6871
6872 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
6873
6874 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
6875 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
6876
6877 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
6878 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
6879
6880 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
6881
6882 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
6883 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
6884
6885 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
6886 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
6887 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
6888 works using `save-current-buffer'.
6889
6890 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
6891 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
6892 of the last form.
6893
6894 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
6895 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
6896 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
6897 as the last form.
6898
6899 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
6900 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
6901 matches.
6902
6903 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
6904
6905 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
6906 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
6907 Then it returns that string.
6908
6909 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
6910
6911 (with-output-to-string
6912 (princ "The buffer is ")
6913 (princ (buffer-name)))
6914
6915 returns "The buffer is foo".
6916
6917 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
6918 is non-nil.
6919
6920 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
6921 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
6922 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
6923
6924 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
6925 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
6926
6927 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
6928 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
6929 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
6930 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
6931 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
6932 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
6933
6934 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
6935 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
6936 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
6937 characters".
6938
6939 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
6940 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
6941 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
6942 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
6943 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
6944
6945 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
6946 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
6947 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
6948 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
6949
6950 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
6951 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
6952
6953 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
6954
6955 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
6956 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
6957 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
6958 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
6959 guaranteed.
6960
6961 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
6962 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
6963 character).
6964
6965 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
6966
6967 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
6968 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
6969 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
6970 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
6971 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
6972
6973 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
6974
6975 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
6976 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
6977 more than the number of characters.
6978
6979 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
6980 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
6981 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
6982 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
6983 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
6984 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
6985
6986 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
6987 and returns a string containing those characters.
6988
6989 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
6990 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
6991 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
6992 character, sref signals an error.
6993
6994 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
6995 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
6996 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
6997
6998 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
6999 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7000 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7001
7002 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7003 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7004 to a vector of the characters in it.
7005
7006 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7007 of a string. You call it as follows:
7008
7009 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7010
7011 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7012 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7013 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7014 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7015 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7016
7017 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7018 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7019
7020 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7021 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7022
7023 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7024 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7025 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7026 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7027
7028 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7029
7030 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7031
7032 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7033 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7034 are not included in the resulting value.
7035
7036 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7037 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7038 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7039 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7040
7041 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7042 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7043 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7044 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7045 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7046 column START-COLUMN.
7047
7048 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7049 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7050 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7051 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7052 changed text, before the change.
7053
7054 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7055 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7056 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7057
7058 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7059
7060 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7061
7062 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7063 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7064
7065 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7066 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7067 which identify the character within that character set.
7068
7069 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7070 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7071 opposite of split-char.
7072
7073 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7074 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7075
7076 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7077 of all the characters in a string.
7078
7079 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7080 and specifying coding systems.
7081
7082 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7083 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7084 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7085 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7086 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7087 as what to do about code conversion.)
7088
7089 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7090 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7091
7092 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7093 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7094 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7095
7096 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7097 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7098 to match against a file name.
7099
7100 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7101 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7102 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7103 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7104 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7105 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7106
7107 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7108 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7109
7110 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7111 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7112
7113 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7114 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7115 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7116 service names.
7117
7118 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7119 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7120 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7121 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7122 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7123 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7124
7125 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7126 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7127
7128 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7129 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7130 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7131 start the subprocess.
7132
7133 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7134 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7135 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7136 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7137 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7138
7139 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7140 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7141 subprocess.
7142
7143 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7144 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7145 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7146 connection permanently or until overridden.
7147
7148 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7149 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7150 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7151 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7152 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7153 system for one operation at a time.
7154
7155 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7156 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7157
7158 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7159 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7160 The value is a cons cell,
7161 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7162 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7163 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7164 input to the subprocess.
7165
7166 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7167 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7168
7169 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7170 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7171 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7172
7173 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7174 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7175 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7176 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7177 customization.
7178
7179 Thus, instead of writing
7180
7181 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7182 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7183
7184 you would now write this:
7185
7186 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7187 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7188 :type 'boolean
7189 :group foo)
7190
7191 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7192 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7193 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7194 for a description of them.
7195
7196 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7197 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7198
7199 (defgroup ispell nil
7200 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7201 :group 'processes)
7202
7203 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7204 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7205 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7206 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7207 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7208
7209 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7210 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7211 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7212 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7213 first-level subgroups.
7214
7215 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7216
7217 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7218 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7219
7220 ** easy-mmode
7221
7222 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7223 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7224 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7225 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7226 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7227 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7228
7229 ** Text property changes
7230
7231 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7232 text property.
7233
7234 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7235 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7236 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7237 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7238 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7239
7240 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7241 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7242 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7243 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7244
7245 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7246 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7247 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7248
7249 ** Changes in invisibility features
7250
7251 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7252 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7253 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7254 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7255 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7256 make the overlay visible.
7257
7258 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7259 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7260 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7261 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7262 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7263 t when it should hide it.
7264
7265 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7266
7267 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7268 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7269 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7270 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7271 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7272 Here is an example of how to do this:
7273
7274 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7275 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7276 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7277 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7278
7279 ...
7280 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7281
7282 ...
7283 ;; When done with the overlays:
7284 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7285 ;; Or respectively:
7286 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7287
7288 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7289
7290 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7291 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7292 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7293 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7294
7295 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7296 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7297 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7298
7299 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7300 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7301
7302 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7303 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7304
7305 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7306 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7307 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7308
7309 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7310 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7311 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7312 determine the syntax type of the character.
7313
7314 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7315 of the current buffer.
7316
7317 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7318 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7319 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7320
7321 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7322 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7323 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7324 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7325 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7326
7327 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7328 text property.
7329
7330 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7331 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7332 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7333
7334 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7335 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7336 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7337 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7338 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7339
7340 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7341 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7342 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7343
7344 ** Changes in face features
7345
7346 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7347 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7348
7349 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7350 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7351
7352 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7353 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7354
7355 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7356 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7357
7358 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7359 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7360 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7361 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7362 overlay property).
7363
7364 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7365 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7366
7367 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7368
7369 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7370 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7371 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7372 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7373
7374 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7375 begins with ~.
7376
7377 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7378 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7379
7380 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7381 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7382
7383 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7384 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7385
7386 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7387 character code conversion as well as other things.
7388
7389 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7390 (formerly it did not).
7391
7392 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7393 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7394
7395 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7396 instead of constant strings.
7397
7398 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7399 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7400 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7401
7402 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7403 in the same way as before.
7404
7405 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7406 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7407 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7408
7409 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7410 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7411 else, and returns nil.
7412
7413 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7414 directory cannot be listed.
7415
7416 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7417
7418 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7419 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7420 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7421 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7422 ways:
7423
7424 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7425 It is available through the history command M-n.
7426
7427 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7428 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7429 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7430 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7431 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7432
7433 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7434 argument in this way.
7435
7436 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7437 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7438 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7439
7440 ** Echo area features
7441
7442 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7443 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7444 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7445 after the echo area is cleared.
7446
7447 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7448 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7449
7450 ** Keyboard input features
7451
7452 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7453 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7454
7455 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7456 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7457 by keyboard macros.
7458
7459 ** Frame-related changes
7460
7461 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7462 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7463 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7464
7465 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7466 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7467 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7468
7469 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7470 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7471 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7472 in the selected frame.
7473
7474 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7475 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7476 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7477
7478 ** X Windows features
7479
7480 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7481 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7482 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7483
7484 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7485 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7486
7487 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7488 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7489 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7490
7491 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7492 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7493
7494 ** Subprocess features
7495
7496 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7497 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7498 automatically.
7499
7500 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7501 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7502
7503 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7504 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7505
7506 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7507 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7508
7509 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7510 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7511 goes after the other menu items.
7512
7513 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7514 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7515 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7516 are in use.
7517
7518 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7519 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7520
7521 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7522 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7523 form.
7524
7525 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7526 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7527 but its hook is still run.
7528
7529 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7530 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7531
7532 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7533 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7534 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7535
7536 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7537 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7538 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7539 warned.
7540
7541 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7542 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7543
7544 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7545 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7546 functions like display-time.
7547
7548 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7549 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7550
7551 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7552 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7553 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7554
7555 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7556 if there is an error in compilation.
7557
7558 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7559 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7560 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7561 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7562
7563 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7564 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7565 the *scratch* buffer.
7566
7567 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7568 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7569 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7570 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7571
7572 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7573 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7574 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7575
7576 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7577 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7578 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7579 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7580
7581 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7582 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7583 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7584
7585 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7586 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7587 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7588 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7589 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7590 files at all.
7591
7592 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7593 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7594 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7595 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7596
7597 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7598 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7599 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7600 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7601
7602 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7603
7604 ** imenu.el changes.
7605
7606 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7607 item from menu created by imenu.
7608
7609 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7610 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7611 select one of those items.
7612 \f
7613 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7614 \f
7615 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7616
7617 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7618 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7619
7620 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7621 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7622 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7623 \f
7624 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7625
7626 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7627 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7628
7629 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7630 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7631 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7632 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7633 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7634 all caps.
7635
7636 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7637 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7638
7639 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7640 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7641 as in previous Emacs versions.
7642
7643 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7644 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7645 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7646 frames.
7647
7648 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7649 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7650 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7651 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7652 accident.
7653
7654 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7655 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7656 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7657 line and then executing the macro.
7658
7659 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7660
7661 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7662 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7663 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7664 characters.
7665
7666 ** Font Lock mode
7667
7668 *** Font Lock support modes
7669
7670 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7671 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7672 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7673 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7674 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7675
7676 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7677
7678 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7679
7680 in your ~/.emacs.
7681
7682 *** lazy-lock
7683
7684 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7685 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7686 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7687 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7688 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7689 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7690 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7691
7692 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7693
7694 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7695
7696 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7697
7698 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7699
7700 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7701 paren and key.
7702
7703 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7704 supported.
7705
7706 ** Gnus changes.
7707
7708 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7709 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7710 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7711 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7712
7713 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7714 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7715
7716 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7717 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7718 obsolete.
7719
7720 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7721 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7722
7723 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7724
7725 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7726
7727 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7728
7729 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7730 referred.
7731
7732 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7733
7734 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7735
7736 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7737
7738 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7739
7740 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7741 buffers.
7742
7743 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7744
7745 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7746
7747 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7748
7749 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7750
7751 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7752
7753 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7754
7755 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7756
7757 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7758 is possible.
7759
7760 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7761
7762 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7763 groups of groups.
7764
7765 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7766
7767 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7768 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7769
7770 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7771
7772 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7773
7774 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7775
7776 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7777
7778 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7779 expiration times.
7780
7781 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7782
7783 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7784 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7785
7786 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7787 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7788 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7789
7790 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7791 articles with the `*' command.
7792
7793 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7794
7795 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7796
7797 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7798
7799 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7800
7801 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7802 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7803
7804 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7805 buffer.
7806
7807 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7808
7809 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7810
7811 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7812
7813 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7814
7815 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7816
7817 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7818
7819 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7820
7821 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7822
7823 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7824
7825 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7826 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7827
7828 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7829 refetching.
7830
7831 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7832
7833 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7834 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7835
7836 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7837
7838 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7839
7840 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7841
7842 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7843 articles.
7844
7845 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7846
7847 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7848
7849 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7850 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7851
7852 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7853
7854 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7855
7856 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7857
7858 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7859
7860 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7861
7862 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
7863 in greater detail.
7864 \f
7865 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
7866
7867 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
7868 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
7869 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
7870 exists.
7871
7872 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
7873 as well as lists.
7874
7875 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
7876 of a given keymap.
7877
7878 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
7879 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
7880 keymap or nil.
7881
7882 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
7883 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
7884 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
7885 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
7886 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
7887 alias.
7888 \f
7889 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
7890
7891 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
7892
7893 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
7894 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
7895 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
7896 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
7897 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
7898
7899 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
7900 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
7901 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
7902
7903 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
7904
7905 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
7906 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
7907 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
7908 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
7909 chapter of the manual for details.
7910
7911 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
7912 customization variables take effect.
7913
7914 ** Marking with the mouse.
7915
7916 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
7917 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
7918 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
7919
7920 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
7921
7922 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
7923
7924 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
7925 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
7926
7927 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
7928 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
7929 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
7930 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
7931 applications, these problems are significant.
7932
7933 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
7934 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
7935 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
7936 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
7937 other DOS application as a subprocess.
7938
7939 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
7940 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
7941
7942 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
7943 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
7944 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
7945 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
7946 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
7947 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
7948
7949 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
7950
7951 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
7952 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
7953 minibuffer contains.
7954
7955 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
7956
7957 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
7958 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
7959 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
7960 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
7961
7962 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
7963 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
7964 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
7965 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
7966
7967 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
7968 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
7969
7970 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
7971 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
7972 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
7973
7974 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
7975 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
7976 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
7977 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
7978
7979 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
7980
7981 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
7982 to replace the characters it "deletes".
7983
7984 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
7985
7986 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
7987 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
7988 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
7989 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
7990 immediately after the selected one.
7991
7992 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
7993 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
7994
7995 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
7996
7997 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
7998 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
7999 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8000 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8001 recover-session.
8002
8003 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8004 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8005 will not work.
8006
8007 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8008 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8009 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8010 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8011 now that the bug is fixed.
8012
8013 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8014
8015 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8016 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8017 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8018 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8019
8020 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8021 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8022 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8023 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8024
8025 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8026 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8027 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8028
8029 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8030 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8031 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8032 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8033 remain normal.
8034
8035 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8036 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8037
8038 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8039 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8040 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8041 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8042
8043 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8044 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8045 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8046 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8047 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8048 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8049
8050 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8051 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8052 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8053 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8054
8055 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8056 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8057 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8058
8059 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8060 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8061 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8062 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8063 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8064 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8065 to a limitation in font-lock).
8066
8067 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8068
8069 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8070 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8071 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8072 this example:
8073
8074 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8075 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8076
8077 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8078
8079 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8080
8081 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8082
8083 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8084
8085 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8086 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8087 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8088 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8089 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8090 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8091
8092 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8093 does the same job.
8094
8095 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8096 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8097
8098 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8099 text.
8100
8101 ** Font Lock mode
8102
8103 *** Global Font Lock mode
8104
8105 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8106 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8107 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8108 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8109 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8110
8111 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8112
8113 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8114
8115 in your ~/.emacs.
8116
8117 *** Local Refontification
8118
8119 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8120 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8121 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8122 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8123
8124 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8125 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8126 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8127 above and below point.
8128
8129 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8130
8131 ** Follow mode
8132
8133 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8134 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8135 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8136 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8137 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8138 follow-mode.
8139
8140 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8141
8142 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8143 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8144
8145 ** hide-show changes.
8146
8147 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8148 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8149 normal hooks.
8150
8151 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8152 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8153
8154 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8155 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8156 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8157
8158 ** MSDOS Changes
8159
8160 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8161 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8162
8163 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8164 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8165
8166 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8167
8168 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8169 pressing both mouse buttons.
8170
8171 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8172 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8173 are:
8174
8175 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8176 now works.
8177
8178 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8179
8180 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8181 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8182
8183 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8184
8185 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8186
8187 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8188
8189 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8190
8191 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8192 \f
8193 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8194
8195 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8196 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8197 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8198 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8199 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8200
8201 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8202
8203 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8204 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8205 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8206 be different.
8207
8208 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8209 than `system-type'.
8210
8211 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8212
8213 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8214 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8215
8216 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8217 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8218
8219 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8220 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8221 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8222
8223 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8224 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8225 like this:
8226
8227 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8228
8229 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8230 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8231 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8232
8233 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8234 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8235 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8236
8237 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8238 up if too much time passes.
8239
8240 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8241
8242 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8243 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8244 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8245 form in BODY.
8246
8247 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8248 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8249 call looks like this:
8250
8251 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8252
8253 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8254 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8255 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8256 ARGS.
8257
8258 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8259 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8260 command.
8261
8262 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8263 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8264 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8265 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8266
8267 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8268 idle for SECS seconds.
8269
8270 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8271 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8272 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8273 instead.
8274
8275 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8276 there is no answer within a certain time.
8277
8278 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8279
8280 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8281 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8282 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8283
8284 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8285 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8286 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8287 arguments in between are ignored.
8288
8289 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8290 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8291
8292 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8293 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8294 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8295 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8296 version.
8297
8298 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8299 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8300 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8301 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8302 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8303 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8304
8305 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8306 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8307 systems with limited file name syntax.
8308
8309 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8310 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8311 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8312 completions.el:
8313
8314 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8315 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8316 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8317
8318 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8319 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8320 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8321 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8322 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8323
8324 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8325 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8326 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8327
8328 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8329 marker from its buffer position.
8330
8331 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8332 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8333 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8334
8335 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8336 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8337 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8338 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8339 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8340 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8341
8342 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8343 errors that happen often during editing.
8344
8345 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8346 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8347 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8348
8349 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8350 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8351
8352 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8353 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8354 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8355 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8356 and not get-buffer-window.
8357
8358 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8359 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8360 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8361
8362 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8363 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8364 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8365 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8366 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8367 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8368 over and over for the same text.
8369
8370 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8371
8372 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8373 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8374
8375 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8376 ;; $HEADER: text $
8377
8378 in addition to the normal
8379
8380 ;; HEADER: text
8381
8382 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8383 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8384 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8385 \f
8386 * For older news, see the file ONEWS.
8387
8388 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8389 Copyright information:
8390
8391 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8392
8393 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8394 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8395 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8396 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8397
8398 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8399 of this document, or of portions of it,
8400 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8401 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8402 \f
8403 Local variables:
8404 mode: outline
8405 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8406 end: