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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.
4
5 Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
6 For older news, see the file ONEWS
7
8 \f
9 * Installation Changes in Emacs 21.1
10
11 ** Support for GNU/Linux on IA64 machines has been added.
12
13 ** Support for LynxOS has been added.
14
15 ** `movemail' defaults to supporting POP. You can turn this off using
16 the --without-pop configure option, should that be necessary.
17
18 ** There are new configure options associated with the support for
19 images and toolkit scrollbars. Use the --help option in `configure'
20 to list them.
21
22 ** There is a new configure option `--without-xim' that instructs
23 Emacs to not use X Input Methods (XIM), if these are available.
24
25 ** There is a new configure option `--disable-largefile' to omit
26 Unix-98-style support for large files if that is available.
27
28 ** You can build a 64-bit Emacs for SPARC/Solaris systems which
29 support 64-bit executables. See etc/MACHINES for instructions.
30
31 \f
32 * Changes in Emacs 21.1
33
34 * When an error is signaled during the loading of the user's init
35 file, Emacs now pops up the *Messages* buffer.
36
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.
40
41 ** A reference card for Dired has been added. Its name is
42 `dired-ref.tex'.
43
44 ** The new variable `auto-mode-interpreter-regexp' contains a regular
45 expression matching interpreters, for file mode determination.
46
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'.
53
54 +++
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.
59
60 ** Variable `load-path' is no longer customizable because it contains
61 a version-dependent component.
62
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.
67
68 ** Item Save Options on the Options menu allows saving options set
69 using that menu.
70
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'.
73
74 +++
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.
82
83 +++
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.
93
94 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
95 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
96
97 +++
98 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
99 point in a pop-up window.
100
101 +++
102 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
103 displays all characters in that character set.
104
105 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
106 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
107
108 +++
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.
112
113 +++
114 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
115
116 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
117 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
118
119 +++
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.
124
125 +++
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.
130
131 +++
132 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
133 on the display using several methods
134
135 +++
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.
139
140 +++
141 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
142 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
143
144 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
145
146 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
147 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
148
149 +++
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.
154
155 +++
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.
159
160 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
161 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
162
163 +++
164 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
165 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
166 this behavior.
167
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
170 Emacs dump core.
171
172 +++
173 ** New X resources recognized
174
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.
178
179 Example:
180
181 emacs.synchronous: true
182
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
188
189 TrueColor
190 PseudoColor
191 DirectColor
192 StaticColor
193 GrayScale
194 StaticGray
195
196 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
197 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
198 meaning.
199
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
203 visual.
204
205 Example:
206
207 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
208
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'.
213
214 Example:
215
216 emacs.privateColormap: true
217
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.
221
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
225 be customized.
226
227 +++
228 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
229
230 +++
231 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
232 all frames except the selected one.
233
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.
236
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.
241
242 +++
243 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
244 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
245
246 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
247 read mail from the menu etc.
248
249 +++
250 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
251 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
252
253 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
254
255 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
256 macros
257
258 Key binding Macro
259 -------------------------
260 C-c C-c C-s @strong
261 C-c C-c C-e @emph
262 C-c C-c u @url
263 C-c C-c q @quotation
264 C-c C-c m @email
265
266 ** Changes in Outline mode.
267
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.
271
272 ** Changes to Emacs Server
273
274 +++
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.
280
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
283 this way.
284
285 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
286
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.
290
291 +++
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).
294
295 +++
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
299 buffers.
300
301 +++
302 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
303 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
304 .emacs file.
305
306 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
307 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
308
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'.
312
313 ** Faces and frame parameters.
314
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'.
322
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.
327
328 +++
329 ** New face `menu'.
330
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.
334
335 +++
336 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
337
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.
342
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).
346
347 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
348 `ScreenGamma'.
349
350 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
351
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
356 the text.
357
358 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
359
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
364 specify a font.
365
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.
369
370 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
371
372 +++
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.
376
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'.
381
382 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
383 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
384
385 ** LessTif support.
386
387 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
388 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
389
390 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
391
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
397 Emacs.
398
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.
405
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.
412
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.
418
419 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
420
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.
424
425 +++
426 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
427
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
433 whitespace.
434
435 +++
436 ** Busy-cursor.
437
438 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
439 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
440
441 +++
442 ** Blinking cursor
443
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
447 the group `cursor'.
448
449 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
450
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
454 details.
455
456 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
457 have to do anything to activate it.
458
459 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
460
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.
465
466 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
467
468 +++
469 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
470
471 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
472
473 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
474 LessTif/Motif one.
475
476 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
477 LessTif and Motif.
478
479 +++
480 ** Hscrolling in C code.
481
482 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
483 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
484 customized.
485
486 ** Tool bar support.
487
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.
490
491 +++
492 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
493
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.
499
500 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
501
502 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
503 buffers.
504
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.
507
508 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
509
510 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
511 `*') toggles the status.
512
513 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
514
515 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
516
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
519 non-nil.
520
521 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
522
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
529 on terminals.
530
531 ** Sound support
532
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).
536
537 +++
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.
544
545 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
546
547 +++
548 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
549
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.
553
554 +++
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).
557
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'.
561
562 +++
563 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
564
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.
569
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.
574
575 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
576 notably at the end of lines.
577
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.
580
581 +++
582 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
583
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.
587
588 +++
589 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
590 you edit the replacement string.
591
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.
595
596 +++
597 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
598
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:
603
604 - User option: max-mini-window-height
605
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.
609
610 Default is 0.25.
611
612 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
613
614 ** Changes to hideshow.el
615
616 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
617 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
618
619 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
620
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').
627
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.
632
633 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
634
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.
640
641 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
642 something like this in your .emacs.
643
644 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
645 (lambda ()
646 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
647
648 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
649
650 +++
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.
654
655 +++
656 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
657 buffer.
658
659 +++
660 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
661 a log file.
662
663 +++
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.
666
667 +++
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.
672
673 ** Changes in Font Lock
674
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
677 mode.
678
679 ** Comint (subshell) changes
680
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.
689
690 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
691 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
692
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.
696
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.
700
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'.
705
706 ** Changes to Rmail mode
707
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
713 as correspondent.
714
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.
718
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.
724
725 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
726 like `j'.
727
728 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
729 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
730 digest message.
731
732 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
733 in which folder to put messages automatically.
734
735 ** Changes to TeX mode
736
737 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
738 `latex-mode'.
739
740 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
741
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.
748
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).
752
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.
755
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
759 been cited.
760
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.
765
766 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
767 has the following new features:
768
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.
773
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
779 defaults to 1.
780
781 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
782 file names.
783
784 +++
785 ** Tooltips.
786
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'.
790
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'.
795
796 +++
797 ** Customize changes
798
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.
802
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
805 default).
806
807 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
808 between custom options. Example:
809
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])."
814 :group 'mule
815 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
816 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
817
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.
821
822 ** New features in evaluation commands
823
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.
829
830 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
831 code when called with a prefix argument.
832
833 ** Ispell changes
834
835 +++
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.
839
840 +++
841 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
842 added.
843
844 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
845 correction is made and re-checked.
846
847 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
848
849 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
850 cases.
851
852 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
853 on syntax errors.
854
855 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
856 end of the buffer.
857
858 ** Dired changes
859
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.
863
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.
867
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.
871
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
874 directory.
875
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.
881
882 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
883 from ls switches.
884
885 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
886 use the -f option when sending mail.
887
888 ** CC mode changes.
889
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
896 release.
897
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
903 have to bother.
904
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.
911
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.
920
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
925 above.
926
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.
935
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.
944
945 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
946
947 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
948 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
949
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
955 style system.
956
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
960 as far as possible.
961
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.
966
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.
972
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.
976
977 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
978 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
979
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
983 inside CC Mode.
