1 GNU Emacs NEWS -- history of user-visible changes. 2000-08-14
2 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
37 ** Polish and German translations of Emacs' reference card have been
38 added. They are named `pl-refcard.tex' and `de-refcard.tex'.
39 Postscript files are included.
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
47 This regular expression is matched against the first line of a file to
48 determine the file's mode in `set-auto-mode' when Emacs can't deduce a
49 mode from the file's name. If it matches, the file is assumed to be
50 interpreted by the interpreter matched by the second group of the
51 regular expression. The mode is then determined as the mode
52 associated with that interpreter in `interpreter-mode-alist'.
55 ** C-down-mouse-3 is bound differently. Now if the menu bar is not
56 displayed it pops up a menu containing the items which would be on the
57 menu bar. If the menu bar is displayed, it pops up the major mode
58 menu or the Edit menu if there is no major mode menu.
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
63 ** The <delete> function key is now bound to `delete-char' by default.
64 Note that this takes effect only on window systems. On TTYs, Emacs
65 will receive ASCII 127 when the DEL key is pressed. This
66 character is still bound as before.
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
71 ** New function executable-make-buffer-file-executable-if-script-p is
72 suitable as an after-save-hook as an alternative to `executable-chmod'.
75 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
76 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
77 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
78 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
79 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
80 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
81 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
84 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
85 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
86 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
87 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
88 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
89 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
90 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
91 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
92 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
94 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
95 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
98 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
99 point in a pop-up window.
102 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
103 displays all characters in that character set.
105 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
106 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
109 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
110 on the context. M-x kill-comment is now an alias to comment-kill,
111 defined on newcomment.el.
114 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
116 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
117 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
120 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
121 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
122 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
123 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
126 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
127 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
128 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
129 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
132 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
133 on the display using several methods
136 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
137 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
138 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
141 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
142 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
144 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
146 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
147 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
150 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
151 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
152 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
153 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
156 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
157 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
158 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
160 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
161 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
164 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
165 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
168 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
169 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
173 ** New X resources recognized
175 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
176 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
177 is useful for debugging X problems.
181 emacs.synchronous: true
183 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
184 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
185 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
186 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
187 visual class names are
196 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
197 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
200 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
201 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
202 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
207 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
209 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
210 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
211 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
212 resource values are `true' or `on'.
216 emacs.privateColormap: true
218 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
219 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
220 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
222 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
223 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
224 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
228 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
231 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
232 all frames except the selected one.
234 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
235 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
237 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
238 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
239 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
240 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
243 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
244 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
246 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
247 read mail from the menu etc.
250 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
251 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
253 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
255 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
259 -------------------------
266 ** Changes in Outline mode.
268 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
269 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
270 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
272 ** Changes to Emacs Server
275 *** The new option `server-kill-new-buffers' specifies what to do
276 with buffers when done with them. If non-nil, the default, buffers
277 are killed, unless they were already present before visiting them with
278 Emacs Server. If nil, `server-temp-file-regexp' specifies which
279 buffers to kill, as before.
281 Please note that only buffers are killed that still have a client,
282 i.e. buffers visited with `emacsclient --no-wait' are never killed in
285 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
287 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
288 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
289 use. Default is 1000.
292 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
293 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
296 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
297 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
298 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
302 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
303 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
306 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
307 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
309 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
310 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
311 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
313 ** Faces and frame parameters.
315 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
316 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
317 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
318 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
319 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
320 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
321 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
323 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
324 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
325 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
326 `default' face and vice versa.
331 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
332 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
333 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
336 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
338 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
339 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
340 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
341 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
343 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
344 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
345 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
347 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
350 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
352 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
353 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
354 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
355 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
358 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
360 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
361 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
362 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
363 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
366 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
367 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
368 under Lisp changes, below.
370 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
373 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
374 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
375 otherwise, it is hollow.
377 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
378 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
379 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
380 customizing face `fringe'.
382 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
383 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
387 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
388 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
390 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
392 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
393 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
394 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
395 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
396 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
399 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
400 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
401 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
402 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
403 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
404 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
406 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
407 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
408 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
409 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
410 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
411 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
413 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
414 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
415 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
416 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
417 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
419 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
421 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
422 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
423 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
426 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
428 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
429 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
430 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
431 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
432 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
438 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
439 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
444 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
445 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
446 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
449 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
451 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
452 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
453 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
456 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
457 have to do anything to activate it.
459 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
461 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
462 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
463 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
464 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
466 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
469 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
471 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
473 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
476 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
480 ** Hscrolling in C code.
482 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
483 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
488 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
489 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
492 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
494 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
495 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
496 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
497 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
498 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
500 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
502 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
505 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
506 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
508 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
510 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
511 `*') toggles the status.
513 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
515 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
517 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
518 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
521 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
523 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
524 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
525 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
526 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
527 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
528 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
533 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
534 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
535 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
538 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
539 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
540 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
541 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
542 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
543 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
545 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
548 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
550 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
551 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
552 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
555 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
556 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
558 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
559 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
560 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
563 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
565 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
566 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
567 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
568 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
570 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
571 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
572 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
573 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
575 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
576 notably at the end of lines.
578 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
579 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
582 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
584 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
585 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
586 after each match to get the replacement text.
589 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
590 you edit the replacement string.
592 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
593 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
594 lisp-complete-symbol.
597 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
599 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
600 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
601 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
602 window size by setting the following variable:
604 - User option: max-mini-window-height
606 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
607 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
608 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
612 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
614 ** Changes to hideshow.el
616 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
617 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
619 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
621 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
622 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
623 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
624 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
625 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
626 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
628 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
629 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
630 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
631 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
633 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
635 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
636 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
637 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
638 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
639 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
641 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
642 something like this in your .emacs.
644 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
646 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
648 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
651 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
652 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
653 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
656 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
660 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
664 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
665 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
668 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
669 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
670 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
671 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
673 ** Changes in Font Lock
675 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
676 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
679 ** Comint (subshell) changes
681 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
682 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
683 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
684 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
685 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
686 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
687 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
688 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
690 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
691 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
693 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
694 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
695 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
697 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
698 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
699 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
701 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
702 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
703 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
704 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
706 ** Changes to Rmail mode
708 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
709 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
710 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
711 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
712 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
715 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
716 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
717 regexp matching your mail addresses.
719 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
720 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
721 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
722 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
723 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
725 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
728 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
729 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
732 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
733 in which folder to put messages automatically.
735 ** Changes to TeX mode
737 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
740 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
742 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
743 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
744 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
745 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
746 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
747 can be edited from that buffer.
749 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
750 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
751 `A' to use all marked entries).
753 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
754 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
756 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
757 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
758 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
761 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
762 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
763 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
764 in column 1 are always made leaves.
766 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
767 has the following new features:
769 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
770 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
771 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
772 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
774 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
775 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
776 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
777 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
778 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
781 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
787 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
788 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
789 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
791 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
792 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
793 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
794 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
799 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
800 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
801 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
803 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
804 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
807 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
808 between custom options. Example:
810 (defcustom default-input-method nil
811 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
812 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
813 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
815 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
816 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
818 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
819 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
820 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
822 ** New features in evaluation commands
824 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
825 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
826 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
827 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
828 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
830 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
831 code when called with a prefix argument.
836 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
837 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
838 spell-checks the current buffer.
841 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
844 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
845 correction is made and re-checked.
847 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
849 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
852 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
855 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
860 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
861 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
862 is, delete only empty directories.
864 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
865 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
866 copy directories recursively.
868 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
869 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
870 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
872 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
873 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
876 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
877 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
878 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
879 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
880 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
882 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
885 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
886 use the -f option when sending mail.
890 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
891 current user setups (although it's believed that these
892 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
893 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
894 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
895 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
898 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
899 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
900 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
901 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
902 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
905 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
906 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
907 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
908 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
909 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
910 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
912 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
913 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
914 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
915 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
916 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
917 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
918 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
919 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
921 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
922 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
923 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
924 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
927 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
928 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
929 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
930 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
931 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
932 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
933 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
934 function documentation for more info.
936 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
937 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
938 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
939 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
940 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
941 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
942 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
943 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
945 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
947 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
948 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
950 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
951 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
952 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
953 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
954 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
957 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
958 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
959 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
962 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
963 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
964 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
965 chapter about this in the manual.
967 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
968 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
969 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
970 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
971 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
973 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
974 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
975 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
977 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
978 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
980 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
981 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
982 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
985 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
986 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
987 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
988 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
991 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
992 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
993 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
996 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
997 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
998 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
999 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
1002 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
1003 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
1004 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
1005 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
1006 Thanks to Eric Eide.
1008 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
1009 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
1010 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
1012 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1014 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
1015 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
1016 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
1017 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
1019 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
1020 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
1021 the column specified by comment-column.
1023 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
1024 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
1025 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
1026 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
1027 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
1028 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
1030 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1031 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1034 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1036 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1037 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1038 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1039 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1042 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1044 ** Makefile mode changes
1046 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1048 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1049 Fontlock mode is active.
1053 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1054 so that searches can be resumed.
1056 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1057 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1058 that started the search.
1060 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1061 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1064 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1066 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1067 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1068 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1069 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1070 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1071 `secondary-selection'.
1073 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1074 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1075 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1076 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1077 usual snappy response.
1079 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1080 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1081 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1082 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1085 ** Changes in sort.el
1087 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1088 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1089 new user-option sort-numeric-base can be used to specify a default
1092 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1095 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1096 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1097 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1099 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1100 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1102 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1103 output ^M at the end of lines.
1105 ** Shell script mode changes.
1107 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1108 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1109 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1113 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1115 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1116 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1117 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1118 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1119 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1121 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1122 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1124 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1125 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1127 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1130 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1132 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1134 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1137 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1138 variables are tagged.
1140 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1142 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1146 ** Changes in etags.el
1148 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1149 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1150 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1152 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1153 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1155 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1156 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1157 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1158 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1160 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1162 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1163 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1165 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1167 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1168 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1169 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1171 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1172 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1174 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1175 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1178 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1179 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1180 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1183 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1184 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1185 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1186 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1189 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1190 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1191 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1193 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1196 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1199 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1200 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1201 expression from that list, are not checked.
1203 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1204 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1205 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1206 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1208 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1210 ** New modes and packages
1213 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1214 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1215 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1216 on certain projects.
1219 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1220 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1222 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1224 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1225 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1226 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1227 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1228 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1229 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1230 corresponding file is read.
1233 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1236 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1237 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1239 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1240 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1241 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1244 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1245 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1246 separate Texinfo file.
1249 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1250 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1251 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1252 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1253 enter checkin log messages.
1256 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1257 without invoking external programs.
1259 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1260 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1261 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1262 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1263 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1265 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1266 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1269 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1270 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1272 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1273 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1274 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1275 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1276 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1279 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1280 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1281 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1282 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1285 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1286 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1287 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1289 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1292 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1294 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1296 ; comment (until end of line)
1300 $A default non-terminal
1301 $"C" default terminal
1302 $?C? default special
1303 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1304 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1305 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1306 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1307 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1308 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1309 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1310 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1311 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1312 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1313 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1314 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1315 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1316 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1317 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1319 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1321 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1322 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1323 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1324 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1325 equal signs of assignments.
1328 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1329 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1332 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1333 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1334 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1335 customize the package.
1337 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1339 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1340 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1341 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1342 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1343 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1344 which answers different needs.
1347 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1348 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1349 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1350 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1351 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1355 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1356 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1359 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1362 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1364 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1366 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1369 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1372 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1375 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1377 *** whitespace.el ???
1379 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1380 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1381 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1382 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1383 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1384 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1385 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1387 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1389 Here is an example of columns:
1392 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1393 porcupine strawberry airplane
1395 Doing the following settings:
1397 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1398 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1399 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1400 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1403 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1405 M-x delimit-columns-region
1409 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1410 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1411 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1413 delim-col has the following options:
1415 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1418 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1419 between each column.
1421 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1424 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1427 delim-col has the following commands:
1429 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1430 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1433 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1434 were operated on recently.
1436 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1438 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1439 recentf at Emacs startup.
1441 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1442 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1443 file list can be displayed:
1445 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1446 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1447 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1449 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1450 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1452 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1456 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1457 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1458 specific to Message mode.
1461 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1462 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1463 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1466 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1467 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1468 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1470 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1471 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1474 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1476 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1477 minibuffer with completion.
1479 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1480 with the diary features.
1482 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1483 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1485 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1488 ** Withdrawn packages
1490 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1491 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1493 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1495 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1498 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1499 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1502 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1503 is running in batch mode. For example,
1505 (message "%s" (read t))
1507 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1511 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1512 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1514 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1515 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1518 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1521 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1523 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1524 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1526 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1528 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1529 comparison is done with `eq'.
1531 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1533 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1537 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1538 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1539 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1541 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1542 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1544 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1545 function was declared obsolete.
1547 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1548 retained as an alias).
1550 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1551 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1552 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1554 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1556 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1558 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1559 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1561 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1563 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1565 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1567 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1568 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1569 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1570 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1573 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1574 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1575 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1576 minibuffer even if it is active.
1578 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1579 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1580 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1581 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1582 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1583 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1585 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1586 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1587 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1588 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1589 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1590 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1591 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1593 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1594 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1595 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1597 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1598 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1599 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1600 Default value is nil.
1602 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1605 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1606 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1607 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1609 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1612 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1613 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1614 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1615 than replacing the local map.
1617 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1618 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1620 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1622 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1625 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1627 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1629 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1630 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1631 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1632 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1634 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1635 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1636 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1637 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1639 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1640 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1641 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1642 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1644 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1645 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1646 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1648 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1649 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1650 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1651 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1652 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1653 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1654 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1657 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1659 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1660 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1661 character set as previously.
1663 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1664 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1665 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1667 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1668 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1669 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1670 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1672 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1673 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1675 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1676 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1679 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1680 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1682 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1683 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1684 buffers and strings.
1686 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1687 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1688 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1689 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1690 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1691 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1692 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1695 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1696 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1697 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1699 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1700 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1701 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1702 may differ between buffer and string text.
1704 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1705 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1707 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1708 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1709 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1710 `composition' from STRING.
1712 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1713 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1715 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1718 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1719 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1720 character set is not used.
1722 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1723 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1724 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1727 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1728 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1729 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1732 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1733 that offset in the file before writing.
1735 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1736 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1738 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1739 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1740 from which the command was issued.
1742 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1743 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1744 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1745 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1748 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1749 to `window-buffer-height'.
1751 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1753 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1754 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1755 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1757 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1760 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1761 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1763 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1764 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1765 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1767 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1768 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1769 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1770 is currently displayed in some window.
1772 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1773 argument function's results.
1775 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1776 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1778 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1779 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1781 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1782 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1784 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1785 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1788 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1789 nil don't display a cursor
1790 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1791 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1792 others display a box cursor.
1794 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1795 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1796 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1797 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1799 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1800 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1801 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1802 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1806 (string-to-syntax "()")
1809 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1812 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1813 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1820 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1825 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1830 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1837 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1838 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1841 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1842 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1843 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1844 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1847 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1849 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1850 for a regexp in a string.
1852 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1853 `mouse-position-function'.
1855 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1856 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1858 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1859 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1862 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1865 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1866 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1869 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1870 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1871 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1872 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1876 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1877 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1880 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1881 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1882 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1883 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1886 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1887 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1888 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1889 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1892 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1893 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1894 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1897 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1898 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1901 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1903 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1904 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1905 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1909 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1910 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1913 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1914 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1917 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1918 instead of being optional.
1921 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1922 modify read-only text.
1925 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1927 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1928 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1929 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1930 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1931 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1933 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1934 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1935 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1936 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1937 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1938 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1939 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1942 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1943 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1944 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1948 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1949 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1952 ** New function `propertize'
1954 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1955 strings with text properties.
1957 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1959 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1960 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1961 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1962 specified value of that property. Example:
1964 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1967 ** push and pop macros.
1969 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1970 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1971 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1973 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1974 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1975 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1977 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1979 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1980 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1982 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1983 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1984 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1985 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1987 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1988 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1989 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1990 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1993 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1994 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1996 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1997 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1998 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1999 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
2000 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
2002 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
2004 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
2005 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2006 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2007 [:alpha:] matches letters.
2008 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2009 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
2010 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
2011 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
2012 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
2013 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
2014 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
2015 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
2016 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
2017 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
2018 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
2021 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2023 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2025 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2027 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2028 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2032 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
2033 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
2034 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
2038 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
2039 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
2041 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2043 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2044 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2045 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2046 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2047 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2049 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2051 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2052 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2053 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2057 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2058 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2059 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2060 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2061 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2063 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2065 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2067 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2069 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2071 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2073 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2076 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2078 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2080 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2082 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2084 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2086 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2088 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2090 Returns the size of TABLE.
2092 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2094 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2096 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2098 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2100 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2104 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2106 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2109 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2111 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2112 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2114 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2116 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2118 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2120 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2121 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2123 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2125 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2127 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2129 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2130 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2131 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2132 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2133 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2135 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2137 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2138 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2139 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2141 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2142 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2144 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2145 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2147 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2148 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2150 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2151 'case-fold-string-hash))
2153 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2156 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2158 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2159 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2160 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2163 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2165 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2166 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2169 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2170 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2171 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2172 is too short to reach that column.
2175 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2176 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2177 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2178 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2180 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2181 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2182 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2185 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2186 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2189 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2190 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2193 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2194 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2195 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2196 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2197 temporary-file-directory instead.
2200 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2201 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2202 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2203 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2206 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2207 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2210 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2212 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2213 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2214 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2217 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2219 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2220 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2221 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2222 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2223 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2224 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2226 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2227 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2228 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2229 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2232 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2234 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2235 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2236 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2239 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2240 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2244 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2246 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2247 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2250 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2253 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2255 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2256 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2259 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2261 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2262 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2268 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2269 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2271 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2272 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2273 to enable sound support.
2275 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2276 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2277 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2278 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2279 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2281 The following sound properties are supported:
2285 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2286 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2290 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2291 may be present, but not both.
2295 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2296 0..1. This property is optional.
2298 Other properties are ignored.
2300 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2302 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2305 ** Changes to garbage collection
2307 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2308 of live and free strings.
2310 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2311 strings that have been consed so far.
2314 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2318 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2320 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2323 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2325 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2327 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2328 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2329 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2330 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2331 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2333 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2334 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2337 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2340 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2342 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2343 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2344 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2345 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2348 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2350 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2351 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2352 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2353 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2355 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2356 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2358 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2359 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2360 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2361 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2362 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2363 just display it black instead.
2365 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2368 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2372 ** New face implementation.
2374 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2375 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2380 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2382 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2384 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2385 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2387 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2389 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2391 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2393 6. Foreground color.
2395 7. Background color.
2397 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2399 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2401 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2403 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2405 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2408 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2409 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2411 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2412 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2413 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2414 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2415 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2416 attributes mentioned above.
2418 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2419 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2422 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2423 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2429 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2430 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2431 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2432 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2433 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2434 results in a fully-specified face.
2437 *** Face realization.
2439 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2440 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2441 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2442 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2443 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2444 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2446 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2447 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2448 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2449 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2451 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2452 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2453 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2454 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2455 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2457 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2458 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2459 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2460 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2461 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2464 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2465 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2466 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2467 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2470 **** Clearing face caches.
2472 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2473 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2479 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2480 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2481 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2483 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2484 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2485 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2486 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2487 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2489 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2490 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2491 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2493 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2495 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2496 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2497 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2498 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2499 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2500 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2501 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2503 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2504 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2510 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2511 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2514 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2515 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2516 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2517 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2518 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2521 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2523 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2526 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2528 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2530 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2531 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2532 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2534 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2535 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2536 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2537 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2538 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2539 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2540 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2541 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2542 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2543 of the face font sort order.
2545 - Function: x-font-family-list
2547 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2548 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2549 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2550 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2552 - Variable: font-list-limit
2554 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2555 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2556 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2559 *** Setting face attributes.
2561 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2562 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2563 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2566 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2567 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2569 The following attributes are recognized:
2573 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2574 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2575 and `?' are allowed.
2579 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2580 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2581 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2582 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2586 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2591 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2592 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2593 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2597 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2598 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2601 `:foreground', `:background'
2603 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2607 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2608 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2609 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2614 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2615 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2616 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2621 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2622 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2623 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2624 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2628 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2629 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2630 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2631 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2632 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2633 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2634 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2635 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2636 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2637 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2638 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2639 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2640 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2641 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2642 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2643 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2648 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2649 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2653 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2654 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2655 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2656 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2657 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2658 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2660 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2661 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2665 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2666 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2667 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2670 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2671 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2672 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2674 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2677 *** Face attributes and X resources
2679 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2682 Face attribute X resource class
2683 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2684 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2685 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2686 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2687 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2688 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2689 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2690 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2691 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2692 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2693 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2694 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2695 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2696 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2697 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2698 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2699 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2700 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2701 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2702 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2705 *** Text property `face'.
2707 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2708 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2709 specification can be
2711 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2713 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2714 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2715 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2716 for face attribute names.
2718 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2719 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2720 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2723 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2725 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2726 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2727 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2728 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2729 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2730 used to clear the mapping table.
2732 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2734 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2735 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2736 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2737 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2738 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2739 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2740 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2741 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2742 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2743 modify their color-related behavior.
2745 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2748 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2750 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2751 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2752 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2753 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2754 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2755 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2756 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2757 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2758 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2761 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2763 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2765 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2766 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2767 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2769 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2771 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2772 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2773 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2775 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2776 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2777 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2778 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2779 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2780 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2781 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2784 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2785 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2786 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2788 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2790 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2792 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2794 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2795 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2796 constrained position if that is is different.
2798 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2799 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2800 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2801 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2802 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2803 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2804 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2805 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2806 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2808 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2809 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2810 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2811 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2812 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2814 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2815 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2817 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2819 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2821 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2822 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2823 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2825 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2827 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2828 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2829 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2830 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2831 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2833 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2835 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2836 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2837 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2838 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2839 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2841 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2843 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2844 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2845 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2847 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2849 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2850 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2851 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2856 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2857 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2858 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2859 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2861 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2862 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2863 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2864 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2867 IMAGE is an image specification.
2869 *** Image specifications
2871 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2872 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2873 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2874 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2875 described below are ignored.
2877 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2881 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2882 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2883 to use for its ascent.
2885 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2886 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2888 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2889 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2890 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2891 overlays that apply to the image.
2895 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2896 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2900 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2905 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2906 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2907 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2908 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2910 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2912 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2913 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2914 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2915 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2916 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2917 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2918 background of the image.
2922 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2923 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2924 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2925 may be present in the image specification.
2929 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2930 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2931 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2932 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2934 *** Supported image types
2936 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2938 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2939 properties supported are
2943 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2944 is the frame's foreground.
2948 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2949 the frame's background color.
2951 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2952 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2953 instead of a `:file' property.
2957 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2961 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2967 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2968 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2970 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2972 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2975 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2976 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2979 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2981 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2982 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2983 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2984 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2986 Additional image properties supported are:
2988 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2990 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2991 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2994 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2995 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2997 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2998 to display compressed images.
3000 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
3002 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
3003 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
3006 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
3008 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3009 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
3012 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
3014 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
3015 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3018 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3020 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3021 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3023 Additional image properties supported are:
3027 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
3028 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
3030 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
3031 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
3032 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
3035 (defun show-anim (file max)
3036 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
3037 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
3039 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3042 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3045 (goto-char (point-min))
3046 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3047 (insert-image img "x"))
3048 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3050 **** PNG, image type `png'
3052 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3053 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3056 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3058 Additional image properties supported are:
3062 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3063 integer. This is a required property.
3067 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3068 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3072 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3073 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3074 files. This is an required property.
3076 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3081 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3082 which are supported in the current configuration.
3084 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3085 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3086 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3087 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3088 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3090 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3092 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3093 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3094 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3095 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3096 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3102 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3105 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3106 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3107 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3108 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3109 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3110 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3111 of the display margins.
3113 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3114 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3115 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3116 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3122 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3123 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3124 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3125 that have a `help-echo' property.
3127 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3128 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3129 the window in which the help was found.
3131 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3132 `help-echo' text property was found.
3134 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3135 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3137 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3138 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3141 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3142 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3144 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3145 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3146 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3147 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3148 used as help string.
3150 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3151 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3152 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3155 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3157 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3158 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3160 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3161 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3162 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3163 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3166 (global-set-key [A-down]
3169 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3170 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3171 (global-set-key [A-up]
3174 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3175 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3178 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3180 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3181 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3182 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3183 is called with one argument, POS.
3185 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3186 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3187 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3188 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3189 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3192 ** Tool bar support.
3194 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3195 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3196 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3197 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3198 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3199 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3201 *** Tool bar item definitions
3203 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3204 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3205 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3207 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3208 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3209 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3210 property (see below).
3212 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3213 binding are currently ignored.
3215 The following properties are recognized:
3219 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3224 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3228 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3229 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3230 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3232 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3234 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3235 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3239 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3240 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3241 meaning of each of the four elements:
3243 Index Use when item is
3244 ----------------------------------------
3245 0 enabled and selected
3246 1 enabled and deselected
3247 2 disabled and selected
3248 3 disabled and deselected
3250 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3251 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3253 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3255 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3256 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3258 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3260 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3261 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3262 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3264 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3265 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3267 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3268 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3269 pixels. Default is 1.
3271 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3272 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3274 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3276 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3279 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3280 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3281 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3283 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3285 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3287 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3290 ** Mode line changes.
3293 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3295 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3296 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3297 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3299 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3300 a `local-map' text property.
3302 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3303 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3305 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3306 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3307 `local-map' property.
3309 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3310 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3313 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3314 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3317 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3318 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3321 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3323 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3324 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3325 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3326 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3329 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3332 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3333 position in the header-line.
3336 ** Text property `display'
3338 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3339 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3340 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3341 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3343 *** Variable width and height spaces
3345 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3346 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3347 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3348 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3349 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3350 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3351 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3353 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3354 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3355 properties described below.
3357 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3358 characters having the `display' property.
3362 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3363 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3365 - :relative-width FACTOR
3367 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3368 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3369 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3370 width of that character by FACTOR.
3374 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3375 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3377 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3381 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3384 - :relative-height FACTOR
3386 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3387 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3391 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3392 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3393 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3396 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3400 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3401 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3402 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3403 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3404 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3405 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3406 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3407 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3408 as display specification.
3410 *** Other display properties
3412 - :space-width FACTOR
3414 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3415 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3420 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3422 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3423 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3424 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3425 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3426 a font is available counts as a step.
3428 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3429 as tall as the frame's default font.
3431 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3432 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3434 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3435 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3439 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3440 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3441 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3442 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3443 `:height' subproperty.
3445 *** Conditional display properties
3447 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3448 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3449 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3450 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3451 the text having the `display' property.
3453 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3457 ** New menu separator types.
3459 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3460 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3461 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3462 to specify other menu separator types.
3464 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3466 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3469 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3471 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3473 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3475 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3477 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3479 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3481 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3483 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3485 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3487 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3488 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3490 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3492 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3494 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3496 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3498 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3500 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3502 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3504 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3506 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3508 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3510 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3512 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3514 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3516 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3518 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3519 the corresponding single-line separators.
3522 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3524 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3525 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3526 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3527 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3528 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3529 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3530 default foreground is black.
3532 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3533 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3534 `ScrollBarBackground').
3536 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3537 settings for scroll bar colors.
3540 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3541 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3544 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3545 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3546 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3547 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3548 the original window start.
3551 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3552 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3553 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3556 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3558 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3559 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3560 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3561 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3563 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3564 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3566 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3568 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3569 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3570 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3571 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3572 temporarily to nil, for example
3574 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3575 (enlarge-window 10))
3577 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3578 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3580 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3581 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3582 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3583 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3584 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3585 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3589 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3591 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3594 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3596 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3598 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3599 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3600 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3601 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3602 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3604 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3608 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3610 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3613 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3615 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3616 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3618 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3620 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3622 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3623 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3624 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3626 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3627 is the one that is used.
3629 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3630 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3631 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3632 separate from the command's regular output.
3633 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3634 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3635 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3638 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3639 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3640 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3641 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3643 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3644 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3645 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3646 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3648 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3649 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3650 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3651 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3653 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3654 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3655 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3656 they never ignore case.
3658 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3659 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3660 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3661 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3662 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3663 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3664 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3666 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3667 the same format that was used in the file before.
3669 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3670 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3672 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3673 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3674 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3676 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3677 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3678 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3679 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3680 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3681 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3682 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3684 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3685 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3686 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3687 format. You can now customize these variables.
3689 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3690 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3691 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3692 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3694 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3695 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3696 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3698 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3699 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3700 doesn't have any effect.
3702 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3705 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3706 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3707 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3709 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3710 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3711 `auto-show-mode' command.
3713 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3714 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3715 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3716 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3717 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3719 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3720 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3722 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3723 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3724 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3726 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3727 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3728 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3729 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3731 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3733 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3734 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3735 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3736 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3737 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3739 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3740 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3742 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3743 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3744 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3745 `?' on other systems.
3747 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3748 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3751 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3752 current codepage when it starts.
3756 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3757 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3758 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3759 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3760 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3761 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3765 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3766 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3768 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3769 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3770 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3771 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3772 buffer-file-coding-system.
3774 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3775 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3778 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3779 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3780 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3781 list of possible coding systems.
3785 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3786 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3787 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3788 docstring for details.
3790 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3791 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3792 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3793 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3794 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3796 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3797 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3799 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3800 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3802 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3803 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3804 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3805 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3808 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3809 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3811 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3812 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3813 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3814 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3816 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3817 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3818 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3819 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3820 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3822 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3824 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3826 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3827 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3829 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3831 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3832 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3833 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3834 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3835 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3839 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3840 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3841 Gnus manual for the full story.
3843 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3844 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3845 group, which is created automatically.
3847 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3850 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3852 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3853 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3855 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3858 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3860 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3861 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3863 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3865 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3866 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3868 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3869 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3871 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3872 control over simplification.
3874 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3876 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3879 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3881 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3883 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3884 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3885 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3887 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3888 `a' forces normal posting method.
3890 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3893 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3896 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3897 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3899 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3902 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3904 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3906 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3907 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3909 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3910 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3912 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3914 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3917 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3918 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3920 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3921 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3923 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3925 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3927 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3929 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3931 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3932 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3933 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3935 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3936 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3937 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3938 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3939 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3941 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3942 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3943 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3944 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3946 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3947 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3948 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3951 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3953 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3954 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3956 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3957 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3958 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3959 removed from the label.
3961 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3962 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3964 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3965 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3967 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3968 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3971 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3973 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3975 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3976 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3978 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3979 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3980 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3982 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3983 changes with a special face.
3985 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3986 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3987 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3989 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3991 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3992 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3993 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3994 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3995 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3997 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3998 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3999 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
4001 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
4002 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
4003 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
4004 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
4005 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
4006 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
4007 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
4008 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
4009 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
4011 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
4012 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
4013 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
4014 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
4015 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
4018 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
4019 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
4020 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
4021 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
4022 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
4023 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
4025 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
4026 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
4027 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
4028 was not documented clearly before.
4030 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4031 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4033 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4035 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
4036 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
4037 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
4038 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
4040 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
4041 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4042 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4044 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4046 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4047 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4049 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4050 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4053 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4054 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4055 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4056 file names and attributes are returned.
4058 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4059 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4060 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4061 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4064 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4065 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4067 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4069 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4070 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4071 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4074 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4075 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4078 The new function process-running-child-p
4079 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4080 terminal to its own child process.
4082 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4083 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4084 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4085 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4087 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4088 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4090 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4091 :included is an alias for :visible.
4093 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4094 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4095 to move or copy menu entries.
4097 ** Multibyte editing changes
4099 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4100 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4101 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4102 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4103 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4104 (setq char (sref str idx)
4105 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4106 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4108 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4109 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4110 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4112 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4113 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4114 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4116 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4118 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4119 across the boundary.
4121 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4122 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4123 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4124 contains 8-bit characters.
4125 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4126 contains invalid characters.
4128 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4129 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4130 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4131 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4134 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4135 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4136 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4137 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4139 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4140 compose Thai characters in a string.
4142 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4143 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4144 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4145 menus should always use the third argument.
4147 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4148 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4149 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4150 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4152 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4153 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4154 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4155 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4157 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4158 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4159 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4162 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4164 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4165 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4166 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4168 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4169 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4170 means to clear out that attribute.
4172 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4173 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4175 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4176 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4177 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4178 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4180 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4181 the gap of the current buffer.
4183 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4184 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4187 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4188 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4189 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4190 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4192 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4194 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4195 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4196 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4197 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4198 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4200 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4201 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4202 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4203 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4204 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4206 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4207 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4208 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4210 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4211 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4212 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4213 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4214 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4217 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4218 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4219 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4220 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4222 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4224 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4225 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4226 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4227 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4229 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4230 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4231 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4232 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4233 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4234 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4235 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4238 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4241 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4242 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4243 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4244 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4245 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4247 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4248 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4249 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4250 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4252 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4253 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4254 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4255 something that most users not do.
4257 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4258 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4259 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4262 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4265 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4266 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4267 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4268 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4271 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4272 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4273 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4274 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4275 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4278 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4279 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4280 to be confused by TeX commands.
4282 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4283 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4284 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4285 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4287 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4288 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4289 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4290 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4291 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4293 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4294 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4296 ** Changes in input method usage.
4298 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4299 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4302 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4304 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4305 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4307 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4308 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4310 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4312 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4314 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4315 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4317 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4318 given in the following case:
4319 o When you are using a complex input method.
4320 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4322 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4323 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4324 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4325 setting it to t is helpful.
4327 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4329 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4331 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4332 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4333 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4334 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4337 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4338 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4339 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4342 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4344 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4346 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4347 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4349 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4350 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4351 its owner and group.
4353 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4354 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4356 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4357 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4359 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4360 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4361 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4362 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4364 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4365 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4366 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4367 for writing keyboard macros.
4369 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4370 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4371 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4372 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4373 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4376 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4378 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4379 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4382 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4383 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4384 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4385 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4387 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4388 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4389 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4391 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4392 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4393 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4394 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4396 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4397 failure if the command produces no output.
4399 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4400 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4403 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4404 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4405 function and variable names.
4407 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4408 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4409 file-coding-system-alist.
4411 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4412 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4413 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4414 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4415 according to the current fontset.
4417 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4419 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4420 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4421 nonascii-insert-offset.
4423 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4424 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4425 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4426 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4428 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4429 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4431 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4432 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4434 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4435 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4438 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4439 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4441 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4442 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4443 all variables that have documentation.
4445 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4446 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4447 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4448 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4449 it should show; the default is 20.
4451 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4452 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4455 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4456 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4457 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4458 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4459 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4460 Newly added options are included as well.
4462 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4463 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4464 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4466 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4469 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4470 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4472 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4473 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4476 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4477 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4480 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4481 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4482 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4483 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4486 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4488 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4489 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4490 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4492 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4493 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4494 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4499 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4500 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4502 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4503 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4505 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4506 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4508 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4509 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4510 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4511 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4512 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4513 made invisible again.
4515 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4517 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4518 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4519 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4522 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4523 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4524 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4525 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4526 rmail-default-body-file.
4528 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4529 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4530 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4532 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4533 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4534 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4536 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4537 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4538 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4539 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4540 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4541 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4543 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4544 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4545 provided by feedmail are:
4547 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4548 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4549 there is also a queue for draft messages
4551 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4552 be prompted for confirmation
4554 **** does smart filling of address headers
4556 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4557 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4558 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4560 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4561 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4562 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4563 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4567 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4568 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4570 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4571 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4573 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4574 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4575 for a specified regexp.
4579 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4582 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4583 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4586 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4587 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4588 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4589 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4591 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4592 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4593 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4594 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4595 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4597 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4598 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4599 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4600 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4601 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4603 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4604 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4605 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4606 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4608 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4609 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4610 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4612 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4613 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4614 session to resolve them.
4616 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4617 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4618 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4621 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4622 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4623 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4624 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4625 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4626 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4629 ** Changes in Font Lock
4631 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4632 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4633 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4634 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4635 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4637 ** Frame name display changes
4639 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4640 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4641 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4642 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4644 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4645 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4648 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4650 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4651 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4652 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4654 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4656 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4657 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4658 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4660 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4661 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4664 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4665 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4666 previously sent input.
4668 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4669 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4670 as the search string.
4672 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4673 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4677 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4678 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4679 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4682 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4683 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4684 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4685 style is still the default however.
4687 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4689 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4690 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4691 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4693 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4694 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4696 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4697 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4699 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4700 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4702 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4703 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4705 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4706 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4707 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4708 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4710 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4712 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4713 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4714 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4716 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4717 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4718 expanding dynamically.
4720 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4721 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4723 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4724 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4725 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4726 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4728 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4730 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4732 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4733 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4734 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4735 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4736 against the first word in the title.
4738 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4739 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4740 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4741 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4742 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4743 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4745 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4746 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4747 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4748 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4750 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4752 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4753 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4754 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4755 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4756 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4757 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4759 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4760 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4762 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4763 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4764 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4766 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4767 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4771 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4772 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4773 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4775 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4776 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4777 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4778 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4781 o URLs are automatically skipped
4782 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4784 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4786 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4788 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4789 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4790 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4791 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4793 *** New recursive parser.
4795 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4796 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4797 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4799 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4801 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4802 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4803 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4805 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4807 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4809 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4811 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4813 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4815 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4816 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4818 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4820 *** References to external documents.
4822 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4823 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4824 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4825 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4826 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4827 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4828 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4830 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4832 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4833 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4835 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4836 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4838 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4840 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4841 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4843 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4845 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4846 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4847 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4848 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4849 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4850 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4853 *** Support for the varioref package
4855 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4859 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4860 and citations are created. These hooks are
4861 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4862 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4864 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4866 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4867 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4869 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4871 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4872 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4875 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4877 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4878 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4879 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4880 directories that contain the same file name.
4882 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4883 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4884 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4885 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4886 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4887 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4888 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4891 ** New modes and packages
4893 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4894 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4895 it, but some do not.
4897 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4900 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4901 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4904 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4906 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4907 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4908 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4909 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4911 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4912 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4913 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4915 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4916 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4917 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4918 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4919 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4922 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4923 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4925 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4926 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4927 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4928 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4930 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4932 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4933 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4934 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4935 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4936 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4937 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4938 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4939 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4940 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4941 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4942 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4944 Platform-specific modes:
4946 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4947 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4948 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4949 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4950 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4951 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4952 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4953 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4954 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4956 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4958 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4959 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4960 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4961 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4963 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4964 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4965 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4967 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4968 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4969 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4970 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4972 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4973 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4974 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4977 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4978 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4979 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4980 current input method for reading this one event.
4982 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4983 now control whether to output certain characters as
4984 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4985 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4986 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4987 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4989 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4991 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4992 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4994 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4995 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4996 always increases point by 1.
4998 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4999 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
5001 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
5003 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
5004 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
5005 default value changed. For example,
5007 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
5012 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
5015 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
5016 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
5017 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
5018 `:version' in the top level group.
5020 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5022 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
5023 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
5025 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
5026 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
5027 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
5030 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
5031 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
5034 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
5035 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
5036 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
5038 ** Frame-local variables.
5040 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
5041 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5042 local bindings for that variable.
5044 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5045 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5046 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5049 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5050 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5051 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5052 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5054 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5055 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5056 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5057 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5059 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5060 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5061 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5062 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5063 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5065 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5066 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5067 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5068 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5070 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5071 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5073 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5074 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5075 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5077 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5078 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5079 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5080 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5082 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5083 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5086 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5087 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5088 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5089 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5090 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5092 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5093 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5094 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5095 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5097 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5098 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5099 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5100 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5101 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5103 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5104 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5105 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5106 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5108 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5109 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5110 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5112 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5113 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5114 was directed to display this buffer.
5116 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5117 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5118 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5119 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5120 set-window-configuration.
5122 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5123 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5124 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5125 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5127 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5128 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5129 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5131 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5132 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5133 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5135 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5136 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5138 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5139 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5141 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5142 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5143 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5145 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5146 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5147 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5148 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5152 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5153 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5156 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5157 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5158 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5159 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5160 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5162 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5164 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5165 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5166 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5167 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5170 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5171 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5172 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5173 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5174 The supported properties include
5176 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5178 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5179 item should appear in the menu.
5181 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5182 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5183 It should return a binding to use instead.
5185 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5186 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5187 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5188 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5189 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5192 This means that the command normally has no
5193 keyboard equivalent.
5194 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5195 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5196 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5197 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5198 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5200 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5201 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5203 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5207 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5208 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5209 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5210 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5212 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5214 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5215 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5216 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5217 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5218 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5219 forward, away from the user.
5221 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5223 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5224 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5225 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5226 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5227 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5229 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5231 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5232 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5233 that were dragged and dropped.
5235 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5237 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5239 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5240 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5241 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5243 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5244 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5245 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5247 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5248 in Emacs 19 and before.
5250 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5251 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5253 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5254 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5255 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5256 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5258 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5259 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5260 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5261 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5262 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5264 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5265 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5266 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5267 consistent with the new representation.
5269 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5270 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5271 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5272 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5274 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5275 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5276 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5278 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5279 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5280 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5282 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5283 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5284 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5286 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5287 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5289 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5290 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5292 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5293 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5294 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5295 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5297 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5298 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5300 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5301 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5302 buffer or string being searched.
5304 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5305 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5306 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5307 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5308 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5309 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5310 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5312 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5314 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5315 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5316 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5317 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5318 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5319 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5320 define-coding-system-alias.
5322 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5323 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5324 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5325 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5326 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5327 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5328 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5331 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5332 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5333 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5334 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5336 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5337 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5338 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5339 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5341 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5342 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5343 This function requires a user interaction.
5345 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5346 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5347 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5348 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5349 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5350 select-safe-coding-system.
5352 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5353 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5354 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5357 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5358 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5359 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5361 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5362 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5363 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5364 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5366 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5367 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5368 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5371 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5372 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5374 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5375 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5376 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5377 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5378 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5379 range of characters.
5381 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5382 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5384 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5385 in the current buffer at position POS.
5387 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5388 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5389 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5390 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5391 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5392 binding input-method-function to nil.
5394 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5395 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5396 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5397 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5398 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5400 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5401 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5403 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5404 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5406 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5407 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5408 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5409 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5410 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5412 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5414 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5415 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5416 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5419 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5420 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5422 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5423 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5424 in your .emacs file.)
5426 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5427 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5429 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5430 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5432 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5433 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5436 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5437 delete the character before point, as usual.
5439 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5440 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5441 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5443 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5444 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5445 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5446 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5447 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5450 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5451 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5452 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5453 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5454 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5456 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5457 and is an alias for it.
5459 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5460 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5462 ** Scrolling changes
5464 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5465 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5467 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5468 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5471 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5472 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5473 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5474 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5476 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5477 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5478 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5479 recenters the window.
5481 ** International character set support (MULE)
5483 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5484 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5485 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5486 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5487 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5488 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5490 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5491 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5492 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5493 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5494 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5496 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5497 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5498 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5499 language, to make it possible to type them.
5501 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5502 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5504 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5505 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5507 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5509 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5511 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5512 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5513 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5514 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5515 characters for their work until they want to change.
5519 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5520 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5521 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5522 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5523 support several input methods.
5525 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5526 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5529 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5530 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5531 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5532 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5533 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5536 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5537 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5538 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5539 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5540 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5542 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5543 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5544 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5545 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5547 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5548 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5549 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5550 the first guess is wrong.
5552 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5553 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5555 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5556 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5557 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5558 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5560 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5561 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5562 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5563 translate automatically to and from either one.
5565 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5567 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5568 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5569 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5572 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5573 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5574 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5575 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5577 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5578 character conversion as well.
5580 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5582 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5583 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5584 requires using many fonts.
5586 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5587 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5589 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5590 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5591 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5592 you would use a font.
5594 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5595 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5596 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5598 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5599 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5600 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5601 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5602 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5604 *** Defining fontsets.
5606 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5607 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5608 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5610 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5611 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5612 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5613 standard fontset are created automatically.
5615 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5616 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5617 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5618 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5619 name is `fontset-startup'.
5621 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5622 The resource value should have this form:
5623 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5624 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5625 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5626 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5627 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5628 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5629 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5630 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5631 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5633 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5634 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5635 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5637 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5638 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5640 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5641 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5642 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5643 Here is the substitution rule:
5644 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5645 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5646 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5647 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5648 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5650 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5651 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5652 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5654 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5655 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5656 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5657 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5660 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5661 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5663 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5664 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5665 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5666 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5667 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5668 system for new files that you create.
5670 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5671 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5672 whole Emacs session.
5674 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5675 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5676 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5678 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5679 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5680 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5681 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5682 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5684 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5685 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5686 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5687 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5688 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5690 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5691 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5693 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5694 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5696 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5697 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5699 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5700 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5701 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5702 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5705 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5706 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5707 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5708 translated into that character code.
5710 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5711 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5713 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5715 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5716 the coding system for keyboard input.
5718 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5719 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5720 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5722 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5724 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5725 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5726 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5727 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5728 designed to work with terminals.
5730 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5731 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5732 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5733 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5734 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5735 in the corresponding buffer.
5737 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5739 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5740 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5741 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5743 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5744 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5745 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5748 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5749 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5751 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5752 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5753 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5754 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5756 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5757 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5758 related information.
5760 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5761 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5764 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5765 information about the support for a particular language.
5766 You specify the language as an argument.
5768 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5769 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5772 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5773 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5774 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5775 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5777 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5779 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5780 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5781 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5782 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5783 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5784 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5785 K euc-korea (Korean)
5788 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5791 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5792 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5793 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5797 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5798 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5799 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5800 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5802 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5803 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5805 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5806 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5807 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5808 Rmail files themselves.
5810 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5811 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5813 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5816 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5817 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5818 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5819 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5820 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5822 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5823 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5824 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5827 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5828 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5829 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5830 without any conversion.
5832 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5833 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5834 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5835 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5837 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5838 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5840 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5841 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5843 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5844 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5846 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5847 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5848 in the buffer before point.
5850 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5851 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5854 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5855 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5857 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5859 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5860 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5862 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5863 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5864 can become a bottleneck.
5866 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5867 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5868 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5869 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5870 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5871 so useful that the change is worth while.
5873 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5874 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5875 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5876 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5878 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5879 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5882 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5883 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5884 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5886 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5887 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5888 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5890 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5891 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5892 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5894 ** Changes in View mode.
5896 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5897 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5899 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5900 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5902 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5905 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5906 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5908 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5909 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5910 not just the selected window.
5912 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5913 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5914 turns View mode on or off.
5916 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5917 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5918 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5920 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5921 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5923 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5924 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5925 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5926 which version to compare with.
5928 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5929 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5931 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5932 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5933 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5934 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5936 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5937 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5938 blocks, all of them or none.
5940 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5941 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5944 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5945 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5946 However, the mode will not be changed if
5947 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5948 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5949 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5950 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5952 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5954 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5955 these commands do not change the major mode.
5957 ** M-x occur changes.
5959 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5960 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5962 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5963 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5964 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5966 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5967 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5968 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5969 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5970 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5972 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5973 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5974 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5975 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5977 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5978 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5979 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5981 ** Outline mode changes.
5983 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5985 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5987 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5988 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5989 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5992 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5993 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5996 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5997 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5999 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
6001 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
6002 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
6003 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
6004 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
6006 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
6007 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
6008 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
6010 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
6011 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
6014 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
6015 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
6016 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
6017 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
6019 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
6020 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
6021 can be. The default value is 30.
6023 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6025 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
6026 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
6027 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
6028 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
6029 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
6032 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6033 compose-mail-other-frame.
6035 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
6036 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
6037 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
6038 buffer that shows the original message.
6040 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6041 with separator lines around the contents.
6043 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6044 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6045 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6046 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6048 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6050 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6051 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6052 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6053 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6055 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6056 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6059 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6060 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6063 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6064 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6065 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6066 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6068 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6069 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6070 be taken to be magic.
6072 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6073 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6074 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6076 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6077 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6079 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6080 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6082 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6084 new key dired.el binding old key
6085 ------- ---------------- -------
6086 * c dired-change-marks c
6088 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6089 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6090 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6092 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6093 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6094 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6095 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6096 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6097 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6101 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6102 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6103 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6104 each time you run it.
6106 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6107 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6109 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6110 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6111 means to move in the opposite direction.
6113 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6114 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6116 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6117 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6118 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6119 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6124 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6126 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6129 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6130 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6132 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6135 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6137 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6139 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6141 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6142 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6143 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6145 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6147 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6149 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6150 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6152 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6153 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6154 used to pick articles.
6156 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6157 another have been added.
6159 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6161 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6162 generating lines in buffers.
6164 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6167 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6169 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6171 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6173 *** Scores can be decayed.
6175 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6177 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6178 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6180 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6183 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6185 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6186 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6188 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6190 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6191 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6193 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6194 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6196 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6199 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6200 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6202 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6204 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6206 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6208 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6210 Use the `Y c' command.
6212 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6214 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6216 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6218 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6219 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6221 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6223 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6225 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6226 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6228 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6230 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6231 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6232 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6233 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6236 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6237 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6238 particular news group. This can be done by:
6240 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6242 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6243 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6244 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6245 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6246 for reading and posting).
6248 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6249 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6250 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6251 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6254 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6255 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6257 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6258 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6259 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6260 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6261 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6263 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6264 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6268 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6269 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6270 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6271 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6272 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6275 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6276 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6277 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6278 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6279 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6280 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6282 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6283 of the current buffer.
6285 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6286 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6287 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6289 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6290 style that the Python developers like.
6292 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6293 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6294 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6298 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6299 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6300 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6302 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6303 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6306 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6307 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6309 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6310 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6311 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6312 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6314 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6315 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6317 ** Calendar changes.
6319 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6320 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6321 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6325 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6327 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6329 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6330 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6331 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6332 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6333 It defaults to `letter'.
6334 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6336 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6337 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6338 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6340 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6341 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6344 *** Horizontal layout
6346 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6347 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6348 All are measured in points.
6352 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6353 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6354 All are measured in points.
6358 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6359 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6360 margin above the text.
6362 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6363 framing box is printed around the header.
6365 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6366 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6368 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6369 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6370 `ps-header-font-size'.
6374 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6375 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6376 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6377 elements to this alist.
6379 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6380 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6382 ** hideshow changes.
6384 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6387 *** Support for java-mode added.
6389 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6390 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6392 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6393 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6394 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6396 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6397 robust and a lot faster.
6399 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6401 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6402 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6403 documentation for more details.
6405 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6407 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6408 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6409 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6410 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6411 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6413 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6414 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6415 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6416 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6422 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6423 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6424 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6425 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6426 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6427 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6429 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6431 *** Maximum decoration
6433 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6434 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6435 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6436 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6437 to get the old behavior.
6441 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6443 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6444 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6446 *** Configurable support
6448 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6449 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6450 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6451 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6452 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6453 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6454 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6456 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6457 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6458 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6460 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6462 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6463 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6466 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6468 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6474 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6475 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6476 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6477 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6479 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6481 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6482 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6483 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6485 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6487 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6488 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6489 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6490 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6491 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6492 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6493 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6495 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6496 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6497 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6498 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6499 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6500 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6502 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6504 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6505 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6506 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6507 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6509 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6512 ** Ada mode changes.
6514 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6515 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6516 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6517 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6520 *** There are two new commands:
6521 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6522 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6524 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6525 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6526 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6528 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6529 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6530 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6532 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6533 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6534 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6535 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6537 ** Scheme mode changes.
6539 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6540 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6541 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6542 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6545 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6546 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6547 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6548 variables as buffer-local variables.
6550 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6553 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6555 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6556 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6557 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6558 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6560 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6561 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6564 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6565 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6566 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6567 option takes precedence.
6569 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6570 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6571 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6573 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6574 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6577 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6578 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6580 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6581 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6584 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6585 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6586 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6587 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6588 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6589 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6591 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6592 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6593 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6594 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6596 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6597 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6598 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6599 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6600 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6602 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6603 since it applies only to the current frame.
6605 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6606 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6607 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6609 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6610 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6611 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6612 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6613 instead of just the file you are editing.
6617 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6618 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6619 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6620 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6621 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6624 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6625 knows which kind of label is needed.
6627 C-c ) reftex-reference
6628 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6629 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6631 C-c [ reftex-citation
6632 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6633 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6635 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6636 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6639 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6640 can quickly jump to every section.
6642 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6643 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6644 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6645 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6646 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6648 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6650 *** Info documentation is now available.
6652 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6653 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6655 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6656 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6658 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6659 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6661 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6662 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6663 appropriate functions.
6665 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6666 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6668 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6671 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6672 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6674 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6677 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6678 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6679 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6681 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6682 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6683 prefixed with `ALT'.
6685 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6686 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6687 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6690 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6691 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6692 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6694 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6695 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6697 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6698 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6699 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6701 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6703 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6705 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6708 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6709 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6712 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6715 *** Added support for imenu.
6717 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6718 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6719 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6720 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6722 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6723 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6725 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6727 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6729 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6730 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6731 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6734 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6735 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6737 ** browse-url changes
6739 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6740 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6741 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6742 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6743 customization variables.
6745 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6747 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6748 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6749 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6753 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6754 pops up the Info file for this command.
6756 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6757 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6758 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6761 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6762 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6763 files in the same directory.
6765 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6766 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6767 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6771 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6772 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6774 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6775 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6776 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6777 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6778 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6779 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6780 color when Viper is in insert state.
6781 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6782 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6783 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6787 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6788 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6789 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6790 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6791 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6793 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6795 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6796 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6798 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6799 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6800 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6802 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6803 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6804 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6805 methods and protocols.
6807 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6808 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6809 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6812 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6813 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6814 at least M times and as many as N times.
6816 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6817 in files has changed slightly.
6819 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6820 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6821 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6822 with old time-stamp-format values.
6824 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6825 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6826 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6829 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6830 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6831 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6832 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6833 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6834 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6836 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6837 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6838 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6840 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6841 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6842 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6843 recommended now will continue to work then.
6845 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6848 ** There are some additional major modes:
6850 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6851 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6852 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6854 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6855 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6858 ** New Lisp packages include:
6860 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6862 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6863 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6865 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6867 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6870 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6871 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6874 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6875 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6876 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6877 strings or comments.
6879 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6880 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6881 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6882 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6885 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6886 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6888 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6889 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6891 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6893 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6894 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6896 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6898 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6900 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6902 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6903 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6905 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6906 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6907 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6908 original place after inserting the copy.
6910 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6913 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6914 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6915 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6917 Enable mouse-drag with:
6918 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6920 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6922 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6923 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6925 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6926 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6930 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6931 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6932 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6933 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6934 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6935 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6936 instance) and vice versa.
6938 To use this package load it using
6939 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6940 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6941 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6942 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6943 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6944 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6946 *** Interface to ph.
6948 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6950 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6951 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6954 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6956 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6957 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6958 while the real cursor does not move.
6960 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6961 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6963 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6964 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6968 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6969 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6970 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6971 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6973 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6975 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6977 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6979 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6980 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6981 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6982 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6983 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6985 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6986 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6987 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6988 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6989 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6990 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6992 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6994 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6995 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6996 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6997 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6999 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
7000 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
7002 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
7003 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
7006 ** Basic Lisp changes
7008 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
7009 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
7011 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
7012 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
7015 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
7017 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
7019 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7020 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7022 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
7023 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
7026 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7028 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7030 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7032 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
7033 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
7034 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
7037 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
7038 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
7039 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
7041 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7042 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7043 adding one of these suffixes.
7045 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7046 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7047 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7049 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7050 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7052 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7054 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7055 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7057 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7058 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7060 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7062 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7063 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7065 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7066 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7067 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7068 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7070 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7071 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7074 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7075 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7076 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7079 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7080 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7083 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7085 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7086 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7087 Then it returns that string.
7089 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7091 (with-output-to-string
7092 (princ "The buffer is ")
7093 (princ (buffer-name)))
7095 returns "The buffer is foo".
7097 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7100 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7101 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7102 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7104 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7105 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7107 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7108 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7109 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7110 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7111 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7112 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7114 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7115 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7116 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7119 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7120 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7121 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7122 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7123 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7125 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7126 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7127 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7128 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7130 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7131 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7133 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7135 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7136 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7137 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7138 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7141 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7142 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7145 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7147 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7148 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7149 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7150 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7151 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7153 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7155 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7156 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7157 more than the number of characters.
7159 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7160 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7161 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7162 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7163 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7164 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7166 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7167 and returns a string containing those characters.
7169 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7170 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7171 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7172 character, sref signals an error.
7174 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7175 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7176 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7178 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7179 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7180 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7182 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7183 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7184 to a vector of the characters in it.
7186 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7187 of a string. You call it as follows:
7189 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7191 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7192 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7193 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7194 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7195 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7197 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7198 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7200 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7201 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7203 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7204 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7205 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7206 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7208 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7210 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7212 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7213 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7214 are not included in the resulting value.
7216 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7217 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7218 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7219 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7221 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7222 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7223 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7224 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7225 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7226 column START-COLUMN.
7228 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7229 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7230 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7231 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7232 changed text, before the change.
7234 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7235 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7236 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7238 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7240 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7242 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7243 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7245 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7246 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7247 which identify the character within that character set.
7249 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7250 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7251 opposite of split-char.
7253 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7254 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7256 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7257 of all the characters in a string.
7259 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7260 and specifying coding systems.
7262 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7263 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7264 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7265 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7266 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7267 as what to do about code conversion.)
7269 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7270 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7272 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7273 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7274 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7276 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7277 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7278 to match against a file name.
7280 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7281 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7282 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7283 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7284 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7285 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7287 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7288 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7290 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7291 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7293 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7294 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7295 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7298 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7299 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7300 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7301 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7302 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7303 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7305 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7306 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7308 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7309 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7310 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7311 start the subprocess.
7313 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7314 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7315 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7316 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7317 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7319 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7320 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7323 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7324 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7325 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7326 connection permanently or until overridden.
7328 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7329 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7330 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7331 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7332 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7333 system for one operation at a time.
7335 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7336 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7338 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7339 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7340 The value is a cons cell,
7341 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7342 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7343 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7344 input to the subprocess.
7346 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7347 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7349 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7350 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7351 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7353 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7354 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7355 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7356 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7359 Thus, instead of writing
7361 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7362 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7364 you would now write this:
7366 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7367 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7371 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7372 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7373 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7374 for a description of them.
7376 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7377 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7379 (defgroup ispell nil
7380 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7383 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7384 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7385 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7386 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7387 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7389 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7390 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7391 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7392 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7393 first-level subgroups.
7395 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7397 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7398 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7402 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7403 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7404 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7405 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7406 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7407 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7409 ** Text property changes
7411 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7414 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7415 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7416 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7417 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7418 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7420 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7421 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7422 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7423 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7425 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7426 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7427 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7429 ** Changes in invisibility features
7431 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7432 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7433 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7434 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7435 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7436 make the overlay visible.
7438 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7439 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7440 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7441 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7442 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7443 t when it should hide it.
7445 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7447 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7448 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7449 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7450 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7451 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7452 Here is an example of how to do this:
7454 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7455 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7456 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7457 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7460 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7463 ;; When done with the overlays:
7464 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7466 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7468 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7470 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7471 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7472 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7473 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7475 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7476 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7477 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7479 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7480 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7482 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7483 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7485 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7486 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7487 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7489 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7490 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7491 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7492 determine the syntax type of the character.
7494 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7495 of the current buffer.
7497 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7498 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7499 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7501 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7502 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7503 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7504 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7505 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7507 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7510 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7511 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7512 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7514 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7515 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7516 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7517 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7518 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7520 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7521 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7522 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7524 ** Changes in face features
7526 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7527 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7529 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7530 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7532 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7533 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7535 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7536 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7538 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7539 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7540 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7541 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7544 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7545 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7547 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7549 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7550 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7551 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7552 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7554 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7557 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7558 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7560 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7561 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7563 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7564 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7566 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7567 character code conversion as well as other things.
7569 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7570 (formerly it did not).
7572 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7573 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7575 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7576 instead of constant strings.
7578 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7579 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7580 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7582 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7583 in the same way as before.
7585 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7586 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7587 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7589 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7590 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7591 else, and returns nil.
7593 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7594 directory cannot be listed.
7596 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7598 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7599 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7600 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7601 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7604 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7605 It is available through the history command M-n.
7607 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7608 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7609 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7610 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7611 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7613 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7614 argument in this way.
7616 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7617 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7618 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7620 ** Echo area features
7622 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7623 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7624 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7625 after the echo area is cleared.
7627 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7628 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7630 ** Keyboard input features
7632 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7633 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7635 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7636 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7639 ** Frame-related changes
7641 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7642 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7643 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7645 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7646 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7647 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7649 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7650 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7651 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7652 in the selected frame.
7654 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7655 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7656 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7658 ** X Windows features
7660 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7661 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7662 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7664 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7665 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7667 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7668 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7669 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7671 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7672 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7674 ** Subprocess features
7676 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7677 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7680 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7681 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7683 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7684 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7686 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7687 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7689 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7690 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7691 goes after the other menu items.
7693 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7694 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7695 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7698 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7699 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7701 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7702 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7705 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7706 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7707 but its hook is still run.
7709 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7710 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7712 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7713 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7714 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7716 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7717 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7718 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7721 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7722 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7724 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7725 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7726 functions like display-time.
7728 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7729 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7731 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7732 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7733 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7735 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7736 if there is an error in compilation.
7738 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7739 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7740 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7741 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7743 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7744 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7745 the *scratch* buffer.
7747 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7748 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7749 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7750 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7752 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7753 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7754 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7756 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7757 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7758 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7759 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7761 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7762 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7763 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7765 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7766 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7767 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7768 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7769 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7772 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7773 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7774 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7775 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7777 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7778 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7779 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7780 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7782 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7784 ** imenu.el changes.
7786 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7787 item from menu created by imenu.
7789 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7790 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7791 select one of those items.
7793 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7795 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7797 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7798 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7800 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7801 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7802 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7804 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7806 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7807 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7809 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7810 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7811 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7812 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7813 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7816 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7817 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7819 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7820 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7821 as in previous Emacs versions.
7823 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7824 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7825 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7828 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7829 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7830 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7831 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7834 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7835 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7836 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7837 line and then executing the macro.
7839 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7841 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7842 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7843 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7848 *** Font Lock support modes
7850 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7851 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7852 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7853 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7854 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7856 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7858 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7864 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7865 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7866 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7867 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7868 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7869 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7870 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7872 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7874 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7876 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7878 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7880 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7883 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7888 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7889 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7890 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7891 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7893 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7894 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7896 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7897 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7900 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7901 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7903 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7905 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7907 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7909 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7912 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7914 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7916 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7918 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7920 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7923 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7925 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7927 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7929 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7931 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7933 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7935 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7937 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7940 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7942 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7945 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7947 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7948 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7950 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7952 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7954 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7956 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7958 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7961 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7963 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7964 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7966 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7967 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7968 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7970 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7971 articles with the `*' command.
7973 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7975 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7977 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7979 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7981 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7982 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7984 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7987 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7989 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7991 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7993 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7995 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7997 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7999 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
8001 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
8003 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
8005 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
8006 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
8008 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
8011 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
8013 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
8014 buffer to allow easier treatment.
8016 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
8018 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
8020 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8022 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8025 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8027 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8029 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8030 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8032 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8034 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8036 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8038 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8040 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8042 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8045 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8047 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8048 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8049 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8052 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8055 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8058 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8059 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8062 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8063 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8064 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8065 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8066 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8069 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8071 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8073 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8074 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8075 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8076 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8077 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8079 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8080 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8081 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8083 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8085 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8086 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8087 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8088 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8089 chapter of the manual for details.
8091 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8092 customization variables take effect.
8094 ** Marking with the mouse.
8096 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8097 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8098 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8100 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8102 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8104 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8105 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8107 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8108 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8109 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8110 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8111 applications, these problems are significant.
8113 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8114 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8115 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8116 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8117 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8119 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8120 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8122 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8123 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8124 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8125 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8126 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8127 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8129 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8131 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8132 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8133 minibuffer contains.
8135 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8137 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8138 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8139 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8140 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8142 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8143 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8144 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8145 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8147 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8148 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8150 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8151 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8152 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8154 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8155 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8156 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8157 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8159 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8161 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8162 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8164 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8166 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8167 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8168 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8169 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8170 immediately after the selected one.
8172 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8173 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8175 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8177 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8178 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8179 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8180 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8183 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8184 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8187 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8188 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8189 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8190 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8191 now that the bug is fixed.
8193 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8195 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8196 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8197 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8198 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8200 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8201 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8202 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8203 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8205 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8206 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8207 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8209 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8210 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8211 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8212 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8215 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8216 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8218 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8219 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8220 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8221 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8223 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8224 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8225 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8226 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8227 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8228 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8230 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8231 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8232 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8233 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8235 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8236 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8237 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8239 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8240 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8241 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8242 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8243 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8244 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8245 to a limitation in font-lock).
8247 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8249 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8250 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8251 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8254 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8255 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8257 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8259 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8261 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8263 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8265 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8266 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8267 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8268 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8269 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8270 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8272 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8275 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8276 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8278 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8283 *** Global Font Lock mode
8285 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8286 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8287 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8288 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8289 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8291 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8293 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8297 *** Local Refontification
8299 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8300 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8301 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8302 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8304 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8305 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8306 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8307 above and below point.
8309 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8313 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8314 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8315 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8316 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8317 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8320 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8322 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8323 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8325 ** hide-show changes.
8327 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8328 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8331 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8332 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8334 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8335 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8336 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8340 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8341 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8343 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8344 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8346 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8348 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8349 pressing both mouse buttons.
8351 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8352 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8355 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8358 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8360 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8361 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8363 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8365 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8367 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8369 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8371 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8373 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8375 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8376 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8377 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8378 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8379 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8381 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8383 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8384 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8385 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8388 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8391 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8393 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8394 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8396 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8397 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8399 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8400 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8401 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8403 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8404 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8407 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8409 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8410 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8411 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8413 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8414 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8415 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8417 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8418 up if too much time passes.
8420 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8422 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8423 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8424 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8427 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8428 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8429 call looks like this:
8431 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8433 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8434 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8435 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8438 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8439 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8442 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8443 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8444 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8445 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8447 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8448 idle for SECS seconds.
8450 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8451 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8452 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8455 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8456 there is no answer within a certain time.
8458 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8460 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8461 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8462 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8464 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8465 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8466 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8467 arguments in between are ignored.
8469 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8470 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8472 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8473 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8474 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8475 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8478 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8479 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8480 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8481 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8482 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8483 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8485 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8486 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8487 systems with limited file name syntax.
8489 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8490 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8491 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8494 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8495 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8496 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8498 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8499 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8500 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8501 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8502 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8504 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8505 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8506 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8508 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8509 marker from its buffer position.
8511 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8512 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8513 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8515 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8516 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8517 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8518 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8519 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8520 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8522 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8523 errors that happen often during editing.
8525 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8526 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8527 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8529 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8530 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8532 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8533 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8534 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8535 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8536 and not get-buffer-window.
8538 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8539 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8540 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8542 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8543 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8544 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8545 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8546 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8547 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8548 over and over for the same text.
8550 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8552 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8553 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8555 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8558 in addition to the normal
8562 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8563 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8564 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8568 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8570 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8571 Copyright information:
8573 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8575 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8576 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8577 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8578 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8580 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8581 of this document, or of portions of it,
8582 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8583 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8587 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"