984
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/
989 cc-mode/).
990
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
994 literals.
995
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
1000 this function.
1001
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.
1007
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.
1011
1012 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
1013
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.
1018
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.
1022
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.
1029
1030 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
1031 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
1032 arguments.
1033
1034 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1035
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
1040 Provan).
1041
1042 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1043
1044 ** Makefile mode changes
1045
1046 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1047
1048 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1049 Fontlock mode is active.
1050
1051 ** Isearch changes
1052
1053 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1054 so that searches can be resumed.
1055
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.
1059
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.
1062
1063 +++
1064 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1065
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'.
1072
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.
1078
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'.
1083
1084 +++
1085 ** Changes in sort.el
1086
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
1090 numeric base.
1091
1092 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1093
1094 +++
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.)
1098
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.
1101
1102 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1103 output ^M at the end of lines.
1104
1105 ** Shell script mode changes.
1106
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.
1110
1111 ** Etags changes.
1112
1113 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1114
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.
1120
1121 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1122 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1123
1124 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1125 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1126
1127 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1128 types.
1129
1130 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1131
1132 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1133
1134 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1135 are now tagged.
1136
1137 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1138 variables are tagged.
1139
1140 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1141
1142 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1143 for PSWrap.
1144
1145 +++
1146 ** Changes in etags.el
1147
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.
1151
1152 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1153 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1154
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.
1159
1160 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1161
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.
1164
1165 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1166
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))
1170
1171 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1172 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1173
1174 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1175 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1176
1177 +++
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.
1181
1182 +++
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.
1187
1188 +++
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.
1192
1193 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1194
1195 +++
1196 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1197
1198 +++
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.
1202
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.
1207
1208 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1209
1210 ** New modes and packages
1211
1212 +++
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.
1217
1218 +++
1219 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1220 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1221
1222 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1223
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.
1231
1232 +++
1233 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1234 Emacs is idle.
1235
1236 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1237 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1238
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.
1242
1243 +++
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.
1247
1248 +++
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.
1254
1255 +++
1256 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1257 without invoking external programs.
1258
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.
1264
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.
1267
1268 +++
1269 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1270 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1271
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
1277 single step.
1278
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.
1283
1284 +++
1285 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1286 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1287 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1288
1289 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1290 PostScript.
1291
1292 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1293
1294 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1295
1296 ; comment (until end of line)
1297 A non-terminal
1298 "C" terminal
1299 ?C? special
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}*]
1318
1319 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1320
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.
1326
1327 +++
1328 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1329 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1330
1331 +++
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.
1336
1337 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1338
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.
1345
1346 +++
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
1352 to be enabled.
1353
1354 +++
1355 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1356 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1357
1358 +++
1359 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1360
1361 +++
1362 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1363
1364 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1365
1366 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1367 Pascal) language.
1368
1369 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1370 the text at point.
1371
1372 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1373
1374 +++
1375 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1376
1377 *** whitespace.el ???
1378
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.
1386
1387 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1388
1389 Here is an example of columns:
1390
1391 horse apple bus
1392 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1393 porcupine strawberry airplane
1394
1395 Doing the following settings:
1396
1397 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1398 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1399 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1400 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1401
1402
1403 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1404
1405 M-x delimit-columns-region
1406
1407 It results:
1408
1409 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1410 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1411 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1412
1413 delim-col has the following options:
1414
1415 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1416 before all columns.
1417
1418 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1419 between each column.
1420
1421 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1422 after all columns.
1423
1424 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1425 each column.
1426
1427 delim-col has the following commands:
1428
1429 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1430 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1431
1432 +++
1433 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1434 were operated on recently.
1435
1436 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1437
1438 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1439 recentf at Emacs startup.
1440
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:
1444
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
1448
1449 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1450 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1451
1452 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1453 text.
1454
1455 +++
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.
1459
1460 +++
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'.
1464
1465 +++
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.
1469
1470 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1471 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1472
1473 +++
1474 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1475
1476 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1477 minibuffer with completion.
1478
1479 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1480 with the diary features.
1481
1482 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1483 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1484
1485 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1486 Fill mode.
1487
1488 ** Withdrawn packages
1489
1490 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1491 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1492
1493 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1494
1495 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1496
1497 \f
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.)
1500
1501 +++
1502 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1503 is running in batch mode. For example,
1504
1505 (message "%s" (read t))
1506
1507 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1508 to standard output.
1509
1510 +++
1511 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1512 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1513
1514 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1515 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1516 frame or window.
1517
1518 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1519 were added
1520
1521 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1522
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'.
1525
1526 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1527
1528 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1529 comparison is done with `eq'.
1530
1531 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1532
1533 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1534 has been changed.
1535
1536 +++
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.
1540
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.
1543
1544 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1545 function was declared obsolete.
1546
1547 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1548 retained as an alias).
1549
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.
1553
1554 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1555
1556 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1557
1558 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1559 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1560
1561 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1562
1563 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1564
1565 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1566
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
1571 returned.
1572
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.
1577
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.
1584
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.
1592
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.
1596
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.
1601
1602 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1603 meaning no limit.
1604
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,
1608
1609 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1610 of a primitive.
1611
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.
1616
1617 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1618 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1619
1620 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1621
1622 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1623 promised long ago.
1624
1625 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1626 \f
1627 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1628
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.
1633
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.
1638
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.
1643
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.
1647
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
1655 eight-bit-graphic.
1656
1657 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1658
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.
1662
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.
1666
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.
1671
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.
1674
1675 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1676 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1677 "fontset-default".
1678
1679 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1680 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1681
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.
1685
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
1693 also been deleted.
1694
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.
1698
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.
1703
1704 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1705 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1706
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.
1711
1712 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1713 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1714
1715 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1716 obsolete.
1717
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.
1721
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.
1725
1726 +++
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.
1730
1731 +++
1732 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1733 that offset in the file before writing.
1734
1735 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1736 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1737
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.
1741
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
1746 operate on.
1747
1748 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1749 to `window-buffer-height'.
1750
1751 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1752
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.
1756
1757 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1758 respectively.
1759
1760 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1761 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1762
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.
1766
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.
1771
1772 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1773 argument function's results.
1774
1775 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1776 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1777
1778 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1779 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1780
1781 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1782 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1783
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
1786 as follows:
1787
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.
1793
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.
1798
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'.
1803
1804 Example:
1805
1806 (string-to-syntax "()")
1807 => (4 . 41)
1808
1809 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1810 other than 10.
1811
1812 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1813 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1814
1815 #b1111
1816 => 15
1817 #b-1111
1818 => -15
1819
1820 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1821
1822 #o666
1823 => 438
1824
1825 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1826
1827 #xbeef
1828 => 48815
1829
1830 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1831
1832 #2R-111
1833 => -7
1834 #25rah
1835 => 267
1836
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
1839 and isn't a string.
1840
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.
1845
1846 +++
1847 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1848
1849 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1850 for a regexp in a string.
1851
1852 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1853 `mouse-position-function'.
1854
1855 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1856 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1857
1858 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1859 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1860
1861 +++
1862 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1863 returns it.
1864
1865 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1866 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1867
1868 +++
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
1873 mode.
1874
1875 +++
1876 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1877 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1878
1879 +++
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
1884 been performed."
1885
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.
1890
1891 +++
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.
1895
1896 +++
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
1899 specified table.
1900
1901 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1902
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
1906 what BODY returns.
1907
1908 +++
1909 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1910 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1911
1912 +++
1913 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1914 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1915
1916 +++
1917 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1918 instead of being optional.
1919
1920 +++
1921 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1922 modify read-only text.
1923
1924 +++
1925 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1926
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.
1932
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.
1940
1941 +++
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
1945 start sequences.
1946
1947 +++
1948 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1949 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1950
1951 +++
1952 ** New function `propertize'
1953
1954 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1955 strings with text properties.
1956
1957 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1958
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:
1963
1964 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1965
1966 +++
1967 ** push and pop macros.
1968
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.
1972
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).
1976
1977 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1978
1979 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1980 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1981
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.
1986
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.
1991
1992 +++
1993 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1994 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1995
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,
2001 space, and DEL.
2002 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
2003 and DEL.
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.
2019
2020 +++
2021 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
2022
2023 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
2024
2025 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
2026
2027 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
2028 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
2029
2030 :test TEST
2031
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'.
2035
2036 :size SIZE
2037
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.
2040
2041 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2042
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.
2048
2049 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2050
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.
2054
2055 :weakness WEAK
2056
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.
2062
2063 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2064
2065 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2066
2067 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2068
2069 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2070
2071 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2072
2073 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2074 values are shared.
2075
2076 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2077
2078 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2079
2080 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2081
2082 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2083
2084 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2085
2086 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2087
2088 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2089
2090 Returns the size of TABLE.
2091
2092 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2093
2094 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2095
2096 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2097
2098 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2099
2100 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2101
2102 Clear TABLE.
2103
2104 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2105
2106 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2107 not found.
2108
2109 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2110
2111 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2112 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2113
2114 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2115
2116 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2117
2118 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2119
2120 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2121 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2122
2123 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2124
2125 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2126
2127 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2128
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).
2134
2135 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2136
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.
2140
2141 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2142 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2143
2144 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2145 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2146
2147 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2148 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2149
2150 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2151 'case-fold-string-hash))
2152
2153 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2154
2155 +++
2156 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2157
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.
2161
2162 +++
2163 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2164
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.
2167
2168 +++
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.
2173
2174 +++
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.
2179
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.
2183
2184 +++
2185 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2186 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2187
2188 +++
2189 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2190 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2191
2192 +++
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.
2198
2199 +++
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.
2204
2205 +++
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.
2208
2209 +++
2210 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2211
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.
2215
2216 +++
2217 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2218
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.
2225
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'.
2230
2231 +++
2232 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2233
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
2237 result string.
2238
2239 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2240 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2241
2242 Example:
2243
2244 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2245 (s2 "world"))
2246 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2247 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2248 (format s1 s2))
2249
2250 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2251
2252 +++
2253 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2254
2255 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2256 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2257 argument in it.
2258
2259 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2260 (arg "world"))
2261 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2262 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2263 (message msg arg))
2264
2265 +++
2266 ** Sound support
2267
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).
2270
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.
2274
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.
2280
2281 The following sound properties are supported:
2282
2283 - `:file FILE'
2284
2285 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2286 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2287
2288 - `:data DATA'
2289
2290 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2291 may be present, but not both.
2292
2293 - `:volume VOLUME'
2294
2295 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2296 0..1. This property is optional.
2297
2298 Other properties are ignored.
2299
2300 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2301
2302 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2303 a keyword symbol.
2304
2305 ** Changes to garbage collection
2306
2307 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2308 of live and free strings.
2309
2310 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2311 strings that have been consed so far.
2312
2313 \f
2314 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2315 Lisp Manual
2316
2317 +++
2318 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2319
2320 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2321 image.
2322
2323 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2324
2325 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2326
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.
2332
2333 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2334 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2335
2336 +++
2337 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2338 optional.
2339
2340 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2341
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.
2346
2347 \f
2348 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2349
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.
2354
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.
2357
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.
2364
2365 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2366 a line like
2367
2368 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2369
2370 in your `.emacs'.
2371
2372 ** New face implementation.
2373
2374 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2375 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2376
2377 +++
2378 *** New faces.
2379
2380 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2381
2382 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2383
2384 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2385 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2386
2387 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2388
2389 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2390
2391 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2392
2393 6. Foreground color.
2394
2395 7. Background color.
2396
2397 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2398
2399 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2400
2401 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2402
2403 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2404
2405 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2406 color.
2407
2408 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2409 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2410
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.
2417
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
2420 created frames.
2421
2422 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2423 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2424 `fully-specified'.
2425
2426 +++
2427 *** Face merging.
2428
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.
2435
2436 +++
2437 *** Face realization.
2438
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.
2445
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.
2450
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.
2456
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
2462 Emacs.
2463
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.
2468
2469 ++++
2470 **** Clearing face caches.
2471
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
2474 unused fonts.
2475
2476 +++
2477 *** Font selection.
2478
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.
2482
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.
2488
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.
2492
2493 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2494
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.
2502
2503 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2504 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2505 face doesn't exist.
2506
2507 +++
2508 **** Scalable fonts
2509
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
2512 servers.
2513
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
2519 that list. Example:
2520
2521 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2522
2523 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2524
2525 +++
2526 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2527
2528 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2529
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 `*'.
2533
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.
2544
2545 - Function: x-font-family-list
2546
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.
2551
2552 - Variable: font-list-limit
2553
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.
2557
2558 +++
2559 *** Setting face attributes.
2560
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
2564 `face-attribute'.
2565
2566 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2567 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2568
2569 The following attributes are recognized:
2570
2571 `:family'
2572
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.
2576
2577 `:width'
2578
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'.
2583
2584 `:height'
2585
2586 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2587 1/10 pt.
2588
2589 `:weight'
2590
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'.
2594
2595 `:slant'
2596
2597 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2598 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2599 `reverse-oblique'.
2600
2601 `:foreground', `:background'
2602
2603 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2604
2605 `:underline'
2606
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
2610 don't underline.
2611
2612 `:overline'
2613
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
2617 overline.
2618
2619 `:strike-through'
2620
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.
2625
2626 `:box'
2627
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
2644 box.
2645
2646 `:inverse-video'
2647
2648 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2649 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2650
2651 `:stipple'
2652
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.
2659
2660 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2661 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2662
2663 `:font'
2664
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
2668 versions of Emacs.
2669
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."
2673
2674 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2675 `defface'.
2676
2677 *** Face attributes and X resources
2678
2679 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2680 from X resources:
2681
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
2703
2704 +++
2705 *** Text property `face'.
2706
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
2710
2711 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2712
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.
2717
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.
2721
2722 +++
2723 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2724
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.
2731
2732 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2733
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.
2744
2745 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2746 any frame type.
2747
2748 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2749
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'.
2759
2760 +++
2761 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2762
2763 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2764
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.
2768
2769 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2770
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).
2774
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
2782 functions.
2783
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.
2787
2788 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2789
2790 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2791
2792 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2793
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.
2797
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'.
2807
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.
2813
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.
2816
2817 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2818
2819 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2820
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.
2824
2825 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2826
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.
2832
2833 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2834
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.
2840
2841 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2842
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.
2846
2847 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2848
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.
2852
2853 +++
2854 ** Image support.
2855
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.
2860
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
2865 area.
2866
2867 IMAGE is an image specification.
2868
2869 *** Image specifications
2870
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.
2876
2877 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2878
2879 `:ascent ASCENT'
2880
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.
2884
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.
2887
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.
2892
2893 `:margin MARGIN'
2894
2895 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2896 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2897
2898 `:relief RELIEF'
2899
2900 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2901 around an image.
2902
2903 `:algorithm ALGO'
2904
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."
2909
2910 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2911
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.
2919
2920 `:file FILE'
2921
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.
2926
2927 `:data DATA'
2928
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.
2933
2934 *** Supported image types
2935
2936 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2937
2938 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2939 properties supported are
2940
2941 `:foreground FG'
2942
2943 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2944 is the frame's foreground.
2945
2946 `:background FG'
2947
2948 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2949 the frame's background color.
2950
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.
2954
2955 `:width WIDTH'
2956
2957 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2958
2959 `:height HEIGHT'
2960
2961 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2962
2963 `:data DATA'
2964
2965 DATA must be either
2966
2967 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2968 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2969
2970 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2971
2972 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2973 bitmap.
2974
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
2977 in the file.
2978
2979 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2980
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'.
2985
2986 Additional image properties supported are:
2987
2988 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2989
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
2992 name.
2993
2994 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2995 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2996
2997 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2998 to display compressed images.
2999
3000 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
3001
3002 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
3003 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
3004 defined.
3005
3006 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
3007
3008 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
3009 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
3010 are:
3011
3012 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
3013
3014 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
3015 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3016 properties defined.
3017
3018 **** GIF, image type `gif'
3019
3020 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
3021 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
3022
3023 Additional image properties supported are:
3024
3025 `:index INDEX'
3026
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.
3029
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
3033 every 0.1 seconds.
3034
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))
3038
3039 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
3040 (when (= idx max)
3041 (setq idx 0))
3042 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3043 (save-excursion
3044 (set-buffer buffer)
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)))
3049
3050 **** PNG, image type `png'
3051
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
3054 properties defined.
3055
3056 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3057
3058 Additional image properties supported are:
3059
3060 `:pt-width WIDTH'
3061
3062 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3063 integer. This is a required property.
3064
3065 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
3066
3067 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3068 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3069
3070 `:bounding-box BOX'
3071
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.
3075
3076 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3077 lisp/gs.el.
3078
3079 *** Lisp interface.
3080
3081 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3082 which are supported in the current configuration.
3083
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.
3089
3090 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3091
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
3097 buffer.
3098
3099 +++
3100 ** Display margins.
3101
3102 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3103 and images.
3104
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.
3112
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
3117 in this file).
3118
3119 +++
3120 ** Help display
3121
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.
3126
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.
3130
3131 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3132 `help-echo' text property was found.
3133
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.
3136
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
3139 mouse.
3140
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.
3143
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.
3149
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.
3153
3154 +++
3155 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3156
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.
3159
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
3164 used.
3165
3166 (global-set-key [A-down]
3167 #'(lambda ()
3168 (interactive)
3169 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3170 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3171 (global-set-key [A-up]
3172 #'(lambda ()
3173 (interactive)
3174 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3175 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3176
3177 +++
3178 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3179
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.
3184
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.
3190
3191 +++
3192 ** Tool bar support.
3193
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.
3200
3201 *** Tool bar item definitions
3202
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...)'.
3206
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).
3211
3212 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3213 binding are currently ignored.
3214
3215 The following properties are recognized:
3216
3217 `:enable FORM'.
3218
3219 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3220 or disabled.
3221
3222 `:visible FORM'
3223
3224 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3225
3226 `:filter FUNCTION'
3227
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.
3231
3232 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3233
3234 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3235 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3236
3237 `:image IMAGES'
3238
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:
3242
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
3249
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.
3252
3253 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3254
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.
3257
3258 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3259
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.
3263
3264 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3265 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3266
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.
3270
3271 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3272 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3273
3274 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3275
3276 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3277 a tool bar item. If
3278
3279 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3280 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3281 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3282
3283 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3284
3285 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3286
3287 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3288 item.
3289
3290 ** Mode line changes.
3291
3292 +++
3293 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3294
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.
3298
3299 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3300 a `local-map' text property.
3301
3302 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3303 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3304
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.
3308
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
3311 example.
3312
3313 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3314 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3315
3316 +++
3317 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3318 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3319
3320 +++
3321 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3322
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
3327 line.
3328
3329 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3330 `header-line'.
3331
3332 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3333 position in the header-line.
3334
3335 +++
3336 ** Text property `display'
3337
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.
3342
3343 *** Variable width and height spaces
3344
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.
3352
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.
3356
3357 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3358 characters having the `display' property.
3359
3360 - :width WIDTH
3361
3362 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3363 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3364
3365 - :relative-width FACTOR
3366
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.
3371
3372 - :align-to HPOS
3373
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.
3376
3377 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3378
3379 - :height HEIGHT
3380
3381 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3382 normal line height.
3383
3384 - :relative-height FACTOR
3385
3386 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3387 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3388
3389 - :ascent ASCENT
3390
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
3394 equal to 100.
3395
3396 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3397
3398 *** Images
3399
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.
3409
3410 *** Other display properties
3411
3412 - :space-width FACTOR
3413
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
3416 integer or float.
3417
3418 - :height HEIGHT
3419
3420 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3421
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.
3427
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.
3430
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.
3433
3434 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3435 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3436
3437 - :raise FACTOR
3438
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.
3444
3445 *** Conditional display properties
3446
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.
3452
3453 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3454 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3455
3456 +++
3457 ** New menu separator types.
3458
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.
3463
3464 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3465
3466 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3467 separator occurs.
3468
3469 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3470
3471 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3472
3473 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3474
3475 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3476
3477 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3478
3479 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3480
3481 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3482
3483 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3484
3485 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3486
3487 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3488 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3489
3490 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3491
3492 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3493
3494 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3495
3496 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3497
3498 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3499
3500 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3501
3502 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3503
3504 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3505
3506 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3507
3508 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3509
3510 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3511
3512 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3513
3514 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3515
3516 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3517
3518 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3519 the corresponding single-line separators.
3520
3521 +++
3522 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3523
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.
3531
3532 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3533 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3534 `ScrollBarBackground').
3535
3536 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3537 settings for scroll bar colors.
3538
3539 +++
3540 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3541 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3542
3543 ---
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.
3549
3550 ---
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.
3554
3555 +++
3556 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3557
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.
3562
3563 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3564 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3565
3566 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3567
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
3573
3574 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3575 (enlarge-window 10))
3576
3577 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3578 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3579
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).
3586
3587
3588 ^L
3589 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3590
3591 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3592 input.
3593
3594 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3595
3596 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3597
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.
3603
3604 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3605 been added.
3606
3607 ^L
3608 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3609
3610 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3611
3612 ^L
3613 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3614
3615 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3616 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3617 \f
3618 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3619
3620 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3621
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.
3625
3626 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3627 is the one that is used.
3628
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
3636 the buffer name.
3637
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.
3642
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.
3647
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.
3652
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.
3657
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.
3665
3666 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3667 the same format that was used in the file before.
3668
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.
3671
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.
3675
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).
3683
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.
3688
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.
3693
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.
3697
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.
3701
3702 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3703 not one per buffer.
3704
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)
3708
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.
3712
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.
3718
3719 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3720 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3721
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.
3725
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.
3730
3731 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3732
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.
3738
3739 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3740 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3741
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.
3746
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
3749 Unix.
3750
3751 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3752 current codepage when it starts.
3753
3754 ** Mail changes
3755
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
3762 latin-1:
3763
3764 MIME-version: 1.0
3765 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3766 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3767
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.
3773
3774 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3775 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3776 mail.
3777
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.
3782
3783 ** CC Mode changes
3784
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.
3789
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.
3795
3796 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3797 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3798
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.
3801
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
3806 anonymous classes.
3807
3808 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3809 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3810
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.
3815
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).
3821
3822 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3823
3824 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3825
3826 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3827 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3828
3829 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3830
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).
3836
3837 ** Gnus changes.
3838
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.
3842
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.
3846
3847 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3848 values.
3849
3850 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3851
3852 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3853 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3854
3855 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3856 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3857
3858 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3859
3860 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3861 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3862
3863 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3864
3865 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3866 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3867
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.
3870
3871 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3872 control over simplification.
3873
3874 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3875
3876 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3877 limit.
3878
3879 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3880
3881 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3882
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.
3886
3887 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3888 `a' forces normal posting method.
3889
3890 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3891 -- `W d'.
3892
3893 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3894 to a non-nil value.
3895
3896 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3897 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3898
3899 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3900 has been added.
3901
3902 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3903
3904 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3905
3906 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3907 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3908
3909 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3910 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3911
3912 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3913
3914 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3915 been added.
3916
3917 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3918 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3919
3920 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3921 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3922
3923 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3924
3925 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3926
3927 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3928
3929 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3930
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 "".
3934
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.
3940
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.
3945
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
3949 mismatch.
3950
3951 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3952
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.
3955
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.
3960
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'.
3963
3964 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3965 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3966
3967 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3968 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3969 expressions.
3970
3971 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3972
3973 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3974
3975 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3976 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3977
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'.
3981
3982 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3983 changes with a special face.
3984
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.
3988 \f
3989 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3990
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.
3996
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.
4000
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.)
4010
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
4016 program.
4017
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.
4024
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.
4029
4030 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
4031 This includes Tetris and Snake.
4032 \f
4033 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
4034
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.
4039
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.
4043
4044 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4045
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.
4048
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
4051 integers.
4052
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.
4057
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
4062 returns the result.
4063
4064 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4065 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4066
4067 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4068
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
4072 optionally.
4073
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.
4076
4077 **
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.
4081
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.
4086
4087 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4088 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4089
4090 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4091 :included is an alias for :visible.
4092
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.
4096
4097 ** Multibyte editing changes
4098
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.
4107
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))
4111
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:
4115
4116 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4117
4118 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4119 across the boundary.
4120
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.
4127
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
4132 way.
4133
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.
4138
4139 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4140 compose Thai characters in a string.
4141
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.
4146
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.
4151
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.
4156
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
4160 echo area contents.
4161
4162 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4163
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.
4167
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.
4171
4172 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4173 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4174
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.
4179
4180 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4181 the gap of the current buffer.
4182
4183 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4184 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4185 current buffer.
4186
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.
4191 \f
4192 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4193
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.
4199
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.
4205
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.
4209
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
4215 results.
4216
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.
4221 \f
4222 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4223
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.
4228
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
4236 region.
4237
4238 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4239 selective undo.
4240
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.
4246
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.
4251
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.
4256
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
4260 applications.
4261
4262 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4263 pasting operations.
4264
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
4269 `ps-printer-name'.
4270
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
4276 hits a new word.
4277
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.
4281
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.
4286
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.
4292
4293 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4294 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4295
4296 ** Changes in input method usage.
4297
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
4300 respectively.
4301
4302 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4303
4304 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4305 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4306
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'.
4309
4310 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4311
4312 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4313
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.
4316
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.
4321
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.
4326
4327 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4328
4329 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4330 keys:
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
4335 environment.
4336
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
4340 get
4341
4342 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4343
4344 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4345
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.
4348
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.
4352
4353 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4354 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4355
4356 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4357 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4358
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.
4363
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.
4368
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
4374 info.
4375
4376 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4377
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
4380 contents only.
4381
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.
4386
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.
4390
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.
4395
4396 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4397 failure if the command produces no output.
4398
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
4401 the mouse.
4402
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.
4406
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.
4410
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.
4416
4417 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4418
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.
4422
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.
4427
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.
4430
4431 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4432 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4433
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
4436 command keys.
4437
4438 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4439 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4440
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.
4444
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.
4450
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
4453 of your input.
4454
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.
4461
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.
4465
4466 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4467 Customize menu.
4468
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.
4471
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
4474 invoked.
4475
4476 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4477 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4478 The default is 1.
4479
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
4484 sensibly.
4485
4486 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4487
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.
4491
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
4495 every night.
4496
4497 ** Desktop changes
4498
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.
4501
4502 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4503 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4504
4505 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4506 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4507
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.
4514
4515 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4516
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
4520 toggle.
4521
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.
4527
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.
4531
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.
4535
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.
4542
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:
4546
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
4550
4551 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4552 be prompted for confirmation
4553
4554 **** does smart filling of address headers
4555
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
4559
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)
4564
4565 ** Dired changes
4566
4567 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4568 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4569
4570 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4571 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4572
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.
4576
4577 ** VC Changes
4578
4579 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4580 conveniently.
4581
4582 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4583 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4584 Dired.
4585
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).
4590
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.
4596
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.
4602
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.
4607
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.
4611
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.
4615
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
4619 uses as well).
4620
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,
4627 using ediff.
4628
4629 ** Changes in Font Lock
4630
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.
4636
4637 ** Frame name display changes
4638
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.
4643
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
4646 menu.
4647
4648 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4649
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.
4653
4654 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4655
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.
4659
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
4662 the following line.
4663
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.
4667
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.
4671
4672 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4673 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4674
4675 ** C mode changes
4676
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
4680 definition.
4681
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.
4686
4687 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4688
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.
4692
4693 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4694 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4695
4696 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4697 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4698
4699 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4700 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4701
4702 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4703 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4704
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.
4709
4710 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4711
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'.
4715
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.
4719
4720 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4721 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4722
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'.
4727
4728 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4729
4730 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4731
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.
4737
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.
4744
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.
4749
4750 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4751
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.
4758
4759 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4760 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4761
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.
4765
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.
4768
4769 ** Ispell changes.
4770
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.
4774
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
4779 include:
4780
4781 o URLs are automatically skipped
4782 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4783
4784 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4785
4786 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4787
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.
4792
4793 *** New recursive parser.
4794
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.
4798
4799 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4800
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.
4804
4805 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4806
4807 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4808
4809 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4810
4811 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4812
4813 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4814
4815 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4816 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4817
4818 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4819
4820 *** References to external documents.
4821
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.
4829
4830 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4831
4832 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4833 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4834
4835 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4836 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4837
4838 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4839
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'.
4842
4843 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4844
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
4851 more.
4852
4853 *** Support for the varioref package
4854
4855 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4856
4857 *** New hooks
4858
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'.
4863
4864 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4865
4866 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4867 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4868
4869 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4870
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
4873 fontified, use
4874
4875 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4876
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.
4881
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
4889 directory.
4890
4891 ** New modes and packages
4892
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.
4896
4897 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4898 code.
4899
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
4902 around in a buffer.
4903
4904 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4905
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.
4910
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.
4914
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
4920 the like.
4921
4922 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4923 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4924
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.
4929
4930 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4931
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
4943
4944 Platform-specific modes:
4945
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
4955 \f
4956 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4957
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.
4962
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.
4966
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.
4971
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
4975 environment.
4976
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.
4981
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).
4988 \f
4989 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4990
4991 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4992 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4993
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.
4997
4998 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4999 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
5000
5001 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
5002
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,
5006
5007 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
5008 :type 'integer
5009 :group 'foo
5010 :version "20.3")
5011
5012 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
5013 :version "20.3")
5014
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.
5019
5020 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
5021
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.
5024
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
5028 to themselves.
5029
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
5032 values whatever.
5033
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*.
5037
5038 ** Frame-local variables.
5039
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.
5043
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
5047 parameter name.
5048
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.
5053
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.
5058
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.
5064
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.
5069
5070 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5071 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5072
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.
5076
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.
5081
5082 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5083 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5084 empty input.
5085
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.
5091
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.
5096
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.
5102
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.
5107
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.
5111
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.
5115
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.
5121
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.
5126
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).
5130
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.
5134
5135 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5136 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5137
5138 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5139 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5140
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.
5144
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.
5149
5150 ** Menu changes
5151
5152 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5153 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5154 better supported.
5155
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.
5161
5162 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5163
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'.
5168
5169 The format is:
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
5175
5176 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5177 item is enabled.
5178 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5179 item should appear in the menu.
5180 :filter FILTER-FN
5181 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5182 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5183 It should return a binding to use instead.
5184 :keys DESCRIPTION
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
5190 keyboard binding.
5191 :key-sequence nil
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.
5199
5200 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5201 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5202
5203 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5204
5205 ** New event types
5206
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:
5211
5212 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5213
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.
5220
5221 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5222
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:
5228
5229 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5230
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.
5234
5235 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5236
5237 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5238
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.
5242
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.
5246
5247 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5248 in Emacs 19 and before.
5249
5250 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5251 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5252
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.
5257
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.
5263
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.
5268
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.
5273
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.
5277
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.
5281
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.
5285
5286 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5287 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5288
5289 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5290 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5291
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.
5296
5297 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5298 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5299
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.
5303
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.
5311
5312 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5313
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.
5321
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
5329 `iso-8859-1'.
5330
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)
5335
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.
5340
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.
5344
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.
5351
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
5355 was done.
5356
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.
5360
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.
5365
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
5369 converted.
5370
5371 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5372 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5373
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.
5380
5381 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5382 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5383
5384 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5385 in the current buffer at position POS.
5386
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.
5393
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.
5399
5400 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5401 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5402
5403 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5404 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5405
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.
5411 \f
5412 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5413
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
5417 tree structure.
5418
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.
5421
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.)
5425
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.
5428
5429 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5430 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5431
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
5434 kills the region.
5435
5436 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5437 delete the character before point, as usual.
5438
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.)
5442
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
5448 past.)
5449
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.
5455
5456 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5457 and is an alias for it.
5458
5459 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5460 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5461
5462 ** Scrolling changes
5463
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.
5466
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
5469 where it started.
5470
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.
5475
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.
5480
5481 ** International character set support (MULE)
5482
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")
5489
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.
5495
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.
5500
5501 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5502 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5503
5504 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5505 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5506
5507 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5508
5509 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5510
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.
5516
5517 *** Input methods
5518
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.
5524
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
5527 work.
5528
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
5534 letter.
5535
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".
5541
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.
5546
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.
5551
5552 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5553 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5554
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.
5559
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.
5564
5565 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5566
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
5570 what you want.
5571
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.
5576
5577 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5578 character conversion as well.
5579
5580 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5581
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.
5585
5586 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5587 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5588
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.
5593
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.
5597
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.
5603
5604 *** Defining fontsets.
5605
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.
5609
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.
5614
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'.
5620
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.
5632
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.
5636
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
5639 following resource,
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.)
5649
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.
5653
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
5658 fontsets.
5659
5660 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5661 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5662
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.
5669
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.
5673
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").
5677
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.
5683
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*.
5689
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.
5692
5693 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5694 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5695
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.
5698
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
5703 of the file.
5704
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.
5709
5710 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5711 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5712
5713 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5714
5715 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5716 the coding system for keyboard input.
5717
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.
5721
5722 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5723
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.
5729
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.
5736
5737 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5738
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.
5742
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
5746 want to use.
5747
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.
5750
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.
5755
5756 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5757 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5758 related information.
5759
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
5762 scripts.
5763
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.
5767
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
5770 first dash.
5771
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:
5776
5777 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5778 B big5 (Chinese)
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)
5786 R koi8 (Russian)
5787 Q tibetan
5788 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5789 T lao
5790 T tis620 (Thai)
5791 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5792 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5793 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5794 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5795 z hz (Chinese)
5796
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.
5801
5802 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5803 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5804
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.
5809
5810 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5811 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5812
5813 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5814 for sending mail:
5815
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.
5821
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
5825 translations.
5826
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.
5831
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.
5836
5837 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5838 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5839
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.
5842
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.
5845
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.
5849
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
5852 you are using.
5853
5854 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5855 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5856
5857 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5858
5859 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5860 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5861
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.
5865
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.
5872
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.
5877
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
5880 show-paren-mode.
5881
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.
5885
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.
5889
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.
5893
5894 ** Changes in View mode.
5895
5896 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5897 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5898
5899 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5900 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5901
5902 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5903 previous state.
5904
5905 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5906 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5907
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.
5911
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.
5915
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.
5919
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.
5922
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.
5927
5928 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5929 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5930
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.
5935
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.
5939
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
5942 confirmation first.
5943
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.
5951
5952 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5953
5954 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5955 these commands do not change the major mode.
5956
5957 ** M-x occur changes.
5958
5959 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5960 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5961
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.
5965
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.
5971
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.
5976
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.
5980
5981 ** Outline mode changes.
5982
5983 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5984
5985 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5986
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
5990 was already active.
5991
5992 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5993 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5994 get confused by it.
5995
5996 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5997 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5998
5999 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
6000
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.
6005
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.
6009
6010 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
6011 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
6012 values.
6013
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).
6018
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.
6022
6023 ** Changes in Mail mode.
6024
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
6030 behavior.
6031
6032 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
6033 compose-mail-other-frame.
6034
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.
6039
6040 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
6041 with separator lines around the contents.
6042
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.
6047
6048 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6049
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.
6054
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
6057 /etc/passwd.
6058
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:
6061 /etc/passwd.
6062
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:'.
6067
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.
6071
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.
6075
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.)
6078
6079 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6080 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6081
6082 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6083
6084 new key dired.el binding old key
6085 ------- ---------------- -------
6086 * c dired-change-marks c
6087 * m dired-mark m
6088 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6089 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6090 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6091 * u dired-unmark u
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-{
6098
6099 ** Rmail changes.
6100
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.
6105
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.
6108
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.
6112
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.
6115
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
6120 for output.
6121
6122 ** Gnus changes.
6123
6124 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6125
6126 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6127 Gnus.
6128
6129 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6130 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6131
6132 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6133 article mode line.
6134
6135 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6136
6137 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6138
6139 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6140
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'.
6144
6145 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6146
6147 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6148
6149 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6150 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6151
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.
6155
6156 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6157 another have been added.
6158
6159 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6160
6161 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6162 generating lines in buffers.
6163
6164 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6165 `M-C-_'.
6166
6167 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6168
6169 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6170
6171 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6172
6173 *** Scores can be decayed.
6174
6175 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6176
6177 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6178 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6179
6180 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6181 the native server.
6182
6183 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6184
6185 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6186 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6187
6188 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6189
6190 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6191 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6192
6193 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6194 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6195
6196 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6197 a group.
6198
6199 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6200 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6201
6202 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6203
6204 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6205
6206 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6207
6208 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6209
6210 Use the `Y c' command.
6211
6212 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6213
6214 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6215
6216 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6217
6218 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6219 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6220
6221 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6222
6223 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6224
6225 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6226 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6227
6228 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6229
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
6234 this issue.)
6235
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:
6239
6240 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6241
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).
6247
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
6252 there.
6253
6254 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6255 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6256
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))
6262
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.
6265
6266 ** CC mode changes.
6267
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
6273 loaded.
6274
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.
6281
6282 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6283 of the current buffer.
6284
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.
6288
6289 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6290 style that the Python developers like.
6291
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.
6295
6296 ** VC Changes [new]
6297
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).
6301
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
6304 developers.
6305
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.
6308
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.
6313
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.
6316
6317 ** Calendar changes.
6318
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.
6322
6323 ** ps-print changes
6324
6325 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6326
6327 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6328
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'.
6335
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.
6339
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.
6342 It defaults to 1.
6343
6344 *** Horizontal layout
6345
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.
6349
6350 *** Vertical layout
6351
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.
6355
6356 *** Headers
6357
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.
6361
6362 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6363 framing box is printed around the header.
6364
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'.
6367
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'.
6371
6372 *** Font managing
6373
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.
6378
6379 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6380 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6381
6382 ** hideshow changes.
6383
6384 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6385 C++, ; for lisp).
6386
6387 *** Support for java-mode added.
6388
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.
6391
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'.
6395
6396 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6397 robust and a lot faster.
6398
6399 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6400
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.
6404
6405 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6406
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.
6412
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.
6417
6418 ** Font Lock mode
6419
6420 *** Custom support
6421
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.
6428
6429 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6430
6431 *** Maximum decoration
6432
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.
6438
6439 *** New support
6440
6441 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6442
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.
6445
6446 *** Configurable support
6447
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.
6455
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.
6459
6460 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6461
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,
6464 for any mode.
6465
6466 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6467
6468 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6469
6470 in your ~/.emacs.
6471
6472 *** New faces
6473
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.
6478
6479 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6480
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.
6484
6485 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6486
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.
6494
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.
6501
6502 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6503
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'.
6508
6509 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6510 settings.
6511
6512 ** Ada mode changes.
6513
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
6518 stubs.
6519
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.
6523
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.
6527
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.
6531
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.
6536
6537 ** Scheme mode changes.
6538
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
6543 have any effect.
6544
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.
6549
6550 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6551 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6552
6553 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6554
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.
6559
6560 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6561 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6562 buffer in Emacs.
6563
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.
6568
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).
6572
6573 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6574 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6575 the current defun.
6576
6577 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6578 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6579
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
6582 necessary).
6583
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.
6590
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.
6595
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.
6601
6602 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6603 since it applies only to the current frame.
6604
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.)
6608
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.
6614
6615 ** RefTeX mode
6616
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:
6622
6623 C-c ( reftex-label
6624 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6625 knows which kind of label is needed.
6626
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}.
6630
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.
6634
6635 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6636 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6637
6638 C-c = reftex-toc
6639 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6640 can quickly jump to every section.
6641
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
6647
6648 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6649
6650 *** Info documentation is now available.
6651
6652 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6653 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6654
6655 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6656 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6657
6658 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6659 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6660
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.
6664
6665 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6666 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6667
6668 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6669 been cleaned.
6670
6671 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6672 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6673
6674 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6675 shall be delimited.
6676
6677 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6678 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6679 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6680
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'.
6684
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
6688 documentation).
6689
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.
6693
6694 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6695 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6696
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).
6700
6701 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6702
6703 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6704
6705 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6706 from alien sources.
6707
6708 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6709 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6710 crossref entries.
6711
6712 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6713 region.
6714
6715 *** Added support for imenu.
6716
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.
6721
6722 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6723 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6724
6725 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6726
6727 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6728
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
6732 as an argument.
6733
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).
6736
6737 ** browse-url changes
6738
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.
6744
6745 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6746
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'.
6750
6751 ** Changes in Ediff
6752
6753 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6754 pops up the Info file for this command.
6755
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
6759 directories).
6760
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.
6764
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.)
6768
6769 ** Changes in Viper
6770
6771 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6772 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6773 instead of vip-.
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.
6784
6785 ** Etags changes.
6786
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.
6792
6793 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6794
6795 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6796 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6797
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.
6801
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.
6806
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
6810 paragraph name.
6811
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.
6815
6816 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6817 in files has changed slightly.
6818
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.
6823
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
6827 reasons.
6828
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".
6835
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.
6839
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.
6844
6845 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6846 details.
6847
6848 ** There are some additional major modes:
6849
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.
6853
6854 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6855 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6856 into Emacs.
6857
6858 ** New Lisp packages include:
6859
6860 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6861
6862 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6863 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6864
6865 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6866
6867 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6868 in shell buffers.
6869
6870 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6871 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6872 and `elint-defun'.
6873
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.
6878
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
6883 at these points.
6884
6885 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6886 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6887
6888 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6889 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6890
6891 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6892
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.
6895
6896 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6897
6898 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6899
6900 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6901
6902 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6903 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6904
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.
6909
6910 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6911 on the buffer.
6912
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.
6916
6917 Enable mouse-drag with:
6918 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6919 -or-
6920 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6921
6922 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6923 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6924
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.
6927
6928 *** ogonek
6929
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.
6937
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'.
6945
6946 *** Interface to ph.
6947
6948 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6949
6950 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6951 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6952 these servers.
6953
6954 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6955
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.
6959
6960 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6961 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6962
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.
6965
6966 ** movemail change
6967
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.
6972
6973 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6974 \f
6975 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6976
6977 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6978
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.
6984
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.
6991 \f
6992 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6993
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.
6998
6999 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
7000 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
7001
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
7004 "win".
7005
7006 ** Basic Lisp changes
7007
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.
7010
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
7013 or by the user.
7014
7015 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
7016
7017 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
7018
7019 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
7020 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
7021
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
7024 its argument.
7025
7026 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
7027
7028 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
7029
7030 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
7031
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
7035 `format' function.
7036
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.
7040
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.
7044
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.
7048
7049 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7050 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7051
7052 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7053
7054 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7055 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7056
7057 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7058 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7059
7060 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7061
7062 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7063 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7064
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'.
7069
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
7072 of the last form.
7073
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)
7077 as the last form.
7078
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
7081 matches.
7082
7083 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7084
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.
7088
7089 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7090
7091 (with-output-to-string
7092 (princ "The buffer is ")
7093 (princ (buffer-name)))
7094
7095 returns "The buffer is foo".
7096
7097 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7098 is non-nil.
7099
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.
7103
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).
7106
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))).
7113
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
7117 characters".
7118
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.
7124
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.
7129
7130 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7131 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7132
7133 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7134
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,
7139 guaranteed.
7140
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
7143 character).
7144
7145 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7146
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.
7152
7153 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7154
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.
7158
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.
7165
7166 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7167 and returns a string containing those characters.
7168
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.
7173
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).
7177
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).
7181
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.
7185
7186 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7187 of a string. You call it as follows:
7188
7189 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7190
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.
7196
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.
7199
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.
7202
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.)
7207
7208 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7209
7210 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7211
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.
7215
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.
7220
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.
7227
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.
7233
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.
7237
7238 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7239
7240 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7241
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.)
7244
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.
7248
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.
7252
7253 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7254 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7255
7256 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7257 of all the characters in a string.
7258
7259 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7260 and specifying coding systems.
7261
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.)
7268
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.
7271
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.
7275
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.
7279
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.
7286
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.
7289
7290 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7291 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7292
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
7296 service names.
7297
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.
7304
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.
7307
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.
7312
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.
7318
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
7321 subprocess.
7322
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.
7327
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.
7334
7335 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7336 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7337
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.
7345
7346 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7347 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7348
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.
7352
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
7357 customization.
7358
7359 Thus, instead of writing
7360
7361 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7362 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7363
7364 you would now write this:
7365
7366 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7367 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7368 :type 'boolean
7369 :group foo)
7370
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.
7375
7376 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7377 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7378
7379 (defgroup ispell nil
7380 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7381 :group 'processes)
7382
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.
7388
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.
7394
7395 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7396
7397 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7398 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7399
7400 ** easy-mmode
7401
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'.
7408
7409 ** Text property changes
7410
7411 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7412 text property.
7413
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.
7419
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.
7424
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.
7428
7429 ** Changes in invisibility features
7430
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.
7437
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.
7444
7445 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7446
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:
7453
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)
7458
7459 ...
7460 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7461
7462 ...
7463 ;; When done with the overlays:
7464 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7465 ;; Or respectively:
7466 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7467
7468 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7469
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.
7474
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.
7478
7479 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7480 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7481
7482 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7483 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7484
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).
7488
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.
7493
7494 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7495 of the current buffer.
7496
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.
7500
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).
7506
7507 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7508 text property.
7509
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.
7513
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.
7519
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'.
7523
7524 ** Changes in face features
7525
7526 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7527 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7528
7529 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7530 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7531
7532 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7533 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7534
7535 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7536 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7537
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
7542 overlay property).
7543
7544 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7545 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7546
7547 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7548
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.
7553
7554 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7555 begins with ~.
7556
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.
7559
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.
7562
7563 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7564 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7565
7566 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7567 character code conversion as well as other things.
7568
7569 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7570 (formerly it did not).
7571
7572 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7573 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7574
7575 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7576 instead of constant strings.
7577
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.
7581
7582 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7583 in the same way as before.
7584
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.
7588
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.
7592
7593 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7594 directory cannot be listed.
7595
7596 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7597
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
7602 ways:
7603
7604 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7605 It is available through the history command M-n.
7606
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.
7612
7613 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7614 argument in this way.
7615
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.
7619
7620 ** Echo area features
7621
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.
7626
7627 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7628 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7629
7630 ** Keyboard input features
7631
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.
7634
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
7637 by keyboard macros.
7638
7639 ** Frame-related changes
7640
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.
7644
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.
7648
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.
7653
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.
7657
7658 ** X Windows features
7659
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.
7663
7664 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7665 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7666
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.
7670
7671 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7672 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7673
7674 ** Subprocess features
7675
7676 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7677 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7678 automatically.
7679
7680 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7681 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7682
7683 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7684 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7685
7686 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7687 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7688
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.
7692
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
7696 are in use.
7697
7698 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7699 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7700
7701 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7702 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7703 form.
7704
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.
7708
7709 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7710 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7711
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.
7715
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
7719 warned.
7720
7721 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7722 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7723
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.
7727
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.
7730
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.
7734
7735 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7736 if there is an error in compilation.
7737
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.
7742
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.
7746
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.
7751
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.
7755
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.
7760
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.
7764
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
7770 files at all.
7771
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.
7776
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.
7781
7782 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7783
7784 ** imenu.el changes.
7785
7786 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7787 item from menu created by imenu.
7788
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.
7792 \f
7793 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7794 \f
7795 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7796
7797 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7798 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7799
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.
7803 \f
7804 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7805
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.
7808
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
7814 all caps.
7815
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.
7818
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.
7822
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
7826 frames.
7827
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
7832 accident.
7833
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.
7838
7839 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7840
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
7844 characters.
7845
7846 ** Font Lock mode
7847
7848 *** Font Lock support modes
7849
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.
7855
7856 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7857
7858 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7859
7860 in your ~/.emacs.
7861
7862 *** lazy-lock
7863
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.
7871
7872 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7873
7874 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7875
7876 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7877
7878 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7879
7880 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7881 paren and key.
7882
7883 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7884 supported.
7885
7886 ** Gnus changes.
7887
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.
7892
7893 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7894 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7895
7896 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7897 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7898 obsolete.
7899
7900 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7901 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7902
7903 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7904
7905 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7906
7907 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7908
7909 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7910 referred.
7911
7912 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7913
7914 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7915
7916 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7917
7918 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7919
7920 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7921 buffers.
7922
7923 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7924
7925 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7926
7927 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7928
7929 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7930
7931 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7932
7933 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7934
7935 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7936
7937 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7938 is possible.
7939
7940 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7941
7942 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7943 groups of groups.
7944
7945 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7946
7947 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7948 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7949
7950 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7951
7952 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7953
7954 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7955
7956 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7957
7958 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7959 expiration times.
7960
7961 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7962
7963 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7964 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7965
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.
7969
7970 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7971 articles with the `*' command.
7972
7973 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7974
7975 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7976
7977 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7978
7979 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7980
7981 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7982 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7983
7984 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7985 buffer.
7986
7987 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7988
7989 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7990
7991 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7992
7993 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7994
7995 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7996
7997 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7998
7999 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
8000
8001 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
8002
8003 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
8004
8005 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
8006 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
8007
8008 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
8009 refetching.
8010
8011 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
8012
8013 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
8014 buffer to allow easier treatment.
8015
8016 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
8017
8018 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
8019
8020 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
8021
8022 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
8023 articles.
8024
8025 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
8026
8027 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
8028
8029 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
8030 cited text to hide is now customizable.
8031
8032 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
8033
8034 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
8035
8036 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
8037
8038 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
8039
8040 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
8041
8042 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8043 in greater detail.
8044 \f
8045 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8046
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
8050 exists.
8051
8052 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8053 as well as lists.
8054
8055 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8056 of a given keymap.
8057
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
8060 keymap or nil.
8061
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
8067 alias.
8068 \f
8069 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8070
8071 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8072
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.
8078
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/'.
8082
8083 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8084
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.
8090
8091 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8092 customization variables take effect.
8093
8094 ** Marking with the mouse.
8095
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.
8099
8100 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8101
8102 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8103
8104 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8105 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8106
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.
8112
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.
8118
8119 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8120 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8121
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.
8128
8129 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8130
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.
8134
8135 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8136
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.
8141
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.
8146
8147 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8148 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8149
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.
8153
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:
8158
8159 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8160
8161 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8162 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8163
8164 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8165
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.
8171
8172 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8173 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8174
8175 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8176
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
8181 recover-session.
8182
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
8185 will not work.
8186
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.
8192
8193 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8194
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.
8199
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.
8204
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).
8208
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,
8213 remain normal.
8214
8215 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8216 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8217
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.
8222
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'.)
8229
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.
8234
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).
8238
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).
8246
8247 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8248
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
8252 this example:
8253
8254 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8255 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8256
8257 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8258
8259 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8260
8261 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8262
8263 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8264
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.
8271
8272 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8273 does the same job.
8274
8275 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8276 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8277
8278 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8279 text.
8280
8281 ** Font Lock mode
8282
8283 *** Global Font Lock mode
8284
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.
8290
8291 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8292
8293 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8294
8295 in your ~/.emacs.
8296
8297 *** Local Refontification
8298
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).
8303
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.
8308
8309 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8310
8311 ** Follow mode
8312
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
8318 follow-mode.
8319
8320 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8321
8322 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8323 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8324
8325 ** hide-show changes.
8326
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
8329 normal hooks.
8330
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.
8333
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.
8337
8338 ** MSDOS Changes
8339
8340 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8341 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8342
8343 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8344 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8345
8346 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8347
8348 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8349 pressing both mouse buttons.
8350
8351 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8352 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8353 are:
8354
8355 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8356 now works.
8357
8358 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8359
8360 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8361 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8362
8363 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8364
8365 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8366
8367 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8368
8369 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8370
8371 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8372 \f
8373 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8374
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.
8380
8381 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8382
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
8386 be different.
8387
8388 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8389 than `system-type'.
8390
8391 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8392
8393 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8394 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8395
8396 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8397 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8398
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.
8402
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
8405 like this:
8406
8407 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8408
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.
8412
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.
8416
8417 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8418 up if too much time passes.
8419
8420 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8421
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
8425 form in BODY.
8426
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:
8430
8431 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8432
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
8436 ARGS.
8437
8438 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8439 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8440 command.
8441
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.
8446
8447 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8448 idle for SECS seconds.
8449
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
8453 instead.
8454
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.
8457
8458 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8459
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.
8463
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.
8468
8469 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8470 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8471
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
8476 version.
8477
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.
8484
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.
8488
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
8492 completions.el:
8493
8494 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8495 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8496 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8497
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.
8503
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.)
8507
8508 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8509 marker from its buffer position.
8510
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.
8514
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.
8521
8522 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8523 errors that happen often during editing.
8524
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.
8528
8529 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8530 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8531
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.
8537
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.
8541
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.
8549
8550 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8551
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:
8554
8555 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8556 ;; $HEADER: text $
8557
8558 in addition to the normal
8559
8560 ;; HEADER: text
8561
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.
8565
8566
8567 \f
8568 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8569
8570 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8571 Copyright information:
8572
8573 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8574
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.
8579
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.
8584 \f
8585 Local variables:
8586 mode: outline
8587 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8588 end: