]> code.delx.au - gnu-emacs/blob - etc/NEWS
(server-kill-new-buffers): New user option.
[gnu-emacs] / etc / NEWS
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 ** The most preferred coding-system is now used to save a buffer if
75 buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and it is safe for the buffer
76 contents. (The most preferred is set by set-language-environment or
77 by M-x prefer-coding-system.) Thus if you visit an ASCII file and
78 insert a non-ASCII character from your current language environment,
79 the file will be saved silently with the appropriate coding.
80 Previously you would be prompted for a safe coding system.
81
82 ** New variable `inhibit-iso-escape-detection' determines if Emacs'
83 coding system detection algorithm should pay attention to ISO2022's
84 escape sequences. If this variable is non-nil, the algorithm ignores
85 such escape sequences. The default value is nil, and it is
86 recommended not to change it except for the special case that you
87 always want to read any escape code verbatim. If you just want to
88 read a specific file without decoding escape codes, use C-x RET c
89 (`universal-coding-system-argument'). For instance, C-x RET c latin-1
90 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
91
92 ** Variable `default-korean-keyboard' is initialized properly from the
93 environment variable `HANGUL_KEYBOARD_TYPE'.
94
95 +++
96 ** C-u C-x = provides detailed information about the character at
97 point in a pop-up window.
98
99 ** New command M-x list-charset-chars reads a character set name and
100 displays all characters in that character set.
101
102 ** M-x set-terminal-coding-system (C-x RET t) now allows CCL-based
103 coding systems such as cpXXX and cyrillic-koi8.
104
105 ** M-; now calls comment-dwim which tries to do something clever based
106 on the context.
107
108 +++
109 ** The function `getenv' is now callable interactively.
110
111 ** The many obsolete language `setup-...-environment' commands have
112 been removed -- use `set-language-environment'.
113
114 +++
115 ** New user options `display-time-mail-face' and
116 `display-time-use-mail-icon' control the appearance of mode-line mail
117 indicator used by the display-time package. On a suitable display the
118 indicator can be an icon and is mouse-sensitive.
119
120 +++
121 ** Emacs' auto-save list files are now by default stored in a
122 sub-directory `.emacs.d/auto-save-list/' of the user's home directory.
123 (On MS-DOS, this subdirectory's name is `_emacs.d/auto-save.list/'.)
124 You can customize `auto-save-list-prefix' to change this location.
125
126 +++
127 ** On window-systems, additional space can be put between text lines
128 on the display using several methods
129
130 +++
131 - By setting frame parameter `line-spacing' to PIXELS. PIXELS must be
132 a positive integer, and specifies that PIXELS number of pixels should
133 be put below text lines on the affected frame or frames.
134
135 +++
136 - By setting X resource `lineSpacing', class `LineSpacing'. This is
137 equivalent ot specifying the frame parameter.
138
139 - By specifying `--line-spacing=N' or `-lsp N' on the command line.
140
141 - By setting buffer-local variable `line-spacing'. The meaning is
142 the same, but applies to the a particular buffer only.
143
144 +++
145 ** The new command `clone-indirect-buffer' can be used to create
146 an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. The
147 command `clone-indirect-buffer-other-window', bound to C-x 4 c,
148 does the same but displays the indirect buffer in another window.
149
150 +++
151 ** New user options `backup-directory-alist' and
152 `make-backup-file-name-function' control the placement of backups,
153 typically in a single directory or in an invisible sub-directory.
154
155 ** New commands iso-iso2sgml and iso-sgml2iso convert between Latin-1
156 characters and the corresponding SGML (HTML) entities.
157
158 ** Emacs now refuses to load compiled Lisp files which weren't
159 compiled with Emacs. Set `load-dangerous-libraries' to t to change
160 this behavior.
161
162 The reason for this change is an incompatible change in XEmacs' byte
163 compiler. Files compiled with XEmacs can contain byte codes that let
164 Emacs dump core.
165
166 +++
167 ** New X resources recognized
168
169 *** The X resource `synchronous', class `Synchronous', specifies
170 whether Emacs should run in synchronous mode. Synchronous mode
171 is useful for debugging X problems.
172
173 Example:
174
175 emacs.synchronous: true
176
177 *** The X resource `visualClass, class `VisualClass', specifies the
178 visual Emacs should use. The resource's value should be a string of
179 the form `CLASS-DEPTH', where CLASS is the name of the visual class,
180 and DEPTH is the requested color depth as a decimal number. Valid
181 visual class names are
182
183 TrueColor
184 PseudoColor
185 DirectColor
186 StaticColor
187 GrayScale
188 StaticGray
189
190 Visual class names specified as X resource are case-insensitive, i.e.
191 `pseudocolor', `Pseudocolor' and `PseudoColor' all have the same
192 meaning.
193
194 The program `xdpyinfo' can be used to list the visual classes
195 supported on your display, and which depths they have. If
196 `visualClass' is not specified, Emacs uses the display's default
197 visual.
198
199 Example:
200
201 emacs.visualClass: TrueColor-8
202
203 *** The X resource `privateColormap', class `PrivateColormap',
204 specifies that Emacs should use a private colormap if it is using the
205 default visual, and that visual is of class PseudoColor. Recognized
206 resource values are `true' or `on'.
207
208 Example:
209
210 emacs.privateColormap: true
211
212 ** The menu bar configuration has changed. The new configuration is
213 more CUA-compliant. The most significant change is that Options is
214 now a separate menu-bar item, with Mule and Customize as its submenus.
215
216 ** User-option `show-cursor-in-non-selected-windows' controls how to
217 display the cursor in non-selected windows. If nil, no cursor is
218 shown, if non-nil a hollow box cursor is shown. This option can
219 be customized.
220
221 +++
222 ** The variable `echo-keystrokes' may now have a floating point value.
223
224 +++
225 ** C-x 5 1 runs the new command delete-other-frames which deletes
226 all frames except the selected one.
227
228 ** If your init file is compiled (.emacs.elc), `user-init-file' is set
229 to the source name (.emacs.el), if that exists, after loading it.
230
231 ** The help string specified for a menu-item whose definition contains
232 the property `:help HELP' is now displayed under X, on MS-Windows, and
233 MS-DOS, either in the echo area or with tooltips. Many standard menus
234 displayed by Emacs now have help strings.
235
236 ** Highlighting of mouse-sensitive regions is now supported in the
237 MS-DOS version of Emacs.
238
239 ** New user option `read-mail-command' specifies a command to use to
240 read mail from the menu etc.
241
242 ** Hexl contains a new command `hexl-insert-hex-string' which inserts
243 a string of hexadecimal numbers read from the mini-buffer.
244
245 ** Changes in Texinfo mode.
246
247 ** A couple of new key bindings have been added for inserting Texinfo
248 macros
249
250 Key binding Macro
251 -------------------------
252 C-c C-c C-s @strong
253 C-c C-c C-e @emph
254 C-c C-c u @url
255 C-c C-c q @quotation
256 C-c C-c m @email
257
258 ** Changes in Outline mode.
259
260 There is now support for Imenu to index headings. A new command
261 `outline-headers-as-kill' copies the visible headings in the region to
262 the kill ring, e.g. to produce a table of contents.
263
264 ** Changes to Show Paren mode.
265
266 *** Overlays used by Show Paren mode now use a priority property.
267 The new user option show-paren-priority specifies the priority to
268 use. Default is 1000.
269
270 ** New command M-x check-parens can be used to find unbalanced paren
271 groups and strings in buffers in Lisp mode (or other modes).
272
273 +++
274 ** You can now easily create new *Info* buffers using either
275 M-x clone-buffer, C-u m <entry> RET or C-u g <entry> RET.
276 M-x clone-buffer can also be used on *Help* and several other special
277 buffers.
278
279 +++
280 ** Emacs can now support 'wheeled' mice (such as the MS IntelliMouse)
281 under XFree86. To enable this, simply put (mwheel-install) in your
282 .emacs file.
283
284 The variables `mwheel-follow-mouse' and `mwheel-scroll-amount'
285 determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled.
286
287 ** Listing buffers with M-x list-buffers (C-x C-b) now shows
288 abbreviated file names. Abbreviations can be customized by changing
289 `directory-abbrev-alist'.
290
291 ** Faces and frame parameters.
292
293 There are four new faces `scroll-bar', `border', `cursor' and `mouse'.
294 Setting the frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
295 `scroll-bar-background' sets foreground and background color of face
296 `scroll-bar' and vice versa. Setting frame parameter `border-color'
297 sets the background color of face `border' and vice versa. Likewise
298 for frame parameters `cursor-color' and face `cursor', and frame
299 parameter `mouse-color' and face `mouse'.
300
301 Changing frame parameter `font' sets font-related attributes of the
302 `default' face and vice versa. Setting frame parameters
303 `foreground-color' or `background-color' sets the colors of the
304 `default' face and vice versa.
305
306 ** New face `menu'.
307
308 The face `menu' can be used to change colors and font of Emacs' menus.
309 Setting the font of LessTif/Motif menus is currently not supported;
310 attempts to set the font are ignored in this case.
311
312 +++
313 ** New frame parameter `screen-gamma' for gamma correction.
314
315 The new frame parameter `screen-gamma' specifies gamma-correction for
316 colors. Its value may be nil, the default, in which case no gamma
317 correction occurs, or a number > 0, usually a float, that specifies
318 the screen gamma of a frame's display.
319
320 PC monitors usually have a screen gamma of 2.2. smaller values result
321 in darker colors. You might want to try a screen gamma of 1.5 for LCD
322 color displays. The viewing gamma Emacs uses is 0.4545. (1/2.2).
323
324 The X resource name of this parameter is `screenGamma', class
325 `ScreenGamma'.
326
327 ** Emacs has a new redisplay engine.
328
329 The new redisplay handles characters of variable width and height.
330 Italic text can be used without redisplay problems. Fonts containing
331 oversized characters, i.e. characters larger than the logical height
332 of a font can be used. Images of various formats can be displayed in
333 the text.
334
335 ** Emacs has a new face implementation.
336
337 The new faces no longer fundamentally use X font names to specify the
338 font. Instead, each face has several independent attributes--family,
339 height, width, weight and slant--that it may or may not specify.
340 These attributes can be merged from various faces, and then together
341 specify a font.
342
343 Faces are supported on terminals that can display color or fonts.
344 These terminal capabilities are auto-detected. Details can be found
345 under Lisp changes, below.
346
347 ** New default font is Courier 12pt.
348
349 +++
350 ** When using a windowing terminal, each Emacs window now has a cursor
351 of its own. When the window is selected, the cursor is solid;
352 otherwise, it is hollow.
353
354 ** Bitmap areas to the left and right of windows are used to display
355 truncation marks, continuation marks, overlay arrows and alike. The
356 foreground, background, and stipple of these areas can be changed by
357 customizing face `fringe'.
358
359 ** The mode line under X is now drawn with shadows by default. You
360 can change its appearance by modifying the face `modeline'.
361
362 ** LessTif support.
363
364 Emacs now runs with the LessTif toolkit (see <http://www.lesstif.org>).
365 You will need a version 0.88.1 or later.
366
367 ** Toolkit scroll bars.
368
369 Emacs now uses toolkit scrollbars if available. When configured for
370 LessTif/Motif, it will use that toolkit's scrollbar. Otherwise, when
371 configured for Lucid and Athena widgets, it will use the Xaw3d scroll
372 bar if Xaw3d is available. You can turn off the use of toolkit scroll
373 bars by specifying `--with-toolkit-scroll-bars=no' when configuring
374 Emacs.
375
376 When you encounter problems with the Xaw3d scroll bar, watch out how
377 Xaw3d is compiled on your system. If the Makefile generated from
378 Xaw3d's Imakefile contains a `-DNARROWPROTO' compiler option, and your
379 Emacs system configuration file `s/your-system.h' does not contain a
380 define for NARROWPROTO, you might consider adding it. Take
381 `s/freebsd.h' as an example.
382
383 Alternatively, if you don't have access to the Xaw3d source code, take
384 a look at your system's imake configuration file, for example in the
385 directory `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config' (paths are different on
386 different systems). You will find files `*.cf' there. If your
387 system's cf-file contains a line like `#define NeedWidePrototypes NO',
388 add a `#define NARROWPROTO' to your Emacs system configuration file.
389
390 The reason for this is that one Xaw3d function uses `double' or
391 `float' function parameters depending on the setting of NARROWPROTO.
392 This is not a problem when Imakefiles are used because each system's
393 image configuration file contains the necessary information. Since
394 Emacs doesn't use imake, this has do be done manually.
395
396 ** Toggle buttons and radio buttons in menus.
397
398 When compiled with LessTif (or Motif) support, Emacs uses toolkit
399 widgets for radio and toggle buttons in menus. When configured for
400 Lucid, Emacs draws radio buttons and toggle buttons similar to Motif.
401
402 +++
403 ** Highlighting of trailing whitespace.
404
405 When `show-trailing-whitespace' is non-nil, Emacs displays trailing
406 whitespace in the face `trailing-whitespace'. Trailing whitespace is
407 defined as spaces or tabs at the end of a line. To avoid busy
408 highlighting when entering new text, trailing whitespace is not
409 displayed if point is at the end of the line containing the
410 whitespace.
411
412 ** Busy-cursor.
413
414 Emacs can optionally display a busy-cursor under X. You can turn the
415 display on or off by customizing group `cursor'.
416
417 +++
418 ** Blinking cursor
419
420 M-x blink-cursor-mode toggles a blinking cursor under X and on
421 terminals having terminal capabilities `vi', `vs', and `ve'. Blinking
422 and related parameters like frequency and delay can be customized in
423 the group `cursor'.
424
425 ** New font-lock support mode `jit-lock-mode'.
426
427 This support mode is roughly equivalent to `lazy-lock' but is
428 generally faster. It supports stealth and deferred fontification.
429 See the documentation of the function `jit-lock-mode' for more
430 details.
431
432 Font-lock uses jit-lock-mode as default support mode, so you don't
433 have to do anything to activate it.
434
435 ** Tabs and variable-width text.
436
437 Tabs are now displayed with stretch properties; the width of a tab is
438 defined as a multiple of the normal character width of a frame, and is
439 independent of the fonts used in the text where the tab appears.
440 Thus, tabs can be used to line up text in different fonts.
441
442 ** Enhancements of the Lucid menu bar
443
444 +++
445 *** The Lucid menu bar now supports the resource "margin".
446
447 emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 5
448
449 The default margin is 4 which makes the menu bar appear like the
450 LessTif/Motif one.
451
452 *** Arrows that indicate sub-menus are now drawn with shadows, as in
453 LessTif and Motif.
454
455 ** Hscrolling in C code.
456
457 Horizontal scrolling now happens automatically if
458 `automatic-hscrolling' is set (the default). This setting can be
459 customized.
460
461 ** Tool bar support.
462
463 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. For details
464 how to define a tool bar, see the page describing Lisp-level changes.
465
466 +++
467 ** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
468
469 Different parts of the mode line under X have been made
470 mouse-sensitive. Moving the mouse to a mouse-sensitive part in the mode
471 line changes the appearance of the mouse pointer to an arrow, and help
472 about available mouse actions is displayed either in the echo area, or
473 in the tooltip window if you have enabled one.
474
475 Currently, the following actions have been defined:
476
477 - Mouse-1 on the buffer name in the mode line switches between two
478 buffers.
479
480 - Mouse-2 on the buffer-name switches to the next buffer, and
481 M-mouse-2 switches to the previous buffer in the buffer list.
482
483 - Mouse-3 on the buffer-name displays a buffer menu.
484
485 - Mouse-2 on the read-only or modified status in the mode line (`%' or
486 `*') toggles the status.
487
488 - Mouse-3 on the mode name display a minor-mode menu.
489
490 ** LessTif/Motif file selection dialog.
491
492 When Emacs is configured to use LessTif or Motif, reading a file name
493 from a menu will pop up a file selection dialog if `use-dialog-box' is
494 non-nil.
495
496 ** Emacs can display faces on TTY frames.
497
498 Emacs automatically detects terminals that are able to display colors.
499 Faces with a weight greater than normal are displayed extra-bright, if
500 the terminal supports it. Faces with a weight less than normal and
501 italic faces are displayed dimmed, if the terminal supports it.
502 Underlined faces are displayed underlined if possible. Other face
503 attributes such as `overline', `strike-through', and `box' are ignored
504 on terminals.
505
506 ** Sound support
507
508 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (Voxware
509 driver and native BSD driver, a.k.a. Luigi's driver). Currently
510 supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio (*.au).
511
512 +++
513 ** A new variable, backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, gives
514 the highest file uid for which backup-by-copying-when-mismatch will be
515 forced on. The assumption is that uids less than or equal to this
516 value are special uids (root, bin, daemon, etc.--not real system
517 users) and that files owned by these users should not change ownership,
518 even if your system policy allows users other than root to edit them.
519
520 The default is 200; set the variable to nil to disable the feature.
521
522 ** A block cursor can be drawn as wide as the glyph under it under X.
523
524 As an example: if a block cursor is over a tab character, it will be
525 drawn as wide as that tab on the display. To do this, set
526 `x-stretch-cursor' to a non-nil value.
527
528 ** Empty display lines at the end of a buffer may be marked with a
529 bitmap (this is similar to the tilde displayed by vi).
530
531 This behavior is activated by setting the buffer-local variable
532 `indicate-empty-lines' to a non-nil value. The default value of this
533 variable is found in `default-indicate-empty-lines'.
534
535 ** There is a new "aggressive" scrolling method.
536
537 When scrolling up because point is above the window start, if the
538 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-up-aggessively' is a
539 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
540 fraction of the window's height from the bottom of the window.
541
542 When scrolling down because point is below the window end, if the
543 value of the buffer-local variable `scroll-down-aggessively' is a
544 number, Emacs chooses a new window start so that point ends up that
545 fraction of the window's height from the top of the window.
546
547 ** The rectangle commands now avoid inserting undesirable spaces,
548 notably at the end of lines.
549
550 All these functions have been rewritten to avoid inserting unwanted
551 spaces, and an optional prefix now allows them to behave the old way.
552
553 +++
554 There is a new command M-x replace-rectangle.
555
556 ** The new command M-x query-replace-regexp-eval acts like
557 query-replace-regexp, but takes a Lisp expression which is evaluated
558 after each match to get the replacement text.
559
560 ** M-x query-replace recognizes a new command `e' (or `E') that lets
561 you edit the replacement string.
562
563 ** The new command mail-abbrev-complete-alias, bound to `M-TAB', lets
564 you complete mail aliases in the text, analogous to
565 lisp-complete-symbol.
566
567 ** Emacs now resizes mini-windows if appropriate.
568
569 If a message is longer than one line, or minibuffer contents are
570 longer than one line, Emacs now resizes the minibuffer window unless
571 it is on a frame of its own. You can control the maximum minibuffer
572 window size by setting the following variable:
573
574 - User option: max-mini-window-height
575
576 Maximum height for resizing mini-windows. If a float, it specifies a
577 fraction of the mini-window frame's height. If an integer, it
578 specifies a number of lines. If nil, don't resize.
579
580 Default is 0.25.
581
582 ** The command `Info-search' now uses a search history.
583
584 ** Changes to hideshow.el
585
586 Hideshow is now at version 5.x. It uses a new algorithms for block
587 selection and traversal and includes more isearch support.
588
589 *** Generalized block selection and traversal
590
591 A block is now recognized by three things: its start and end regexps
592 (both strings), and a match-data selector (an integer) specifying
593 which sub-expression in the start regexp serves as the place where a
594 `forward-sexp'-like function can operate. Hideshow always adjusts
595 point to this sub-expression before calling `hs-forward-sexp-func'
596 (which for most modes evaluates to `forward-sexp').
597
598 If the match-data selector is not specified, it defaults to zero,
599 i.e., the entire start regexp is valid, w/ no prefix. This is
600 backwards compatible with previous versions of hideshow. Please see
601 the docstring for variable `hs-special-modes-alist' for details.
602
603 *** Isearch support for updating mode line
604
605 During incremental search, if Hideshow minor mode is active, hidden
606 blocks are temporarily shown. The variable `hs-headline' records the
607 line at the beginning of the opened block (preceding the hidden
608 portion of the buffer), and the mode line is refreshed. When a block
609 is re-hidden, the variable is set to nil.
610
611 To show `hs-headline' in the mode line, you may wish to include
612 something like this in your .emacs.
613
614 (add-hook 'hs-minor-mode-hook
615 (lambda ()
616 (add-to-list 'mode-line-format 'hs-headline)))
617
618 ** Changes to Change Log mode and Add-Log functions
619
620 +++
621 If you invoke `add-change-log-entry' from a backup file, it makes an
622 entry appropriate for the file's parent. This is useful for making
623 log entries by comparing a version with deleted functions.
624
625 +++
626 New command M-x change-log-merge merges another log into the current
627 buffer.
628
629 +++
630 New command M-x change-log-redate fixes any old-style date entries in
631 a log file.
632
633 Change Log mode now adds a file's version number to change log entries
634 if user-option `change-log-version-info-enabled' is non-nil.
635
636 Unless the file is under version control the search for a file's
637 version number is performed based on regular expressions from
638 `change-log-version-number-regexp-list' which can be cutomized.
639 Version numbers are only found in the first 10 percent of a file.
640
641 ** Changes in Font Lock
642
643 *** The new function `font-lock-remove-keywords' can be used to remove
644 font-lock keywords from the current buffer or from a specific major
645 mode.
646
647 ** Comint (subshell) changes
648
649 By default, comint no longer uses the variable `comint-prompt-regexp' to
650 distiguish prompts from user-input. Instead, it notices which parts of
651 the text were output by the process, and which entered by the user, and
652 attaches `field' properties to allow emacs commands to use this information.
653 Common movement commands, notably beginning-of-line, respect field
654 boundaries in a fairly natural manner.
655 To disable this feature, and use the old behavior, set the variable
656 `comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields' to a non-nil value.
657
658 Comint now includes new features to send commands to running processes
659 and redirect the output to a designated buffer or buffers.
660
661 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command reads a command and
662 buffer name from the mini-buffer. The command is sent to the current
663 buffer's process, and its output is inserted into the specified buffer.
664
665 The command M-x comint-redirect-send-command-to-process acts like
666 M-x comint-redirect-send-command but additionally reads the name of
667 the buffer whose process should be used from the mini-buffer.
668
669 Packages based on comint.el like shell-mode, and scheme-interaction-mode
670 now highlight user input and program prompts, and support choosing
671 previous input with mouse-2. To control these feature, see the
672 user-options `comint-highlight-input' and `comint-highlight-prompt'.
673
674 ** Changes to Rmail mode
675
676 *** The new user-option rmail-rmail-user-mail-address-regexp can be
677 set to fine tune the identification of of the correspondent when
678 receiving new mail. If it matches the address of the sender, the
679 recipient is taken as correspondent of a mail. If nil, the default,
680 `user-login-name' and `user-mail-address' are used to exclude yourself
681 as correspondent.
682
683 Usually you don't have to set this variable, except if you collect
684 mails sent by you under different user names. Then it should be a
685 regexp matching your mail addresses.
686
687 *** The new user-option rmail-confirm-expunge controls whether and how
688 to ask for confirmation before expunging deleted messages from an
689 Rmail file. You can choose between no confirmation, confirmation
690 with y-or-n-p, or confirmation with yes-or-no-p. Default is to ask
691 for confirmation with yes-or-no-p.
692
693 *** RET is now bound in the Rmail summary to rmail-summary-goto-msg,
694 like `j'.
695
696 *** There is a new user option `rmail-digest-end-regexps' that
697 specifies the regular expressions to detect the line that ends a
698 digest message.
699
700 *** The new user option `rmail-automatic-folder-directives' specifies
701 in which folder to put messages automatically.
702
703 ** Changes to TeX mode
704
705 The default mode has been changed from `plain-tex-mode' to
706 `latex-mode'.
707
708 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
709
710 *** RefTeX has new support for index generation. Index entries can be
711 created with `C-c <', with completion available on index keys.
712 Pressing `C-c /' indexes the word at the cursor with a default
713 macro. `C-c >' compiles all index entries into an alphabetically
714 sorted *Index* buffer which looks like the final index. Entries
715 can be edited from that buffer.
716
717 *** Label and citation key selection now allow to select several
718 items and reference them together (use `m' to mark items, `a' or
719 `A' to use all marked entries).
720
721 *** reftex.el has been split into a number of smaller files to reduce
722 memory use when only a part of RefTeX is being used.
723
724 *** a new command `reftex-view-crossref-from-bibtex' (bound to `C-c &'
725 in BibTeX-mode) can be called in a BibTeX database buffer in order
726 to show locations in LaTeX documents where a particular entry has
727 been cited.
728
729 ** Emacs Lisp mode now allows multiple levels of outline headings.
730 The level of a heading is determined from the number of leading
731 semicolons in a heading line. Toplevel forms starting with a `('
732 in column 1 are always made leaves.
733
734 ** The M-x time-stamp command (most commonly used on write-file-hooks)
735 has the following new features:
736
737 *** The patterns for finding the time stamp and for updating a pattern
738 may match text spanning multiple lines. For example, some people like
739 to have the filename and date on separate lines. The new variable
740 time-stamp-inserts-lines controls the matching for multi-line patterns.
741
742 *** More than one time stamp can be updated in the same file. This
743 feature is useful if you need separate time stamps in a program source
744 file to both include in formatted documentation and insert in the
745 compiled binary. The same time-stamp will be written at each matching
746 pattern. The variable time-stamp-count enables this new feature; it
747 defaults to 1.
748
749 ** Partial Completion mode now completes environment variables in
750 file names.
751
752 +++
753 ** Tooltips.
754
755 Tooltips are small X windows displaying a help string at the current
756 mouse position. To use them, use the Lisp package `tooltip' which you
757 can access via the user option `tooltip-mode'.
758
759 Tooltips also provides support for GUD debugging. If activated,
760 variable values can be displayed in tooltips by pointing at them with
761 the mouse in source buffers. You can customize various aspects of the
762 tooltip display in the group `tooltip'.
763
764 +++
765 ** Customize changes
766
767 *** Customize now supports comments about customized items. Use the
768 `State' menu to add comments. Note that customization comments will
769 cause the customizations to fail in earlier versions of Emacs.
770
771 *** The new option `custom-buffer-done-function' says whether to kill
772 Custom buffers when you've done with them or just bury them (the
773 default).
774
775 *** The keyword :set-after in defcustom allows to specify dependencies
776 between custom options. Example:
777
778 (defcustom default-input-method nil
779 "*Default input method for multilingual text (a string).
780 This is the input method activated automatically by the command
781 `toggle-input-method' (\\[toggle-input-method])."
782 :group 'mule
783 :type '(choice (const nil) string)
784 :set-after '(current-language-environment))
785
786 This specifies that default-input-method should be set after
787 current-language-environment even if default-input-method appears
788 first in a custom-set-variables statement.
789
790 ** New features in evaluation commands
791
792 *** The commands to evaluate Lisp expressions, such as C-M-x in Lisp
793 modes, C-j in Lisp Interaction mode, and M-:, now bind the variables
794 print-level, print-length, and debug-on-error based on the
795 customizable variables eval-expression-print-level,
796 eval-expression-print-length, and eval-expression-debug-on-error.
797
798 *** The function `eval-defun' (M-C-x) now loads Edebug and instruments
799 code when called with a prefix argument.
800
801 ** Ispell changes
802
803 *** The command `ispell' now spell-checks a region if
804 transient-mark-mode is on, and the mark is active. Otherwise it
805 spell-checks the current buffer.
806
807 *** Support for synchronous subprocesses - DOS/Windoze - has been
808 added.
809
810 *** An "alignment error" bug was fixed when a manual spelling
811 correction is made and re-checked.
812
813 *** An Italian and a Portuguese dictionary definition has been added.
814
815 *** Region skipping performance has been vastly improved in some
816 cases.
817
818 *** Spell checking HTML buffers has been improved and isn't so strict
819 on syntax errors.
820
821 *** The buffer-local words are now always placed on a new line at the
822 end of the buffer.
823
824 ** Dired changes
825
826 *** New variable `dired-recursive-deletes' determines if the delete
827 command will delete non-empty directories recursively. The default
828 is, delete only empty directories.
829
830 *** New variable `dired-recursive-copies' determines if the copy
831 command will copy directories recursively. The default is, do not
832 copy directories recursively.
833
834 *** In command `dired-do-shell-command' (usually bound to `!') a `?'
835 in the shell command has a special meaning similar to `*', but with
836 the difference that the command will be run on each file individually.
837
838 *** The new command `dired-find-alternate-file' (usually bound to `a')
839 replaces the Dired buffer with the buffer for an alternate file or
840 directory.
841
842 *** The new command `dired-show-file-type' (usually bound to `w') shows
843 a message in the echo area describing what type of file the point is on.
844 This command invokes the external program `file' do its work, and so
845 will only work on systems with that program, and will be only as
846 accurate or inaccurate as it is.
847
848 *** Dired now properly handles undo changes of adding/removing `-R'
849 from ls switches.
850
851 ** The variable mail-specify-envelope-from controls whether to
852 use the -f option when sending mail.
853
854 ** CC mode changes.
855
856 Note: This release contains changes that might not be compatible with
857 current user setups (although it's believed that these
858 incompatibilities will only show in very uncommon circumstances).
859 However, since the impact is uncertain, these changes may be rolled
860 back depending on user feedback. Therefore there's no forward
861 compatibility guarantee wrt the new features introduced in this
862 release.
863
864 *** c-style-variables-are-local-p now defaults to t.
865 This is an incompatible change that has been made to make the behavior
866 of the style system wrt global variable settings less confusing for
867 non-advanced users. If you know what this variable does you might
868 want to set it to nil in your .emacs, otherwise you probably don't
869 have to bother.
870
871 Defaulting c-style-variables-are-local-p to t avoids the confusing
872 situation that occurs when a user sets some style variables globally
873 and edits both a Java and a non-Java file in the same Emacs session.
874 If the style variables aren't buffer local in this case, loading of
875 the second file will cause the default style (either "gnu" or "java"
876 by default) to override the global settings made by the user.
877
878 *** New initialization procedure for the style system.
879 When the initial style for a buffer is determined by CC Mode (from the
880 variable c-default-style), the global values of style variables now
881 take precedence over the values specified by the chosen style. This
882 is different than the old behavior: previously, the style-specific
883 settings would override the global settings. This change makes it
884 possible to do simple configuration in the intuitive way with
885 Customize or with setq lines in one's .emacs file.
886
887 By default, the global value of every style variable is the new
888 special symbol set-from-style, which causes the value to be taken from
889 the style system. This means that in effect, only an explicit setting
890 of a style variable will cause the "overriding" behavior described
891 above.
892
893 Also note that global settings override style-specific settings *only*
894 when the initial style of a buffer is chosen by a CC Mode major mode
895 function. When a style is chosen in other ways --- for example, by a
896 call like (c-set-style "gnu") in a hook, or via M-x c-set-style ---
897 then the style-specific values take precedence over any global style
898 values. In Lisp terms, global values override style-specific values
899 only when the new second argument to c-set-style is non-nil; see the
900 function documentation for more info.
901
902 The purpose of these changes is to make it easier for users,
903 especially novice users, to do simple customizations with Customize or
904 with setq in their .emacs files. On the other hand, the new system is
905 intended to be compatible with advanced users' customizations as well,
906 such as those that choose styles in hooks or whatnot. This new system
907 is believed to be almost entirely compatible with current
908 configurations, in spite of the changed precedence between style and
909 global variable settings when a buffer's default style is set.
910
911 (Thanks to Eric Eide for clarifying this explanation a bit.)
912
913 **** c-offsets-alist is now a customizable variable.
914 This became possible as a result of the new initialization behavior.
915
916 This variable is treated slightly differently from the other style
917 variables; instead of using the symbol set-from-style, it will be
918 completed with the syntactic symbols it doesn't already contain when
919 the style is first initialized. This means it now defaults to the
920 empty list to make all syntactic elements get their values from the
921 style system.
922
923 **** Compatibility variable to restore the old behavior.
924 In case your configuration doesn't work with this change, you can set
925 c-old-style-variable-behavior to non-nil to get the old behavior back
926 as far as possible.
927
928 *** Improvements to line breaking and text filling.
929 CC Mode now handles this more intelligently and seamlessly wrt the
930 surrounding code, especially inside comments. For details see the new
931 chapter about this in the manual.
932
933 **** New variable to recognize comment line prefix decorations.
934 The variable c-comment-prefix-regexp has been added to properly
935 recognize the line prefix in both block and line comments. It's
936 primarily used to initialize the various paragraph recognition and
937 adaptive filling variables that the text handling functions uses.
938
939 **** New variable c-block-comment-prefix.
940 This is a generalization of the now obsolete variable
941 c-comment-continuation-stars to handle arbitrary strings.
942
943 **** CC Mode now uses adaptive fill mode.
944 This to make it adapt better to the paragraph style inside comments.
945
946 It's also possible to use other adaptive filling packages inside CC
947 Mode, notably Kyle E. Jones' Filladapt mode (http://wonderworks.com/).
948 A new convenience function c-setup-filladapt sets up Filladapt for use
949 inside CC Mode.
950
951 Note though that the 2.12 version of Filladapt lacks a feature that
952 causes it to work suboptimally when c-comment-prefix-regexp can match
953 the empty string (which it commonly does). A patch for that is
954 available from the CC Mode web site (http://www.python.org/emacs/
955 cc-mode/).
956
957 **** It's now possible to selectively turn off auto filling.
958 The variable c-ignore-auto-fill is used to ignore auto fill mode in
959 specific contexts, e.g. in preprocessor directives and in string
960 literals.
961
962 **** New context sensitive line break function c-context-line-break.
963 It works like newline-and-indent in normal code, and adapts the line
964 prefix according to the comment style when used inside comments. If
965 you're normally using newline-and-indent, you might want to switch to
966 this function.
967
968 *** Fixes to IDL mode.
969 It now does a better job in recognizing only the constructs relevant
970 to IDL. E.g. it no longer matches "class" as the beginning of a
971 struct block, but it does match the CORBA 2.3 "valuetype" keyword.
972 Thanks to Eric Eide.
973
974 *** Improvements to the Whitesmith style.
975 It now keeps the style consistently on all levels and both when
976 opening braces hangs and when they don't.
977
978 **** New lineup function c-lineup-whitesmith-in-block.
979
980 *** New lineup functions c-lineup-template-args and c-indent-multi-line-block.
981 See their docstrings for details. c-lineup-template-args does a
982 better job of tracking the brackets used as parens in C++ templates,
983 and is used by default to line up continued template arguments.
984
985 *** c-lineup-comment now preserves alignment with a comment on the
986 previous line. It used to instead preserve comments that started in
987 the column specified by comment-column.
988
989 *** c-lineup-C-comments handles "free form" text comments.
990 In comments with a long delimiter line at the start, the indentation
991 is kept unchanged for lines that start with an empty comment line
992 prefix. This is intended for the type of large block comments that
993 contain documentation with its own formatting. In these you normally
994 don't want CC Mode to change the indentation.
995
996 *** The `c' syntactic symbol is now relative to the comment start
997 instead of the previous line, to make integers usable as lineup
998 arguments.
999
1000 *** All lineup functions have gotten docstrings.
1001
1002 *** More preprocessor directive movement functions.
1003 c-down-conditional does the reverse of c-up-conditional.
1004 c-up-conditional-with-else and c-down-conditional-with-else are
1005 variants of these that also stops at "#else" lines (suggested by Don
1006 Provan).
1007
1008 *** Minor improvements to many movement functions in tricky situations.
1009
1010 ** Makefile mode changes
1011
1012 *** The mode now uses the abbrev table `makefile-mode-abbrev-table'.
1013
1014 *** Conditionals and include statements are now highlighted when
1015 Fontlock mode is active.
1016
1017 ** Isearch changes
1018
1019 *** Isearch now puts a call to `isearch-resume' in the command history,
1020 so that searches can be resumed.
1021
1022 *** In Isearch mode, M-C-s and M-C-r are now bound like C-s and C-r,
1023 respectively, i.e. you can repeat a regexp isearch with the same keys
1024 that started the search.
1025
1026 *** In Isearch mode, mouse-2 in the echo area now yanks the current
1027 selection into the search string rather than giving an error.
1028
1029 *** There is a new lazy highlighting feature in incremental search.
1030
1031 Lazy highlighting is switched on/off by customizing variable
1032 `isearch-lazy-highlight'. When active, all matches for the current
1033 search string are highlighted. The current match is highlighted as
1034 before using face `isearch' or `region'. All other matches are
1035 highlighted using face `isearch-lazy-highlight-face' which defaults to
1036 `secondary-selection'.
1037
1038 The extra highlighting makes it easier to anticipate where the cursor
1039 will end up each time you press C-s or C-r to repeat a pending search.
1040 Highlighting of these additional matches happens in a deferred fashion
1041 using "idle timers," so the cycles needed do not rob isearch of its
1042 usual snappy response.
1043
1044 If `isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup' is set to t, highlights for
1045 matches are automatically cleared when you end the search. If it is
1046 set to nil, you can remove the highlights manually with `M-x
1047 isearch-lazy-highlight-cleanup'.
1048
1049 ** Changes in sort.el
1050
1051 The function sort-numeric-fields interprets numbers starting with `0'
1052 as octal and numbers starting with `0x' or `0X' as hexadecimal. The
1053 new user-option sort-numberic-base can be used to specify a default
1054 numeric base.
1055
1056 ** Changes to Ange-ftp
1057
1058 +++
1059 *** Ange-ftp allows you to specify of a port number in remote file
1060 names cleanly. It is appended to the host name, separated by a hash
1061 sign, e.g. `/foo@bar.org#666:mumble'. (This syntax comes from EFS.)
1062
1063 *** If the new user-option `ange-ftp-try-passive-mode' is set, passive
1064 ftp mode will be used if the ftp client supports that.
1065
1066 *** Ange-ftp handles the output of the w32-style clients which
1067 output ^M at the end of lines.
1068
1069 ** Shell script mode changes.
1070
1071 Shell script mode (sh-script) can now indent scripts for shells
1072 derived from sh and rc. The indentation style is customizeable, and
1073 sh-script can attempt to "learn" the current buffer's style.
1074
1075 ** Etags changes.
1076
1077 *** In DOS, etags looks for file.cgz if it cannot find file.c.
1078
1079 *** New option --ignore-case-regex is an alternative to --regex. It is now
1080 possible to bind a regexp to a language, by prepending the regexp with
1081 {lang}, where lang is one of the languages that `etags --help' prints out.
1082 This feature is useful especially for regex files, where each line contains
1083 a regular expression. The manual contains details.
1084
1085 *** In C and derived languages, etags creates tags for function
1086 declarations when given the --declarations option.
1087
1088 *** In C++, tags are created for "operator". The tags have the form
1089 "operator+", without spaces between the keyword and the operator.
1090
1091 *** New language Ada: tags are functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and
1092 types.
1093
1094 *** In Fortran, `procedure' is not tagged.
1095
1096 *** In Java, tags are created for "interface".
1097
1098 *** In Lisp, "(defstruct (foo", "(defun (operator" and similar constructs
1099 are now tagged.
1100
1101 *** In Perl, the --globals option tags global variables. my and local
1102 variables are tagged.
1103
1104 *** New language Python: def and class at the beginning of a line are tags.
1105
1106 *** .ss files are Scheme files, .pdb is Postscript with C syntax, .psw is
1107 for PSWrap.
1108
1109 ** Changes in etags.el
1110
1111 *** The new user-option tags-case-fold-search can be used to make
1112 tags operations case-sensitive or case-insensitive. The default
1113 is to use the same setting as case-fold-search.
1114
1115 *** You can display additional output with M-x tags-apropos by setting
1116 the new variable tags-apropos-additional-actions.
1117
1118 If non-nil, the variable's value should be a list of triples (TITLE
1119 FUNCTION TO-SEARCH). For each triple, M-x tags-apropos processes
1120 TO-SEARCH and lists tags from it. TO-SEARCH should be an alist,
1121 obarray, or symbol. If it is a symbol, the symbol's value is used.
1122
1123 TITLE is a string to use to label the list of tags from TO-SEARCH.
1124
1125 FUNCTION is a function to call when an entry is selected in the Tags
1126 List buffer. It is called with one argument, the selected symbol.
1127
1128 A useful example value for this variable might be something like:
1129
1130 '(("Emacs Lisp" Info-goto-emacs-command-node obarray)
1131 ("Common Lisp" common-lisp-hyperspec common-lisp-hyperspec-obarray)
1132 ("SCWM" scwm-documentation scwm-obarray))
1133
1134 *** The face tags-tag-face can be used to customize the appearance
1135 of tags in the output of M-x tags-apropos.
1136
1137 *** Setting tags-apropos-verbose to a non-nil value displays the
1138 names of tags files in the *Tags List* buffer.
1139
1140 +++
1141 ** Emacs now attempts to determine the initial language environment
1142 and preferred and locale coding systems systematically from the
1143 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG environment variables during startup.
1144
1145 ** New language environments `Polish', `Latin-8' and `Latin-9'.
1146 Latin-8 and Latin-9 correspond respectively to the ISO character sets
1147 8859-14 (Celtic) and 8859-15 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro sign).
1148 There is currently no specific input method support for them.
1149
1150 +++
1151 ** Fortran mode has a new command `fortran-strip-sequence-nos' to
1152 remove text past column 72. The syntax class of `\' in Fortran is now
1153 appropriate for C-style escape sequences in strings.
1154
1155 ** SGML mode's default `sgml-validate-command' is now `nsgmls'.
1156
1157 +++
1158 ** A new command `view-emacs-problems' (C-h P) displays the PROBLEMS file.
1159
1160 ** The Dabbrev package has a new user-option `dabbrev-ignore-regexps'
1161 containing a list of regular expressions. Buffers matching a regular
1162 expression from that list, are not checked.
1163
1164 ** Emacs can now figure out modification times of remote files.
1165 When you do C-x C-f /user@host:/path/file RET and edit the file,
1166 and someone else modifies the file, you will be prompted to revert
1167 the buffer, just like for the local files.
1168
1169 ** The buffer menu (C-x C-b) no longer lists the *Buffer List* buffer.
1170
1171 ** New modes and packages
1172
1173 *** The new package timeclock.el is a mode is for keeping track of time
1174 intervals. You can use it for whatever purpose you like, but the
1175 typical scenario is to keep track of how much time you spend working
1176 on certain projects.
1177
1178 *** The new package hi-lock.el, text matching interactively entered
1179 regexp's can be highlighted. For example,
1180
1181 M-x highlight-regexp RET clearly RET RET
1182
1183 will highlight all occurrences of `clearly' using a yellow background
1184 face. New occurrences of `clearly' will be highlighted as they are
1185 typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET' will remove the highlighting.
1186 Any existing face can be used for highlighting and a set of
1187 appropriate faces is provided. The regexps can be written into the
1188 current buffer in a form that will be recognized the next time the
1189 corresponding file is read.
1190
1191 +++
1192 *** The new package zone.el plays games with Emacs' display when
1193 Emacs is idle.
1194
1195 *** The new package xml.el provides a simple but generic XML
1196 parser. It doesn't parse the DTDs however.
1197
1198 *** The comment operations are now provided by the newcomment.el
1199 package which allows different styles of comment-region and should
1200 be more robust while offering the same functionality.
1201
1202 +++
1203 *** The Ebrowse package implements a C++ class browser and tags
1204 facilities tailored for use with C++. It is documented in a
1205 separate Texinfo file.
1206
1207 +++
1208 *** The PCL-CVS package available by either running M-x cvs-examine or
1209 by visiting a CVS administrative directory (with a prefix argument)
1210 provides an alternative interface to VC-dired for CVS. It comes with
1211 `log-view-mode' to view RCS and SCCS logs and `log-edit-mode' used to
1212 enter checkin log messages.
1213
1214 +++
1215 *** The new package called `woman' allows to browse Unix man pages
1216 without invoking external programs.
1217
1218 The command `M-x woman' formats manual pages entirely in Emacs Lisp
1219 and then displays them, like `M-x manual-entry' does. Unlike
1220 `manual-entry', `woman' does not invoke any external programs, so it
1221 is useful on systems such as MS-DOS/MS-Windows where the `man' and
1222 Groff or `troff' commands are not readily available.
1223
1224 The command `M-x woman-find-file' asks for the file name of a man
1225 page, then formats and displays it like `M-x woman' does.
1226
1227 *** The new command M-x re-builder offers a convenient interface for
1228 authoring regular expressions with immediate visual feedback.
1229
1230 The buffer from which the command was called becomes the target for
1231 the regexp editor popping up in a separate window. Matching text in
1232 the target buffer is immediately color marked during the editing.
1233 Each sub-expression of the regexp will show up in a different face so
1234 even complex regexps can be edited and verified on target data in a
1235 single step.
1236
1237 On displays not supporting faces the matches instead blink like
1238 matching parens to make them stand out. On such a setup you will
1239 probably also want to use the sub-expression mode when the regexp
1240 contains such to get feedback about their respective limits.
1241
1242 +++
1243 *** glasses-mode is a minor mode that makes
1244 unreadableIdentifiersLikeThis readable. It works as glasses, without
1245 actually modifying content of a buffer.
1246
1247 *** The package ebnf2ps translates an EBNF to a syntactic chart in
1248 PostScript.
1249
1250 Currently accepts ad-hoc EBNF, ISO EBNF and Bison/Yacc.
1251
1252 The ad-hoc default EBNF syntax has the following elements:
1253
1254 ; comment (until end of line)
1255 A non-terminal
1256 "C" terminal
1257 ?C? special
1258 $A default non-terminal
1259 $"C" default terminal
1260 $?C? default special
1261 A = B. production (A is the header and B the body)
1262 C D sequence (C occurs before D)
1263 C | D alternative (C or D occurs)
1264 A - B exception (A excluding B, B without any non-terminal)
1265 n * A repetition (A repeats n (integer) times)
1266 (C) group (expression C is grouped together)
1267 [C] optional (C may or not occurs)
1268 C+ one or more occurrences of C
1269 {C}+ one or more occurrences of C
1270 {C}* zero or more occurrences of C
1271 {C} zero or more occurrences of C
1272 C / D equivalent to: C {D C}*
1273 {C || D}+ equivalent to: C {D C}*
1274 {C || D}* equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1275 {C || D} equivalent to: [C {D C}*]
1276
1277 Please, see ebnf2ps documentation for EBNF syntax and how to use it.
1278
1279 *** The package align.el will align columns within a region, using M-x
1280 align. Its mode-specific rules, based on regular expressions,
1281 determine where the columns should be split. In C and C++, for
1282 example, it will align variable names in declaration lists, or the
1283 equal signs of assignments.
1284
1285 +++
1286 *** `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' is a new minor mode supporting
1287 paragraphs in the same style as `paragraph-indent-text-mode'.
1288
1289 +++
1290 *** bs.el is a new package for buffer selection similar to
1291 list-buffers or electric-buffer-list. Use M-x bs-show to display a
1292 buffer menu with this package. You can use M-x bs-customize to
1293 customize the package.
1294
1295 *** find-lisp.el is a package emulating the Unix find command in Lisp.
1296
1297 *** calculator.el is a small calculator package that is intended to
1298 replace desktop calculators such as xcalc and calc.exe. Actually, it
1299 is not too small - it has more features than most desktop calculators,
1300 and can be customized easily to get many more functions. It should
1301 not be confused with "calc" which is a much bigger mathematical tool
1302 which answers different needs.
1303
1304 +++
1305 *** The minor modes cwarn-mode and global-cwarn-mode highlights
1306 suspicious C and C++ constructions. Currently, assignments inside
1307 expressions, semicolon following `if', `for' and `while' (except, of
1308 course, after a `do .. while' statement), and C++ functions with
1309 reference parameters are recognized. The modes require font-lock mode
1310 to be enabled.
1311
1312 +++
1313 *** smerge-mode.el provides `smerge-mode', a simple minor-mode for files
1314 containing diff3-style conflict markers, such as generated by RCS.
1315
1316 +++
1317 *** 5x5.el is a simple puzzle game.
1318
1319 +++
1320 *** hl-line.el provides a minor mode to highlight the current line.
1321
1322 *** ansi-color.el translates ANSI terminal escapes into text-properties.
1323
1324 *** delphi.el provides a major mode for editing the Delphi (Object
1325 Pascal) language.
1326
1327 *** quickurl.el provides a simple method of inserting a URL based on
1328 the text at point.
1329
1330 *** sql.el provides an interface to SQL data bases.
1331
1332 +++
1333 *** fortune.el uses the fortune program to create mail/news signatures.
1334
1335 *** whitespace.el ???
1336
1337 *** PostScript mode (ps-mode) is a new major mode for editing PostScript
1338 files. It offers: interaction with a PostScript interpreter, including
1339 (very basic) error handling; fontification, easily customizable for
1340 interpreter messages; auto-indentation; insertion of EPSF templates and
1341 often used code snippets; viewing of BoundingBox; commenting out /
1342 uncommenting regions; conversion of 8bit characters to PostScript octal
1343 codes. All functionality is accessible through a menu.
1344
1345 *** delim-col helps to prettify columns in a text region or rectangle.
1346
1347 Here is an example of columns:
1348
1349 horse apple bus
1350 dog pineapple car EXTRA
1351 porcupine strawberry airplane
1352
1353 Doing the following settings:
1354
1355 (setq delimit-columns-str-before "[ ")
1356 (setq delimit-columns-str-after " ]")
1357 (setq delimit-columns-str-separator ", ")
1358 (setq delimit-columns-separator "\t")
1359
1360
1361 Selecting the lines above and typing:
1362
1363 M-x delimit-columns-region
1364
1365 It results:
1366
1367 [ horse , apple , bus , ]
1368 [ dog , pineapple , car , EXTRA ]
1369 [ porcupine, strawberry, airplane, ]
1370
1371 delim-col has the following options:
1372
1373 delimit-columns-str-before Specify a string to be inserted
1374 before all columns.
1375
1376 delimit-columns-str-separator Specify a string to be inserted
1377 between each column.
1378
1379 delimit-columns-str-after Specify a string to be inserted
1380 after all columns.
1381
1382 delimit-columns-separator Specify a regexp which separates
1383 each column.
1384
1385 delim-col has the following commands:
1386
1387 delimit-columns-region Prettify all columns in a text region.
1388 delimit-columns-rectangle Prettify all columns in a text rectangle.
1389
1390 +++
1391 *** The package recentf.el maintains a menu for visiting files that
1392 were operated on recently.
1393
1394 M-x recentf-mode RET toggles recentf mode.
1395
1396 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-mode RET can be used to enable
1397 recentf at Emacs startup.
1398
1399 M-x customize-variable RET recentf-menu-filter RET to specify a menu
1400 filter function to change the menu appearance. For example, the recent
1401 file list can be displayed:
1402
1403 - organized by major modes, directories or user defined rules.
1404 - sorted by file pathes, file names, ascending or descending.
1405 - showing pathes relative to the current default-directory
1406
1407 The `recentf-filter-changer' menu filter function allows to
1408 dynamically change the menu appearance.
1409
1410 *** elide-head.el provides a mechanism for eliding boilerplate header
1411 text.
1412
1413 +++
1414 *** footnote.el provides `footnote-mode', a minor mode supporting use
1415 of footnotes. It is intended for use with Message mode, but isn't
1416 specific to Message mode.
1417
1418 +++
1419 *** diff-mode.el provides `diff-mode', a major mode for
1420 viewing/editing context diffs (patches). It is selected for files
1421 with extension `.diff', `.diffs', `.patch' and `.rej'.
1422
1423 +++
1424 *** EUDC, the Emacs Unified Directory Client, provides a common user
1425 interface to access directory servers using different directory
1426 protocols. It has a separate manual.
1427
1428 *** autoconf.el provides a major mode for editing configure.in files
1429 for Autoconf, selected automatically.
1430
1431 +++
1432 *** windmove.el provides moving between windows.
1433
1434 *** crm.el provides a facility to read multiple strings from the
1435 minibuffer with completion.
1436
1437 *** todo-mode.el provides management of TODO lists and integration
1438 with the diary features.
1439
1440 *** autoarg.el provides a feature reported from Twenex Emacs whereby
1441 numeric keys supply prefix args rather than self inserting.
1442
1443 *** The function `turn-off-auto-fill' unconditionally turns off Auto
1444 Fill mode.
1445
1446 ** Withdrawn packages
1447
1448 *** mldrag.el has been removed. mouse.el provides the same
1449 functionality with aliases for the mldrag functions.
1450
1451 *** eval-reg.el has been obsoleted by changes to edebug.el and removed.
1452
1453 *** ph.el has been obsoleted by EUDC and removed.
1454
1455 \f
1456 * Lisp changes made after edition 2.6 of the Emacs Lisp Manual,
1457 (Display-related features are described in a page of their own below.)
1458
1459 +++
1460 ** Reading from the mini-buffer now reads from standard input if Emacs
1461 is running in batch mode. For example,
1462
1463 (message "%s" (read t))
1464
1465 will read a Lisp expression from standard input and print the result
1466 to standard output.
1467
1468 +++
1469 ** The argument of `down-list', `backward-up-list', `up-list',
1470 `kill-sexp', `backward-kill-sexp' and `mark-sexp' is now optional.
1471
1472 ** If `display-buffer-reuse-frames' is set, function `display-buffer'
1473 will raise frames displaying a buffer, instead of creating a new
1474 frame or window.
1475
1476 ** Two new functions for removing elements from lists/sequences
1477 were added
1478
1479 - Function: remove ELT SEQ
1480
1481 Return a copy of SEQ with all occurences of ELT removed. SEQ must be
1482 a list, vector, or string. The comparison is done with `equal'.
1483
1484 - Function: remq ELT LIST
1485
1486 Return a copy of LIST with all occurences of ELT removed. The
1487 comparison is done with `eq'.
1488
1489 ** The function `delete' now also works with vectors and strings.
1490
1491 ** The meaning of the `:weakness WEAK' argument of make-hash-table
1492 has been changed.
1493
1494 +++
1495 ** Function `aset' stores any multibyte character in any string
1496 without signaling "Attempt to change char length of a string". It may
1497 convert a unibyte string to multibyte if necessary.
1498
1499 ** The value of the `help-echo' text property is called as a function
1500 or evaluated, if it is not a string already, to obtain a help string.
1501
1502 ** Function `make-obsolete' now has an optional arg to say when the
1503 function was declared obsolete.
1504
1505 ** Function `plist-member' is renamed from `widget-plist-member' (which is
1506 retained as an alias).
1507
1508 ** Easy-menu's :filter now works as in XEmacs.
1509 It takes the unconverted (i.e. XEmacs) form of the menu and the result
1510 is automatically converted to Emacs' form.
1511
1512 ** The new function `window-list' has been defined
1513
1514 - Function: window-list &optional WINDOW MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES
1515
1516 Return a list of windows in canonical order. The parameters WINDOW,
1517 MINIBUF and ALL-FRAMES are defined like for `next-window'.
1518
1519 ** There's a new function `some-window' defined as follows
1520
1521 - Function: some-window PREDICATE &optional MINIBUF ALL-FRAMES DEFAULT
1522
1523 Return a window satisfying PREDICATE.
1524
1525 This function cycles through all visible windows using `walk-windows',
1526 calling PREDICATE on each one. PREDICATE is called with a window as
1527 argument. The first window for which PREDICATE returns a non-nil
1528 value is returned. If no window satisfies PREDICATE, DEFAULT is
1529 returned.
1530
1531 Optional second arg MINIBUF t means count the minibuffer window even
1532 if not active. MINIBUF nil or omitted means count the minibuffer iff
1533 it is active. MINIBUF neither t nor nil means not to count the
1534 minibuffer even if it is active.
1535
1536 Several frames may share a single minibuffer; if the minibuffer
1537 counts, all windows on all frames that share that minibuffer count
1538 too. Therefore, if you are using a separate minibuffer frame
1539 and the minibuffer is active and MINIBUF says it counts,
1540 `walk-windows' includes the windows in the frame from which you
1541 entered the minibuffer, as well as the minibuffer window.
1542
1543 ALL-FRAMES is the optional third argument.
1544 ALL-FRAMES nil or omitted means cycle within the frames as specified above.
1545 ALL-FRAMES = `visible' means include windows on all visible frames.
1546 ALL-FRAMES = 0 means include windows on all visible and iconified frames.
1547 ALL-FRAMES = t means include windows on all frames including invisible frames.
1548 If ALL-FRAMES is a frame, it means include windows on that frame.
1549 Anything else means restrict to the selected frame.
1550
1551 ** The function `single-key-description' now encloses function key and
1552 event names in angle brackets. When called with a second optional
1553 argument non-nil, angle brackets won't be printed.
1554
1555 ** If the variable `message-truncate-lines' is bound to t around a
1556 call to `message', the echo area will not be resized to display that
1557 message; it will be truncated instead, as it was done in 20.x.
1558 Default value is nil.
1559
1560 ** The user option `line-number-display-limit' can now be set to nil,
1561 meaning no limit.
1562
1563 ** `select-safe-coding-system' now also checks the most preferred
1564 coding-system if buffer-file-coding-system is `undecided' and
1565 DEFAULT-CODING-SYSTEM is not specified,
1566
1567 ** The function `subr-arity' provides information on the argument list
1568 of a primitive.
1569
1570 ** The text property `keymap' specifies a key map which overrides the
1571 buffer's local map and the map specified by the `local-map' property.
1572 This is probably what most current uses of `local-map' want, rather
1573 than replacing the local map.
1574
1575 ** The obsolete variables before-change-function and
1576 after-change-function are no longer acted upon and have been removed.
1577
1578 ** The function `apropos-mode' runs the hook `apropos-mode-hook'.
1579
1580 ** `concat' no longer accepts individual integer arguments, as
1581 promised long ago.
1582
1583 ** The new function `float-time' returns the current time as a float.
1584 \f
1585 * Lisp changes in Emacs 21.1 (see following page for display-related features)
1586
1587 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
1588 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
1589 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
1590 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
1591
1592 *** The special form `save-restriction' now works correctly even if the
1593 buffer is widened inside the save-restriction and changes made outside
1594 the original restriction. Previously, doing this would cause the saved
1595 restriction to be restored incorrectly.
1596
1597 *** The functions `find-charset-region' and `find-charset-string' include
1598 `eight-bit-control' and/or `eight-bit-graphic' in the returned list
1599 when it finds 8-bit characters. Previously, it included `ascii' in a
1600 multibyte buffer and `unknown' in a unibyte buffer.
1601
1602 *** The functions `set-buffer-modified', `string-as-multibyte' and
1603 `string-as-unibyte' change the byte sequence of a buffer if it
1604 contains a character from the `eight-bit-control' character set.
1605
1606 *** The handling of multibyte sequences in a multibyte buffer is
1607 changed. Previously, a byte sequence matching the pattern
1608 [\200-\237][\240-\377]+ was interpreted as a single character
1609 regardless of the length of the trailing bytes [\240-\377]+. Thus, if
1610 the sequence was longer than what the leading byte indicated, the
1611 extra trailing bytes were ignored by Lisp functions. Now such extra
1612 bytes are independent 8-bit characters belonging to the charset
1613 eight-bit-graphic.
1614
1615 ** Fontsets are now implemented using char-tables.
1616
1617 A fontset can now be specified for for each independent character, for
1618 a group of characters or for a character set rather than just for a
1619 character set as previously.
1620
1621 *** The arguments of the function `set-fontset-font' are changed.
1622 They are NAME, CHARACTER, FONTNAME, and optional FRAME. The function
1623 modifies fontset NAME to use FONTNAME for CHARACTER.
1624
1625 CHARACTER may be a cons (FROM . TO), where FROM and TO are non-generic
1626 characters. In that case FONTNAME is used for all characters in the
1627 range FROM and TO (inclusive). CHARACTER may be a charset. In that
1628 case FONTNAME is used for all character in the charset.
1629
1630 FONTNAME may be a cons (FAMILY . REGISTRY), where FAMILY is the family
1631 name of a font and REGSITRY is a registry name of a font.
1632
1633 *** Variable x-charset-registry has been deleted. The default charset
1634 registries of character sets are set in the default fontset
1635 "fontset-default".
1636
1637 *** The function `create-fontset-from-fontset-spec' ignores the second
1638 argument STYLE-VARIANT. It never creates style-variant fontsets.
1639
1640 ** The method of composing characters is changed. Now character
1641 composition is done by a special text property `composition' in
1642 buffers and strings.
1643
1644 *** Charset composition is deleted. Emacs never creates a `composite
1645 character' which is an independent character with a unique character
1646 code. Thus the following functions handling `composite characters'
1647 have been deleted: composite-char-component,
1648 composite-char-component-count, composite-char-composition-rule,
1649 composite-char-composition-rule and decompose-composite-char delete.
1650 The variables leading-code-composition and min-composite-char have
1651 also been deleted.
1652
1653 *** Three more glyph reference points are added. They can be used to
1654 specify a composition rule. See the documentation of the variable
1655 `reference-point-alist' for more detail.
1656
1657 *** The function `compose-region' takes new arguments COMPONENTS and
1658 MODIFICATION-FUNC. With COMPONENTS, you can specify not only a
1659 composition rule but also characters to be composed. Such characters
1660 may differ between buffer and string text.
1661
1662 *** The function `compose-string' takes new arguments START, END,
1663 COMPONENTS, and MODIFICATION-FUNC.
1664
1665 *** The function `compose-string' puts text property `composition'
1666 directly on the argument STRING instead of returning a new string.
1667 Likewise, the function `decompose-string' just removes text property
1668 `composition' from STRING.
1669
1670 *** The new function `find-composition' returns information about
1671 a composition at a specified position in a buffer or a string.
1672
1673 *** The function `decompose-composite-char' is now labeled as
1674 obsolete.
1675
1676 ** The new character set `mule-unicode-0100-24ff' is introduced for
1677 Unicode characters of the range U+0100..U+24FF. Currently, this
1678 character set is not used.
1679
1680 ** The new character sets `japanese-jisx0213-1' and
1681 `japanese-jisx0213-2' are introduced for the new Japanese standard JIS
1682 X 0213 Plane 1 and Plane 2.
1683
1684 +++
1685 ** The new character sets `eight-bit-control' and `eight-bit-graphic'
1686 are introduced for 8-bit characters in the ranges 0x80..0x9F and
1687 0xA0..0xFF respectively.
1688
1689 +++
1690 ** If the APPEND argument of `write-region' is an integer, it seeks to
1691 that offset in the file before writing.
1692
1693 ** The function `add-minor-mode' has been added for convenience and
1694 compatibility with XEmacs (and is used internally by define-minor-mode).
1695
1696 ** The function `shell-command' now sets the default directory of the
1697 `*Shell Command Output*' buffer to the default directory of the buffer
1698 from which the command was issued.
1699
1700 ** The functions `query-replace', `query-replace-regexp',
1701 `query-replace-regexp-eval' `map-query-replace-regexp',
1702 `replace-string', `replace-regexp', and `perform-replace' take two
1703 additional optional arguments START and END that specify the region to
1704 operate on.
1705
1706 ** The new function `count-screen-lines' is a more flexible alternative
1707 to `window-buffer-height'.
1708
1709 - Function: count-screen-lines &optional BEG END COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE WINDOW
1710
1711 Return the number of screen lines in the region between BEG and END.
1712 The number of screen lines may be different from the number of actual
1713 lines, due to line breaking, display table, etc.
1714
1715 Optional arguments BEG and END default to `point-min' and `point-max'
1716 respectively.
1717
1718 If region ends with a newline, ignore it unless optinal third argument
1719 COUNT-FINAL-NEWLINE is non-nil.
1720
1721 The optional fourth argument WINDOW specifies the window used for
1722 obtaining parameters such as width, horizontal scrolling, and so
1723 on. The default is to use the selected window's parameters.
1724
1725 Like `vertical-motion', `count-screen-lines' always uses the current
1726 buffer, regardless of which buffer is displayed in WINDOW. This makes
1727 possible to use `count-screen-lines' in any buffer, whether or not it
1728 is currently displayed in some window.
1729
1730 ** The new function `mapc' is like `mapcar' but doesn't collect the
1731 argument function's results.
1732
1733 ** The functions base64-decode-region and base64-decode-string now
1734 signal an error instead of returning nil if decoding fails.
1735
1736 ** The function sendmail-user-agent-compose now recognizes a `body'
1737 header is the list of headers passed to it.
1738
1739 ** The new function member-ignore-case works like `member', but
1740 ignores differences in case and text representation.
1741
1742 ** The buffer-local variable cursor-type can be used to specify the
1743 cursor to use in windows displaying a buffer. Values are interpreted
1744 as follows:
1745
1746 t use the cursor specified for the frame (default)
1747 nil don't display a cursor
1748 `bar' display a bar cursor with default width
1749 (bar . WIDTH) display a bar cursor with width WIDTH
1750 others display a box cursor.
1751
1752 ** The variable open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start controls whether
1753 an open parenthesis in column 0 is considered to be the start of a
1754 defun. If set, the default, it is considered a defun start. If not
1755 set, an open parenthesis in column 0 has no special meaning.
1756
1757 ** The new function `string-to-syntax' can be used to translate syntax
1758 specifications in string form as accepted by `modify-syntax-entry' to
1759 the cons-cell form that is used for the values of the `syntax-table'
1760 text property, and in `font-lock-syntactic-keywords'.
1761
1762 Example:
1763
1764 (string-to-syntax "()")
1765 => (4 . 41)
1766
1767 ** Emacs' reader supports CL read syntax for integers in bases
1768 other than 10.
1769
1770 *** `#BINTEGER' or `#bINTEGER' reads INTEGER in binary (radix 2).
1771 INTEGER optionally contains a sign.
1772
1773 #b1111
1774 => 15
1775 #b-1111
1776 => -15
1777
1778 *** `#OINTEGER' or `#oINTEGER' reads INTEGER in octal (radix 8).
1779
1780 #o666
1781 => 438
1782
1783 *** `#XINTEGER' or `#xINTEGER' reads INTEGER in hexadecimal (radix 16).
1784
1785 #xbeef
1786 => 48815
1787
1788 *** `#RADIXrINTEGER' reads INTEGER in radix RADIX, 2 <= RADIX <= 36.
1789
1790 #2R-111
1791 => -7
1792 #25rah
1793 => 267
1794
1795 ** The function `documentation-property' now evaluates the value of
1796 the given property to obtain a string if it doesn't refer to etc/DOC
1797 and isn't a string.
1798
1799 ** If called for a symbol, the function `documentation' now looks for
1800 a `function-documentation' property of that symbol. If it has a non-nil
1801 value, the documentation is taken from that value. If the value is
1802 not a string, it is evaluated to obtain a string.
1803
1804 +++
1805 ** The last argument of `define-key-after' defaults to t for convenience.
1806
1807 ** The new function `replace-regexp-in-string' replaces all matches
1808 for a regexp in a string.
1809
1810 ** `mouse-position' now runs the abnormal hook
1811 `mouse-position-function'.
1812
1813 ** The function string-to-number now returns a float for numbers
1814 that don't fit into a Lisp integer.
1815
1816 ** The variable keyword-symbols-constants-flag has been removed.
1817 Keywords are now always considered constants.
1818
1819 +++
1820 ** The new function `delete-and-extract-region' deletes text and
1821 returns it.
1822
1823 ** The function `clear-this-command-keys' now also clears the vector
1824 returned by function `recent-keys'.
1825
1826 +++
1827 ** Variables `beginning-of-defun-function' and `end-of-defun-function'
1828 can be used to define handlers for the functions that find defuns.
1829 Major modes can define these locally instead of rebinding M-C-a
1830 etc. if the normal conventions for defuns are not appropriate for the
1831 mode.
1832
1833 +++
1834 ** easy-mmode-define-minor-mode now takes an additional BODY argument
1835 and is renamed `define-minor-mode'.
1836
1837 +++
1838 ** If an abbrev has a hook function which is a symbol, and that symbol
1839 has a non-nil `no-self-insert' property, the return value of the hook
1840 function specifies whether an expansion has been done or not. If it
1841 returns nil, abbrev-expand also returns nil, meaning "no expansion has
1842 been performed."
1843
1844 When abbrev expansion is done by typing a self-inserting character,
1845 and the abbrev has a hook with the `no-self-insert' property, and the
1846 hook function returns non-nil meaning expansion has been done,
1847 then the self-inserting character is not inserted.
1848
1849 +++
1850 ** The function `intern-soft' now accepts a symbol as first argument.
1851 In this case, that exact symbol is looked up in the specified obarray,
1852 and the function's value is nil if it is not found.
1853
1854 +++
1855 ** The new macro `with-syntax-table' can be used to evaluate forms
1856 with the syntax table of the current buffer temporarily set to a
1857 specified table.
1858
1859 (with-syntax-table TABLE &rest BODY)
1860
1861 Evaluate BODY with syntax table of current buffer set to a copy of
1862 TABLE. The current syntax table is saved, BODY is evaluated, and the
1863 saved table is restored, even in case of an abnormal exit. Value is
1864 what BODY returns.
1865
1866 +++
1867 ** Regular expressions now support intervals \{n,m\} as well as
1868 Perl's shy-groups \(?:...\) and non-greedy *? +? and ?? operators.
1869
1870 +++
1871 ** The optional argument BUFFER of function file-local-copy has been
1872 removed since it wasn't used by anything.
1873
1874 +++
1875 ** The file name argument of function `file-locked-p' is now required
1876 instead of being optional.
1877
1878 +++
1879 ** The new built-in error `text-read-only' is signaled when trying to
1880 modify read-only text.
1881
1882 +++
1883 ** New functions and variables for locales.
1884
1885 The new variable `locale-coding-system' specifies how to encode and
1886 decode strings passed to low-level message functions like strerror and
1887 time functions like strftime. The new variables
1888 `system-messages-locale' and `system-time-locale' give the system
1889 locales to be used when invoking these two types of functions.
1890
1891 The new function `set-locale-environment' sets the language
1892 environment, preferred coding system, and locale coding system from
1893 the system locale as specified by the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG
1894 environment variables. Normally, it is invoked during startup and need
1895 not be invoked thereafter. It uses the new variables
1896 `locale-language-names', `locale-charset-language-names', and
1897 `locale-preferred-coding-systems' to make its decisions.
1898
1899 +++
1900 ** syntax tables now understand nested comments.
1901 To declare a comment syntax as allowing nesting, just add an `n'
1902 modifier to either of the characters of the comment end and the comment
1903 start sequences.
1904
1905 +++
1906 ** The function `pixmap-spec-p' has been renamed `bitmap-spec-p'
1907 because `bitmap' is more in line with the usual X terminology.
1908
1909 +++
1910 ** New function `propertize'
1911
1912 The new function `propertize' can be used to conveniently construct
1913 strings with text properties.
1914
1915 - Function: propertize STRING &rest PROPERTIES
1916
1917 Value is a copy of STRING with text properties assigned as specified
1918 by PROPERTIES. PROPERTIES is a sequence of pairs PROPERTY VALUE, with
1919 PROPERTY being the name of a text property and VALUE being the
1920 specified value of that property. Example:
1921
1922 (propertize "foo" 'face 'bold 'read-only t)
1923
1924 +++
1925 ** push and pop macros.
1926
1927 Simple versions of the push and pop macros of Common Lisp
1928 are now defined in Emacs Lisp. These macros allow only symbols
1929 as the place that holds the list to be changed.
1930
1931 (push NEWELT LISTNAME) add NEWELT to the front of LISTNAME's value.
1932 (pop LISTNAME) return first elt of LISTNAME, and remove it
1933 (thus altering the value of LISTNAME).
1934
1935 ** New dolist and dotimes macros.
1936
1937 Simple versions of the dolist and dotimes macros of Common Lisp
1938 are now defined in Emacs Lisp.
1939
1940 (dolist (VAR LIST [RESULT]) BODY...)
1941 Execute body once for each element of LIST,
1942 using the variable VAR to hold the current element.
1943 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1944
1945 (dotimes (VAR COUNT [RESULT]) BODY...)
1946 Execute BODY with VAR bound to successive integers running from 0,
1947 inclusive, to COUNT, exclusive.
1948 Then return the value of RESULT, or nil if RESULT is omitted.
1949
1950 +++
1951 ** Regular expressions now support Posix character classes such
1952 as [:alpha:], [:space:] and so on.
1953
1954 [:digit:] matches 0 through 9
1955 [:cntrl:] matches ASCII control characters
1956 [:xdigit:] matches 0 through 9, a through f and A through F.
1957 [:blank:] matches space and tab only
1958 [:graph:] matches graphic characters--everything except ASCII control chars,
1959 space, and DEL.
1960 [:print:] matches printing characters--everything except ASCII control chars
1961 and DEL.
1962 [:alnum:] matches letters and digits.
1963 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1964 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1965 [:alpha:] matches letters.
1966 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1967 it matches anything that has word syntax.)
1968 [:ascii:] matches ASCII (unibyte) characters.
1969 [:nonascii:] matches non-ASCII (multibyte) characters.
1970 [:lower:] matches anything lower-case.
1971 [:punct:] matches punctuation.
1972 (But at present, for multibyte characters,
1973 it matches anything that has non-word syntax.)
1974 [:space:] matches anything that has whitespace syntax.
1975 [:upper:] matches anything upper-case.
1976 [:word:] matches anything that has word syntax.
1977
1978 +++
1979 ** Emacs now has built-in hash tables.
1980
1981 The following functions are defined for hash tables:
1982
1983 - Function: make-hash-table ARGS
1984
1985 The argument list ARGS consists of keyword/argument pairs. All arguments
1986 are optional. The following arguments are defined:
1987
1988 :test TEST
1989
1990 TEST must be a symbol specifying how to compare keys. Default is `eql'.
1991 Predefined are `eq', `eql' and `equal'. If TEST is not predefined,
1992 it must have been defined with `define-hash-table-test'.
1993
1994 :size SIZE
1995
1996 SIZE must be an integer > 0 giving a hint to the implementation how
1997 many elements will be put in the hash table. Default size is 65.
1998
1999 :rehash-size REHASH-SIZE
2000
2001 REHASH-SIZE specifies by how much to grow a hash table once it becomes
2002 full. If REHASH-SIZE is an integer, add that to the hash table's old
2003 size to get the new size. Otherwise, REHASH-SIZE must be a float >
2004 1.0, and the new size is computed by multiplying REHASH-SIZE with the
2005 old size. Default rehash size is 1.5.
2006
2007 :rehash-threshold THRESHOLD
2008
2009 THRESHOLD must be a float > 0 and <= 1.0 specifying when to resize the
2010 hash table. It is resized when the ratio of (number of entries) /
2011 (size of hash table) is >= THRESHOLD. Default threshold is 0.8.
2012
2013 :weakness WEAK
2014
2015 WEAK must be either nil, one of the symbols `key, `value',
2016 `key-or-value', `key-and-value', or t, meaning the same as
2017 `key-and-value'. Entries are removed from weak tables during garbage
2018 collection if their key and/or value are not referenced elsewhere
2019 outside of the hash table. Default are non-weak hash tables.
2020
2021 - Function: makehash &optional TEST
2022
2023 Similar to make-hash-table, but only TEST can be specified.
2024
2025 - Function: hash-table-p TABLE
2026
2027 Returns non-nil if TABLE is a hash table object.
2028
2029 - Function: copy-hash-table TABLE
2030
2031 Returns a copy of TABLE. Only the table itself is copied, keys and
2032 values are shared.
2033
2034 - Function: hash-table-count TABLE
2035
2036 Returns the number of entries in TABLE.
2037
2038 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2039
2040 Returns the rehash size of TABLE.
2041
2042 - Function: hash-table-rehash-threshold TABLE
2043
2044 Returns the rehash threshold of TABLE.
2045
2046 - Function: hash-table-rehash-size TABLE
2047
2048 Returns the size of TABLE.
2049
2050 - Function: hash-table-test TABLE
2051
2052 Returns the test TABLE uses to compare keys.
2053
2054 - Function: hash-table-weakness TABLE
2055
2056 Returns the weakness specified for TABLE.
2057
2058 - Function: clrhash TABLE
2059
2060 Clear TABLE.
2061
2062 - Function: gethash KEY TABLE &optional DEFAULT
2063
2064 Look up KEY in TABLE and return its associated VALUE or DEFAULT if
2065 not found.
2066
2067 - Function: puthash KEY VALUE TABLE
2068
2069 Associate KEY with VALUE in TABLE. If KEY is already associated with
2070 another value, replace the old value with VALUE.
2071
2072 - Function: remhash KEY TABLE
2073
2074 Remove KEY from TABLE if it is there.
2075
2076 - Function: maphash FUNCTION TABLE
2077
2078 Call FUNCTION for all elements in TABLE. FUNCTION must take two
2079 arguments KEY and VALUE.
2080
2081 - Function: sxhash OBJ
2082
2083 Return a hash code for Lisp object OBJ.
2084
2085 - Function: define-hash-table-test NAME TEST-FN HASH-FN
2086
2087 Define a new hash table test named NAME. If NAME is specified as
2088 a test in `make-hash-table', the table created will use TEST-FN for
2089 comparing keys, and HASH-FN to compute hash codes for keys. Test
2090 and hash function are stored as symbol property `hash-table-test'
2091 of NAME with a value of (TEST-FN HASH-FN).
2092
2093 TEST-FN must take two arguments and return non-nil if they are the same.
2094
2095 HASH-FN must take one argument and return an integer that is the hash
2096 code of the argument. The function should use the whole range of
2097 integer values for hash code computation, including negative integers.
2098
2099 Example: The following creates a hash table whose keys are supposed to
2100 be strings that are compared case-insensitively.
2101
2102 (defun case-fold-string= (a b)
2103 (compare-strings a nil nil b nil nil t))
2104
2105 (defun case-fold-string-hash (a)
2106 (sxhash (upcase a)))
2107
2108 (define-hash-table-test 'case-fold 'case-fold-string=
2109 'case-fold-string-hash))
2110
2111 (make-hash-table :test 'case-fold)
2112
2113 +++
2114 ** The Lisp reader handles circular structure.
2115
2116 It now works to use the #N= and #N# constructs to represent
2117 circular structures. For example, #1=(a . #1#) represents
2118 a cons cell which is its own cdr.
2119
2120 +++
2121 ** The Lisp printer handles circular structure.
2122
2123 If you bind print-circle to a non-nil value, the Lisp printer outputs
2124 #N= and #N# constructs to represent circular and shared structure.
2125
2126 +++
2127 ** If the second argument to `move-to-column' is anything but nil or
2128 t, that means replace a tab with spaces if necessary to reach the
2129 specified column, but do not add spaces at the end of the line if it
2130 is too short to reach that column.
2131
2132 +++
2133 ** perform-replace has a new feature: the REPLACEMENTS argument may
2134 now be a cons cell (FUNCTION . DATA). This means to call FUNCTION
2135 after each match to get the replacement text. FUNCTION is called with
2136 two arguments: DATA, and the number of replacements already made.
2137
2138 If the FROM-STRING contains any upper-case letters,
2139 perform-replace also turns off `case-fold-search' temporarily
2140 and inserts the replacement text without altering case in it.
2141
2142 +++
2143 ** The function buffer-size now accepts an optional argument
2144 to specify which buffer to return the size of.
2145
2146 +++
2147 ** The calendar motion commands now run the normal hook
2148 calendar-move-hook after moving point.
2149
2150 +++
2151 ** The new variable small-temporary-file-directory specifies a
2152 directory to use for creating temporary files that are likely to be
2153 small. (Certain Emacs features use this directory.) If
2154 small-temporary-file-directory is nil, they use
2155 temporary-file-directory instead.
2156
2157 +++
2158 ** The variable `inhibit-modification-hooks', if non-nil, inhibits all
2159 the hooks that track changes in the buffer. This affects
2160 `before-change-functions' and `after-change-functions', as well as
2161 hooks attached to text properties and overlay properties.
2162
2163 +++
2164 ** assoc-delete-all is a new function that deletes all the
2165 elements of an alist which have a particular value as the car.
2166
2167 +++
2168 ** make-temp-file provides a more reliable way to create a temporary file.
2169
2170 make-temp-file is used like make-temp-name, except that it actually
2171 creates the file before it returns. This prevents a timing error,
2172 ensuring that no other job can use the same name for a temporary file.
2173
2174 +++
2175 ** New exclusive-open feature in `write-region'
2176
2177 The optional seventh arg is now called MUSTBENEW. If non-nil, it insists
2178 on a check for an existing file with the same name. If MUSTBENEW
2179 is `excl', that means to get an error if the file already exists;
2180 never overwrite. If MUSTBENEW is neither nil nor `excl', that means
2181 ask for confirmation before overwriting, but do go ahead and
2182 overwrite the file if the user gives confirmation.
2183
2184 If the MUSTBENEW argument in `write-region' is `excl',
2185 that means to use a special feature in the `open' system call
2186 to get an error if the file exists at that time.
2187 The error reported is `file-already-exists'.
2188
2189 +++
2190 ** Function `format' now handles text properties.
2191
2192 Text properties of the format string are applied to the result string.
2193 If the result string is longer than the format string, text properties
2194 ending at the end of the format string are extended to the end of the
2195 result string.
2196
2197 Text properties from string arguments are applied to the result
2198 string where arguments appear in the result string.
2199
2200 Example:
2201
2202 (let ((s1 "hello, %s")
2203 (s2 "world"))
2204 (put-text-property 0 (length s1) 'face 'bold s1)
2205 (put-text-property 0 (length s2) 'face 'italic s2)
2206 (format s1 s2))
2207
2208 results in a bold-face string with an italic `world' at the end.
2209
2210 +++
2211 ** Messages can now be displayed with text properties.
2212
2213 Text properties are handled as described above for function `format'.
2214 The following example displays a bold-face message with an italic
2215 argument in it.
2216
2217 (let ((msg "hello, %s!")
2218 (arg "world"))
2219 (put-text-property 0 (length msg) 'face 'bold msg)
2220 (put-text-property 0 (length arg) 'face 'italic arg)
2221 (message msg arg))
2222
2223 +++
2224 ** Sound support
2225
2226 Emacs supports playing sound files on GNU/Linux and the free BSDs
2227 (Voxware driver and native BSD driver, aka as Luigi's driver).
2228
2229 Currently supported file formats are RIFF-WAVE (*.wav) and Sun Audio
2230 (*.au). You must configure Emacs with the option `--with-sound=yes'
2231 to enable sound support.
2232
2233 Sound files can be played by calling (play-sound SOUND). SOUND is a
2234 list of the form `(sound PROPERTY...)'. The function is only defined
2235 when sound support is present for the system on which Emacs runs. The
2236 functions runs `play-sound-functions' with one argument which is the
2237 sound to play, before playing the sound.
2238
2239 The following sound properties are supported:
2240
2241 - `:file FILE'
2242
2243 FILE is a file name. If FILE isn't an absolute name, it will be
2244 searched relative to `data-directory'.
2245
2246 - `:data DATA'
2247
2248 DATA is a string containing sound data. Either :file or :data
2249 may be present, but not both.
2250
2251 - `:volume VOLUME'
2252
2253 VOLUME must be an integer in the range 0..100 or a float in the range
2254 0..1. This property is optional.
2255
2256 Other properties are ignored.
2257
2258 ** `multimedia' is a new Finder keyword and Custom group.
2259
2260 ** keywordp is a new predicate to test efficiently for an object being
2261 a keyword symbol.
2262
2263 ** Changes to garbage collection
2264
2265 *** The function garbage-collect now additionally returns the number
2266 of live and free strings.
2267
2268 *** There is a new variable `strings-consed' holding the number of
2269 strings that have been consed so far.
2270
2271 \f
2272 * Lisp-level Display features added after release 2.6 of the Emacs
2273 Lisp Manual
2274
2275 +++
2276 ** Help strings in menu items are now used to provide `help-echo' text.
2277
2278 ** The function `image-size' can be used to determine the size of an
2279 image.
2280
2281 - Function: image-size SPEC &optional PIXELS FRAME
2282
2283 Return the size of an image as a pair (WIDTH . HEIGHT).
2284
2285 SPEC is an image specification. PIXELS non-nil means return sizes
2286 measured in pixels, otherwise return sizes measured in canonical
2287 character units (fractions of the width/height of the frame's default
2288 font). FRAME is the frame on which the image will be displayed.
2289 FRAME nil or omitted means use the selected frame.
2290
2291 ** The function `find-image' can be used to find a usable image
2292 satisfying one of a list of specifications.
2293
2294 +++
2295 ** The STRING argument of `put-image' and `insert-image' is now
2296 optional.
2297
2298 ** Image specifications may contain the property `:ascent center'.
2299
2300 When this property is specified, the image is vertically centered
2301 around a centerline which would be the vertical center of text drawn
2302 at the position of the image, in the manner specified by the text
2303 properties and overlays that apply to the image.
2304
2305 \f
2306 * New Lisp-level Display features in Emacs 21.1
2307
2308 Note that +++ before an item means the Lisp manual has been updated.
2309 --- means that I have decided it does not need to be in the Lisp manual.
2310 When you add a new item, please add it without either +++ or ---
2311 so I will know I still need to look at it -- rms.
2312
2313 ** The function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors can be used
2314 to make Emacs avoid displaying text with bold black foreground on TTYs.
2315
2316 Some terminals, notably PC consoles, emulate bold text by displaying
2317 text in brighter colors. On such a console, a bold black foreground
2318 is displayed in a gray color. If this turns out to be hard to read on
2319 your monitor---the problem occurred with the mode line on
2320 laptops---you can instruct Emacs to ignore the text's boldness, and to
2321 just display it black instead.
2322
2323 This situation can't be detected automatically. You will have to put
2324 a line like
2325
2326 (tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors t)
2327
2328 in your `.emacs'.
2329
2330 ** New face implementation.
2331
2332 Emacs faces have been reimplemented from scratch. They don't use XLFD
2333 font names anymore and face merging now works as expected.
2334
2335 +++
2336 *** New faces.
2337
2338 Each face can specify the following display attributes:
2339
2340 1. Font family or fontset alias name.
2341
2342 2. Relative proportionate width, aka character set width or set
2343 width (swidth), e.g. `semi-compressed'.
2344
2345 3. Font height in 1/10pt
2346
2347 4. Font weight, e.g. `bold'.
2348
2349 5. Font slant, e.g. `italic'.
2350
2351 6. Foreground color.
2352
2353 7. Background color.
2354
2355 8. Whether or not characters should be underlined, and in what color.
2356
2357 9. Whether or not characters should be displayed in inverse video.
2358
2359 10. A background stipple, a bitmap.
2360
2361 11. Whether or not characters should be overlined, and in what color.
2362
2363 12. Whether or not characters should be strike-through, and in what
2364 color.
2365
2366 13. Whether or not a box should be drawn around characters, its
2367 color, the width of the box lines, and 3D appearance.
2368
2369 Faces are frame-local by nature because Emacs allows to define the
2370 same named face (face names are symbols) differently for different
2371 frames. Each frame has an alist of face definitions for all named
2372 faces. The value of a named face in such an alist is a Lisp vector
2373 with the symbol `face' in slot 0, and a slot for each each of the face
2374 attributes mentioned above.
2375
2376 There is also a global face alist `face-new-frame-defaults'. Face
2377 definitions from this list are used to initialize faces of newly
2378 created frames.
2379
2380 A face doesn't have to specify all attributes. Those not specified
2381 have a nil value. Faces specifying all attributes are called
2382 `fully-specified'.
2383
2384 +++
2385 *** Face merging.
2386
2387 The display style of a given character in the text is determined by
2388 combining several faces. This process is called `face merging'. Any
2389 aspect of the display style that isn't specified by overlays or text
2390 properties is taken from the `default' face. Since it is made sure
2391 that the default face is always fully-specified, face merging always
2392 results in a fully-specified face.
2393
2394 +++
2395 *** Face realization.
2396
2397 After all face attributes for a character have been determined by
2398 merging faces of that character, that face is `realized'. The
2399 realization process maps face attributes to what is physically
2400 available on the system where Emacs runs. The result is a `realized
2401 face' in form of an internal structure which is stored in the face
2402 cache of the frame on which it was realized.
2403
2404 Face realization is done in the context of the charset of the
2405 character to display because different fonts and encodings are used
2406 for different charsets. In other words, for characters of different
2407 charsets, different realized faces are needed to display them.
2408
2409 Except for composite characters, faces are always realized for a
2410 specific character set and contain a specific font, even if the face
2411 being realized specifies a fontset. The reason is that the result of
2412 the new font selection stage is better than what can be done with
2413 statically defined font name patterns in fontsets.
2414
2415 In unibyte text, Emacs' charsets aren't applicable; function
2416 `char-charset' reports ASCII for all characters, including those >
2417 0x7f. The X registry and encoding of fonts to use is determined from
2418 the variable `face-default-registry' in this case. The variable is
2419 initialized at Emacs startup time from the font the user specified for
2420 Emacs.
2421
2422 Currently all unibyte text, i.e. all buffers with
2423 `enable-multibyte-characters' nil are displayed with fonts of the same
2424 registry and encoding `face-default-registry'. This is consistent
2425 with the fact that languages can also be set globally, only.
2426
2427 ++++
2428 **** Clearing face caches.
2429
2430 The Lisp function `clear-face-cache' can be called to clear face caches
2431 on all frames. If called with a non-nil argument, it will also unload
2432 unused fonts.
2433
2434 +++
2435 *** Font selection.
2436
2437 Font selection tries to find the best available matching font for a
2438 given (charset, face) combination. This is done slightly differently
2439 for faces specifying a fontset, or a font family name.
2440
2441 If the face specifies a fontset name, that fontset determines a
2442 pattern for fonts of the given charset. If the face specifies a font
2443 family, a font pattern is constructed. Charset symbols have a
2444 property `x-charset-registry' for that purpose that maps a charset to
2445 an XLFD registry and encoding in the font pattern constructed.
2446
2447 Available fonts on the system on which Emacs runs are then matched
2448 against the font pattern. The result of font selection is the best
2449 match for the given face attributes in this font list.
2450
2451 Font selection can be influenced by the user.
2452
2453 The user can specify the relative importance he gives the face
2454 attributes width, height, weight, and slant by setting
2455 face-font-selection-order (faces.el) to a list of face attribute
2456 names. The default is (:width :height :weight :slant), and means
2457 that font selection first tries to find a good match for the font
2458 width specified by a face, then---within fonts with that width---tries
2459 to find a best match for the specified font height, etc.
2460
2461 Setting `face-alternative-font-family-alist' allows the user to
2462 specify alternative font families to try if a family specified by a
2463 face doesn't exist.
2464
2465 +++
2466 **** Scalable fonts
2467
2468 Emacs can make use of scalable fonts but doesn't do so by default,
2469 since the use of too many or too big scalable fonts may crash XFree86
2470 servers.
2471
2472 To enable scalable font use, set the variable
2473 `scalable-fonts-allowed'. A value of nil, the default, means never use
2474 scalable fonts. A value of t means any scalable font may be used.
2475 Otherwise, the value must be a list of regular expressions. A
2476 scalable font may then be used if it matches a regular expression from
2477 that list. Example:
2478
2479 (setq scalable-fonts-allowed '("muleindian-2$"))
2480
2481 allows the use of scalable fonts with registry `muleindian-2'.
2482
2483 +++
2484 *** Functions and variables related to font selection.
2485
2486 - Function: x-family-fonts &optional FAMILY FRAME
2487
2488 Return a list of available fonts of family FAMILY on FRAME. If FAMILY
2489 is omitted or nil, list all families. Otherwise, FAMILY must be a
2490 string, possibly containing wildcards `?' and `*'.
2491
2492 If FRAME is omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Each element of
2493 the result is a vector [FAMILY WIDTH POINT-SIZE WEIGHT SLANT FIXED-P
2494 FULL REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING]. FAMILY is the font family name.
2495 POINT-SIZE is the size of the font in 1/10 pt. WIDTH, WEIGHT, and
2496 SLANT are symbols describing the width, weight and slant of the font.
2497 These symbols are the same as for face attributes. FIXED-P is non-nil
2498 if the font is fixed-pitch. FULL is the full name of the font, and
2499 REGISTRY-AND-ENCODING is a string giving the registry and encoding of
2500 the font. The result list is sorted according to the current setting
2501 of the face font sort order.
2502
2503 - Function: x-font-family-list
2504
2505 Return a list of available font families on FRAME. If FRAME is
2506 omitted or nil, use the selected frame. Value is a list of conses
2507 (FAMILY . FIXED-P) where FAMILY is a font family, and FIXED-P is
2508 non-nil if fonts of that family are fixed-pitch.
2509
2510 - Variable: font-list-limit
2511
2512 Limit for font matching. If an integer > 0, font matching functions
2513 won't load more than that number of fonts when searching for a
2514 matching font. The default is currently 100.
2515
2516 +++
2517 *** Setting face attributes.
2518
2519 For the most part, the new face implementation is interface-compatible
2520 with the old one. Old face attribute related functions are now
2521 implemented in terms of the new functions `set-face-attribute' and
2522 `face-attribute'.
2523
2524 Face attributes are identified by their names which are keyword
2525 symbols. All attributes can be set to `unspecified'.
2526
2527 The following attributes are recognized:
2528
2529 `:family'
2530
2531 VALUE must be a string specifying the font family, e.g. ``courier'',
2532 or a fontset alias name. If a font family is specified, wild-cards `*'
2533 and `?' are allowed.
2534
2535 `:width'
2536
2537 VALUE specifies the relative proportionate width of the font to use.
2538 It must be one of the symbols `ultra-condensed', `extra-condensed',
2539 `condensed', `semi-condensed', `normal', `semi-expanded', `expanded',
2540 `extra-expanded', or `ultra-expanded'.
2541
2542 `:height'
2543
2544 VALUE must be an integer specifying the height of the font to use in
2545 1/10 pt.
2546
2547 `:weight'
2548
2549 VALUE specifies the weight of the font to use. It must be one of the
2550 symbols `ultra-bold', `extra-bold', `bold', `semi-bold', `normal',
2551 `semi-light', `light', `extra-light', `ultra-light'.
2552
2553 `:slant'
2554
2555 VALUE specifies the slant of the font to use. It must be one of the
2556 symbols `italic', `oblique', `normal', `reverse-italic', or
2557 `reverse-oblique'.
2558
2559 `:foreground', `:background'
2560
2561 VALUE must be a color name, a string.
2562
2563 `:underline'
2564
2565 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be underlined. If
2566 VALUE is t, underline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is
2567 a string, underline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly
2568 don't underline.
2569
2570 `:overline'
2571
2572 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be overlined. If
2573 VALUE is t, overline with foreground color of the face. If VALUE is a
2574 string, overline with that color. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't
2575 overline.
2576
2577 `:strike-through'
2578
2579 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be drawn with a line
2580 striking through them. If VALUE is t, use the foreground color of the
2581 face. If VALUE is a string, strike-through with that color. If VALUE
2582 is nil, explicitly don't strike through.
2583
2584 `:box'
2585
2586 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should have a box drawn
2587 around them. If VALUE is nil, explicitly don't draw boxes. If
2588 VALUE is t, draw a box with lines of width 1 in the foreground color
2589 of the face. If VALUE is a string, the string must be a color name,
2590 and the box is drawn in that color with a line width of 1. Otherwise,
2591 VALUE must be a property list of the form `(:line-width WIDTH
2592 :color COLOR :style STYLE)'. If a keyword/value pair is missing from
2593 the property list, a default value will be used for the value, as
2594 specified below. WIDTH specifies the width of the lines to draw; it
2595 defaults to 1. COLOR is the name of the color to draw in, default is
2596 the foreground color of the face for simple boxes, and the background
2597 color of the face for 3D boxes. STYLE specifies whether a 3D box
2598 should be draw. If STYLE is `released-button', draw a box looking
2599 like a released 3D button. If STYLE is `pressed-button' draw a box
2600 that appears like a pressed button. If STYLE is nil, the default if
2601 the property list doesn't contain a style specification, draw a 2D
2602 box.
2603
2604 `:inverse-video'
2605
2606 VALUE specifies whether characters in FACE should be displayed in
2607 inverse video. VALUE must be one of t or nil.
2608
2609 `:stipple'
2610
2611 If VALUE is a string, it must be the name of a file of pixmap data.
2612 The directories listed in the `x-bitmap-file-path' variable are
2613 searched. Alternatively, VALUE may be a list of the form (WIDTH
2614 HEIGHT DATA) where WIDTH and HEIGHT are the size in pixels, and DATA
2615 is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. VALUE nil means
2616 explicitly don't use a stipple pattern.
2617
2618 For convenience, attributes `:family', `:width', `:height', `:weight',
2619 and `:slant' may also be set in one step from an X font name:
2620
2621 `:font'
2622
2623 Set font-related face attributes from VALUE. VALUE must be a valid
2624 XLFD font name. If it is a font name pattern, the first matching font
2625 is used--this is for compatibility with the behavior of previous
2626 versions of Emacs.
2627
2628 For compatibility with Emacs 20, keywords `:bold' and `:italic' can
2629 be used to specify that a bold or italic font should be used. VALUE
2630 must be t or nil in that case. A value of `unspecified' is not allowed."
2631
2632 Please see also the documentation of `set-face-attribute' and
2633 `defface'.
2634
2635 *** Face attributes and X resources
2636
2637 The following X resource names can be used to set face attributes
2638 from X resources:
2639
2640 Face attribute X resource class
2641 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
2642 :family attributeFamily . Face.AttributeFamily
2643 :width attributeWidth Face.AttributeWidth
2644 :height attributeHeight Face.AttributeHeight
2645 :weight attributeWeight Face.AttributeWeight
2646 :slant attributeSlant Face.AttributeSlant
2647 foreground attributeForeground Face.AttributeForeground
2648 :background attributeBackground . Face.AttributeBackground
2649 :overline attributeOverline Face.AttributeOverline
2650 :strike-through attributeStrikeThrough Face.AttributeStrikeThrough
2651 :box attributeBox Face.AttributeBox
2652 :underline attributeUnderline Face.AttributeUnderline
2653 :inverse-video attributeInverse Face.AttributeInverse
2654 :stipple attributeStipple Face.AttributeStipple
2655 or attributeBackgroundPixmap
2656 Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap
2657 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2658 :bold attributeBold Face.AttributeBold
2659 :italic attributeItalic . Face.AttributeItalic
2660 :font attributeFont Face.AttributeFont
2661
2662 +++
2663 *** Text property `face'.
2664
2665 The value of the `face' text property can now be a single face
2666 specification or a list of such specifications. Each face
2667 specification can be
2668
2669 1. A symbol or string naming a Lisp face.
2670
2671 2. A property list of the form (KEYWORD VALUE ...) where each
2672 KEYWORD is a face attribute name, and VALUE is an appropriate value
2673 for that attribute. Please see the doc string of `set-face-attribute'
2674 for face attribute names.
2675
2676 3. Conses of the form (FOREGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) or
2677 (BACKGROUND-COLOR . COLOR) where COLOR is a color name. This is
2678 for compatibility with previous Emacs versions.
2679
2680 +++
2681 ** Support functions for colors on text-only terminals.
2682
2683 The function `tty-color-define' can be used to define colors for use
2684 on TTY and MSDOS frames. It maps a color name to a color number on
2685 the terminal. Emacs defines a couple of common color mappings by
2686 default. You can get defined colors with a call to
2687 `defined-colors'. The function `tty-color-clear' can be
2688 used to clear the mapping table.
2689
2690 ** Unified support for colors independent of frame type.
2691
2692 The new functions `defined-colors', `color-defined-p', `color-values',
2693 and `display-color-p' work for any type of frame. On frames whose
2694 type is neither x nor w32, these functions transparently map X-style
2695 color specifications to the closest colors supported by the frame
2696 display. Lisp programs should use these new functions instead of the
2697 old `x-defined-colors', `x-color-defined-p', `x-color-values', and
2698 `x-display-color-p'. (The old function names are still available for
2699 compatibility; they are now aliases of the new names.) Lisp programs
2700 should no more look at the value of the variable window-system to
2701 modify their color-related behavior.
2702
2703 The primitives `color-gray-p' and `color-supported-p' also work for
2704 any frame type.
2705
2706 ** Platform-independent functions to describe display capabilities.
2707
2708 The new functions `display-mouse-p', `display-popup-menus-p',
2709 `display-graphic-p', `display-selections-p', `display-screens',
2710 `display-pixel-width', `display-pixel-height', `display-mm-width',
2711 `display-mm-height', `display-backing-store', `display-save-under',
2712 `display-planes', `display-color-cells', `display-visual-class', and
2713 `display-grayscale-p' describe the basic capabilities of a particular
2714 display. Lisp programs should call these functions instead of testing
2715 the value of the variables `window-system' or `system-type', or calling
2716 platform-specific functions such as `x-display-pixel-width'.
2717
2718 +++
2719 ** The minibuffer prompt is now actually inserted in the minibuffer.
2720
2721 This makes it possible to scroll through the prompt, if you want to.
2722
2723 The function minubuffer-prompt-end returns the current position of the
2724 end of the minibuffer prompt, if the minibuffer is current.
2725 Otherwise, it returns zero.
2726
2727 ** New `field' abstraction in buffers.
2728
2729 There is now code to support an abstraction called `fields' in emacs
2730 buffers. A field is a contiguous region of text with the same `field'
2731 property (which can be a text property or an overlay).
2732
2733 Many emacs functions, such as forward-word, forward-sentence,
2734 forward-paragraph, beginning-of-line, etc., stop moving when they come
2735 to the boundary between fields; beginning-of-line and end-of-line will
2736 not let the point move past the field boundary, but other movement
2737 commands continue into the next field if repeated. Stopping at field
2738 boundaries can be suppressed programmatically by binding
2739 `inhibit-field-text-motion' to a non-nil value around calls to these
2740 functions.
2741
2742 Now that the minibuffer prompt is inserted into the minibuffer, it is in
2743 a separate field from the user-input part of the buffer, so that common
2744 editing commands treat the user's text separately from the prompt.
2745
2746 The following functions are defined for operating on fields:
2747
2748 - Function: constrain-to-field NEW-POS OLD-POS &optional ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE ONLY-IN-LINE INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY
2749
2750 Return the position closest to NEW-POS that is in the same field as OLD-POS.
2751
2752 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2753 If NEW-POS is nil, then the current point is used instead, and set to the
2754 constrained position if that is is different.
2755
2756 If OLD-POS is at the boundary of two fields, then the allowable
2757 positions for NEW-POS depends on the value of the optional argument
2758 ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE: If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is nil, then NEW-POS is
2759 constrained to the field that has the same `field' char-property
2760 as any new characters inserted at OLD-POS, whereas if ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2761 is non-nil, NEW-POS is constrained to the union of the two adjacent
2762 fields. Additionally, if two fields are separated by another field with
2763 the special value `boundary', then any point within this special field is
2764 also considered to be `on the boundary'.
2765
2766 If the optional argument ONLY-IN-LINE is non-nil and constraining
2767 NEW-POS would move it to a different line, NEW-POS is returned
2768 unconstrained. This useful for commands that move by line, like
2769 C-n or C-a, which should generally respect field boundaries
2770 only in the case where they can still move to the right line.
2771
2772 If the optional argument INHIBIT-CAPTURE-PROPERTY is non-nil, and OLD-POS has
2773 a non-nil property of that name, then any field boundaries are ignored.
2774
2775 Field boundaries are not noticed if `inhibit-field-text-motion' is non-nil.
2776
2777 - Function: delete-field &optional POS
2778
2779 Delete the field surrounding POS.
2780 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2781 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2782
2783 - Function: field-beginning &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2784
2785 Return the beginning of the field surrounding POS.
2786 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2787 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2788 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the beginning of its
2789 field, then the beginning of the *previous* field is returned.
2790
2791 - Function: field-end &optional POS ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE
2792
2793 Return the end of the field surrounding POS.
2794 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2795 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2796 If ESCAPE-FROM-EDGE is non-nil and POS is at the end of its field,
2797 then the end of the *following* field is returned.
2798
2799 - Function: field-string &optional POS
2800
2801 Return the contents of the field surrounding POS as a string.
2802 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2803 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2804
2805 - Function: field-string-no-properties &optional POS
2806
2807 Return the contents of the field around POS, without text-properties.
2808 A field is a region of text with the same `field' property.
2809 If POS is nil, the value of point is used for POS.
2810
2811 +++
2812 ** Image support.
2813
2814 Emacs can now display images. Images are inserted into text by giving
2815 strings or buffer text a `display' text property containing one of
2816 (AREA IMAGE) or IMAGE. The display of the `display' property value
2817 replaces the display of the characters having that property.
2818
2819 If the property value has the form (AREA IMAGE), AREA must be one of
2820 `(margin left-margin)', `(margin right-margin)' or `(margin nil)'. If
2821 AREA is `(margin nil)', IMAGE will be displayed in the text area of a
2822 window, otherwise it will be displayed in the left or right marginal
2823 area.
2824
2825 IMAGE is an image specification.
2826
2827 *** Image specifications
2828
2829 Image specifications are lists of the form `(image PROPS)' where PROPS
2830 is a property list whose keys are keyword symbols. Each
2831 specifications must contain a property `:type TYPE' with TYPE being a
2832 symbol specifying the image type, e.g. `xbm'. Properties not
2833 described below are ignored.
2834
2835 The following is a list of properties all image types share.
2836
2837 `:ascent ASCENT'
2838
2839 ASCENT must be a number in the range 0..100, or the symbol `center'.
2840 If it is a number, it specifies the percentage of the image's height
2841 to use for its ascent.
2842
2843 If not specified, ASCENT defaults to the value 50 which means that the
2844 image will be centered with the base line of the row it appears in.
2845
2846 If ASCENT is `center' the image is vertically centered around a
2847 centerline which is the vertical center of text drawn at the position
2848 of the image, in the manner specified by the text properties and
2849 overlays that apply to the image.
2850
2851 `:margin MARGIN'
2852
2853 MARGIN must be a number >= 0 specifying how many pixels to put as
2854 margin around the image. Default is 0.
2855
2856 `:relief RELIEF'
2857
2858 RELIEF is analogous to the `:relief' attribute of faces. Puts a relief
2859 around an image.
2860
2861 `:algorithm ALGO'
2862
2863 Apply an image algorithm to the image before displaying it. ALGO must
2864 be a symbol specifying the algorithm. Currently only `laplace' is
2865 supported which applies a Laplace edge detection algorithm to an image
2866 which is intended to display images "disabled."
2867
2868 `:heuristic-mask BG'
2869
2870 If BG is not nil, build a clipping mask for the image, so that the
2871 background of a frame is visible behind the image. If BG is t,
2872 determine the background color of the image by looking at the 4
2873 corners of the image, assuming the most frequently occuring color from
2874 the corners is the background color of the image. Otherwise, BG must
2875 be a list `(RED GREEN BLUE)' specifying the color to assume for the
2876 background of the image.
2877
2878 `:file FILE'
2879
2880 Load image from FILE. If FILE is not absolute after expanding it,
2881 search for the image in `data-directory'. Some image types support
2882 building images from data. When this is done, no `:file' property
2883 may be present in the image specification.
2884
2885 `:data DATA'
2886
2887 Get image data from DATA. (As of this writing, this is not yet
2888 supported for image type `postscript'). Either :file or :data may be
2889 present in an image specification, but not both. All image types
2890 support strings as DATA, some types allow additional types of DATA.
2891
2892 *** Supported image types
2893
2894 **** XBM, image type `xbm'.
2895
2896 XBM images don't require an external library. Additional image
2897 properties supported are
2898
2899 `:foreground FG'
2900
2901 FG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default
2902 is the frame's foreground.
2903
2904 `:background FG'
2905
2906 BG must be a string specifying the image foreground color. Default is
2907 the frame's background color.
2908
2909 XBM images can be constructed from data instead of file. In this
2910 case, the image specification must contain the following properties
2911 instead of a `:file' property.
2912
2913 `:width WIDTH'
2914
2915 WIDTH specifies the width of the image in pixels.
2916
2917 `:height HEIGHT'
2918
2919 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pixels.
2920
2921 `:data DATA'
2922
2923 DATA must be either
2924
2925 1. a string large enough to hold the bitmap data, i.e. it must
2926 have a size >= (WIDTH + 7) / 8 * HEIGHT
2927
2928 2. a bool-vector of size >= WIDTH * HEIGHT
2929
2930 3. a vector of strings or bool-vectors, one for each line of the
2931 bitmap.
2932
2933 4. a string that's an in-memory XBM file. Neither width nor
2934 height may be specified in this case because these are defined
2935 in the file.
2936
2937 **** XPM, image type `xpm'
2938
2939 XPM images require the external library `libXpm', package
2940 `xpm-3.4k.tar.gz', version 3.4k or later. Make sure the library is
2941 found when Emacs is configured by supplying appropriate paths via
2942 `--x-includes' and `--x-libraries'.
2943
2944 Additional image properties supported are:
2945
2946 `:color-symbols SYMBOLS'
2947
2948 SYMBOLS must be a list of pairs (NAME . COLOR), with NAME being the
2949 name of color as it appears in an XPM file, and COLOR being an X color
2950 name.
2951
2952 XPM images can be built from memory instead of files. In that case,
2953 add a `:data' property instead of a `:file' property.
2954
2955 The XPM library uses libz in its implementation so that it is able
2956 to display compressed images.
2957
2958 **** PBM, image type `pbm'
2959
2960 PBM images don't require an external library. Color, gray-scale and
2961 mono images are supported. There are no additional image properties
2962 defined.
2963
2964 **** JPEG, image type `jpeg'
2965
2966 Support for JPEG images requires the external library `libjpeg',
2967 package `jpegsrc.v6a.tar.gz', or later. Additional image properties
2968 are:
2969
2970 **** TIFF, image type `tiff'
2971
2972 Support for TIFF images requires the external library `libtiff',
2973 package `tiff-v3.4-tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
2974 properties defined.
2975
2976 **** GIF, image type `gif'
2977
2978 Support for GIF images requires the external library `libungif', package
2979 `libungif-4.1.0', or later.
2980
2981 Additional image properties supported are:
2982
2983 `:index INDEX'
2984
2985 INDEX must be an integer >= 0. Load image number INDEX from a
2986 multi-image GIF file. An error is signalled if INDEX is too large.
2987
2988 This could be used to implement limited support for animated GIFs.
2989 For example, the following function displays a multi-image GIF file
2990 at point-min in the current buffer, switching between sub-images
2991 every 0.1 seconds.
2992
2993 (defun show-anim (file max)
2994 "Display multi-image GIF file FILE which contains MAX subimages."
2995 (display-anim (current-buffer) file 0 max t))
2996
2997 (defun display-anim (buffer file idx max first-time)
2998 (when (= idx max)
2999 (setq idx 0))
3000 (let ((img (create-image file nil nil :index idx)))
3001 (save-excursion
3002 (set-buffer buffer)
3003 (goto-char (point-min))
3004 (unless first-time (delete-char 1))
3005 (insert-image img "x"))
3006 (run-with-timer 0.1 nil 'display-anim buffer file (1+ idx) max nil)))
3007
3008 **** PNG, image type `png'
3009
3010 Support for PNG images requires the external library `libpng',
3011 package `libpng-1.0.2.tar.gz', or later. There are no additional image
3012 properties defined.
3013
3014 **** Ghostscript, image type `postscript'.
3015
3016 Additional image properties supported are:
3017
3018 `:pt-width WIDTH'
3019
3020 WIDTH is width of the image in pt (1/72 inch). WIDTH must be an
3021 integer. This is a required property.
3022
3023 `:pt-height HEIGHT'
3024
3025 HEIGHT specifies the height of the image in pt (1/72 inch). HEIGHT
3026 must be a integer. This is an required property.
3027
3028 `:bounding-box BOX'
3029
3030 BOX must be a list or vector of 4 integers giving the bounding box of
3031 the PS image, analogous to the `BoundingBox' comment found in PS
3032 files. This is an required property.
3033
3034 Part of the Ghostscript interface is implemented in Lisp. See
3035 lisp/gs.el.
3036
3037 *** Lisp interface.
3038
3039 The variable `image-types' contains a list of those image types
3040 which are supported in the current configuration.
3041
3042 Images are stored in an image cache and removed from the cache when
3043 they haven't been displayed for `image-cache-eviction-delay seconds.
3044 The function `clear-image-cache' can be used to clear the image cache
3045 manually. Images in the cache are compared with `equal', i.e. all
3046 images with `equal' specifications share the same image.
3047
3048 *** Simplified image API, image.el
3049
3050 The new Lisp package image.el contains functions that simplify image
3051 creation and putting images into text. The function `create-image'
3052 can be used to create images. The macro `defimage' can be used to
3053 define an image based on available image types. The functions
3054 `put-image' and `insert-image' can be used to insert an image into a
3055 buffer.
3056
3057 +++
3058 ** Display margins.
3059
3060 Windows can now have margins which are used for special text
3061 and images.
3062
3063 To give a window margins, either set the buffer-local variables
3064 `left-margin-width' and `right-margin-width', or call
3065 `set-window-margins'. The function `window-margins' can be used to
3066 obtain the current settings. To make `left-margin-width' and
3067 `right-margin-width' take effect, you must set them before displaying
3068 the buffer in a window, or use `set-window-buffer' to force an update
3069 of the display margins.
3070
3071 You can put text in margins by giving it a `display' text property
3072 containing a pair of the form `(LOCATION . VALUE)', where LOCATION is
3073 one of `left-margin' or `right-margin' or nil. VALUE can be either a
3074 string, an image specification or a stretch specification (see later
3075 in this file).
3076
3077 +++
3078 ** Help display
3079
3080 Emacs displays short help messages in the echo area, when the mouse
3081 moves over a tool-bar item or a piece of text that has a text property
3082 `help-echo'. This feature also applies to strings in the mode line
3083 that have a `help-echo' property.
3084
3085 If the value of the `help-echo' property is a function, that function
3086 is called with three arguments WINDOW, OBJECT and POSITION. WINDOW is
3087 the window in which the help was found.
3088
3089 If OBJECT is a buffer, POS is the position in the buffer where the
3090 `help-echo' text property was found.
3091
3092 If OBJECT is an overlay, that overlay has a `help-echo' property, and
3093 POS is the position in the overlay's buffer under the mouse.
3094
3095 If OBJECT is a string (an overlay string or a string displayed with
3096 the `display' property), POS is the position in that string under the
3097 mouse.
3098
3099 If the value of the `help-echo' property is neither a function nor a
3100 string, it is evaluated to obtain a help string.
3101
3102 For tool-bar and menu-bar items, their key definition is used to
3103 determine the help to display. If their definition contains a
3104 property `:help FORM', FORM is evaluated to determine the help string.
3105 For tool-bar items without a help form, the caption of the item is
3106 used as help string.
3107
3108 The hook `show-help-function' can be set to a function that displays
3109 the help string differently. For example, enabling a tooltip window
3110 causes the help display to appear there instead of in the echo area.
3111
3112 +++
3113 ** Vertical fractional scrolling.
3114
3115 The display of text in windows can be scrolled smoothly in pixels.
3116 This is useful, for example, for making parts of large images visible.
3117
3118 The function `window-vscroll' returns the current value of vertical
3119 scrolling, a non-negative fraction of the canonical character height.
3120 The function `set-window-vscroll' can be used to set the vertical
3121 scrolling value. Here is an example of how these function might be
3122 used.
3123
3124 (global-set-key [A-down]
3125 #'(lambda ()
3126 (interactive)
3127 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3128 (+ 0.5 (window-vscroll)))))
3129 (global-set-key [A-up]
3130 #'(lambda ()
3131 (interactive)
3132 (set-window-vscroll (selected-window)
3133 (- (window-vscroll) 0.5)))))
3134
3135 +++
3136 ** New hook `fontification-functions'.
3137
3138 Functions from `fontification-functions' are called from redisplay
3139 when it encounters a region of text that is not yet fontified. This
3140 variable automatically becomes buffer-local when set. Each function
3141 is called with one argument, POS.
3142
3143 At least one of the hook functions should fontify one or more
3144 characters starting at POS in the current buffer. It should mark them
3145 as fontified by giving them a non-nil value of the `fontified' text
3146 property. It may be reasonable for these functions to check for the
3147 `fontified' property and not put it back on, but they do not have to.
3148
3149 +++
3150 ** Tool bar support.
3151
3152 Emacs supports a tool bar at the top of a frame under X. The frame
3153 parameter `tool-bar-lines' (X resource "toolBar", class "ToolBar")
3154 controls how may lines to reserve for the tool bar. A zero value
3155 suppresses the tool bar. If the value is non-zero and
3156 `auto-resize-tool-bars' is non-nil the tool bar's size will be changed
3157 automatically so that all tool bar items are visible.
3158
3159 *** Tool bar item definitions
3160
3161 Tool bar items are defined using `define-key' with a prefix-key
3162 `tool-bar'. For example `(define-key global-map [tool-bar item1] ITEM)'
3163 where ITEM is a list `(menu-item CAPTION BINDING PROPS...)'.
3164
3165 CAPTION is the caption of the item, If it's not a string, it is
3166 evaluated to get a string. The caption is currently not displayed in
3167 the tool bar, but it is displayed if the item doesn't have a `:help'
3168 property (see below).
3169
3170 BINDING is the tool bar item's binding. Tool bar items with keymaps as
3171 binding are currently ignored.
3172
3173 The following properties are recognized:
3174
3175 `:enable FORM'.
3176
3177 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is enabled
3178 or disabled.
3179
3180 `:visible FORM'
3181
3182 FORM is evaluated and specifies whether the tool bar item is displayed.
3183
3184 `:filter FUNCTION'
3185
3186 FUNCTION is called with one parameter, the same list BINDING in which
3187 FUNCTION is specified as the filter. The value FUNCTION returns is
3188 used instead of BINDING to display this item.
3189
3190 `:button (TYPE SELECTED)'
3191
3192 TYPE must be one of `:radio' or `:toggle'. SELECTED is evaluated
3193 and specifies whether the button is selected (pressed) or not.
3194
3195 `:image IMAGES'
3196
3197 IMAGES is either a single image specification or a vector of four
3198 image specifications. If it is a vector, this table lists the
3199 meaning of each of the four elements:
3200
3201 Index Use when item is
3202 ----------------------------------------
3203 0 enabled and selected
3204 1 enabled and deselected
3205 2 disabled and selected
3206 3 disabled and deselected
3207
3208 If IMAGE is a single image specification, a Laplace edge-detection
3209 algorithm is used on that image to draw the image in disabled state.
3210
3211 `:help HELP-STRING'.
3212
3213 Gives a help string to display for the tool bar item. This help
3214 is displayed when the mouse is moved over the item.
3215
3216 *** Tool-bar-related variables.
3217
3218 If `auto-resize-tool-bar' is non-nil, the tool bar will automatically
3219 resize to show all defined tool bar items. It will never grow larger
3220 than 1/4 of the frame's size.
3221
3222 If `auto-raise-tool-bar-buttons' is non-nil, tool bar buttons will be
3223 raised when the mouse moves over them.
3224
3225 You can add extra space between tool bar items by setting
3226 `tool-bar-button-margin' to a positive integer specifying a number of
3227 pixels. Default is 1.
3228
3229 You can change the shadow thickness of tool bar buttons by setting
3230 `tool-bar-button-relief' to an integer. Default is 3.
3231
3232 *** Tool-bar clicks with modifiers.
3233
3234 You can bind commands to clicks with control, shift, meta etc. on
3235 a tool bar item. If
3236
3237 (define-key global-map [tool-bar shell]
3238 '(menu-item "Shell" shell
3239 :image (image :type xpm :file "shell.xpm")))
3240
3241 is the original tool bar item definition, then
3242
3243 (define-key global-map [tool-bar S-shell] 'some-command)
3244
3245 makes a binding to run `some-command' for a shifted click on the same
3246 item.
3247
3248 ** Mode line changes.
3249
3250 +++
3251 *** Mouse-sensitive mode line.
3252
3253 The mode line can be made mouse-sensitive by displaying strings there
3254 that have a `local-map' text property. There are three ways to display
3255 a string with a `local-map' property in the mode line.
3256
3257 1. The mode line spec contains a variable whose string value has
3258 a `local-map' text property.
3259
3260 2. The mode line spec contains a format specifier (e.g. `%12b'), and
3261 that format specifier has a `local-map' property.
3262
3263 3. The mode line spec contains a list containing `:eval FORM'. FORM
3264 is evaluated. If the result is a string, and that string has a
3265 `local-map' property.
3266
3267 The same mechanism is used to determine the `face' and `help-echo'
3268 properties of strings in the mode line. See `bindings.el' for an
3269 example.
3270
3271 *** If a mode line element has the form `(:eval FORM)', FORM is
3272 evaluated and the result is used as mode line element.
3273
3274 +++
3275 *** You can suppress mode-line display by setting the buffer-local
3276 variable mode-line-format to nil.
3277
3278 +++
3279 *** A headerline can now be displayed at the top of a window.
3280
3281 This mode line's contents are controlled by the new variable
3282 `header-line-format' and `default-header-line-format' which are
3283 completely analogous to `mode-line-format' and
3284 `default-mode-line-format'. A value of nil means don't display a top
3285 line.
3286
3287 The appearance of top mode lines is controlled by the face
3288 `header-line'.
3289
3290 The function `coordinates-in-window-p' returns `header-line' for a
3291 position in the header-line.
3292
3293 +++
3294 ** Text property `display'
3295
3296 The `display' text property is used to insert images into text, and
3297 also control other aspects of how text displays. The value of the
3298 `display' property should be a display specification, as described
3299 below, or a list or vector containing display specifications.
3300
3301 *** Variable width and height spaces
3302
3303 To display a space of fractional width or height, use a display
3304 specification of the form `(LOCATION STRECH)'. If LOCATION is
3305 `(margin left-margin)', the space is displayed in the left marginal
3306 area, if it is `(margin right-margin)', it is displayed in the right
3307 marginal area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the space is
3308 displayed in the text. In the latter case you can also use the
3309 simpler form STRETCH as property value.
3310
3311 The stretch specification STRETCH itself is a list of the form `(space
3312 PROPS)', where PROPS is a property list which can contain the
3313 properties described below.
3314
3315 The display of the fractional space replaces the display of the
3316 characters having the `display' property.
3317
3318 - :width WIDTH
3319
3320 Specifies that the space width should be WIDTH times the normal
3321 character width. WIDTH can be an integer or floating point number.
3322
3323 - :relative-width FACTOR
3324
3325 Specifies that the width of the stretch should be computed from the
3326 first character in a group of consecutive characters that have the
3327 same `display' property. The computation is done by multiplying the
3328 width of that character by FACTOR.
3329
3330 - :align-to HPOS
3331
3332 Specifies that the space should be wide enough to reach HPOS. The
3333 value HPOS is measured in units of the normal character width.
3334
3335 Exactly one of the above properties should be used.
3336
3337 - :height HEIGHT
3338
3339 Specifies the height of the space, as HEIGHT, measured in terms of the
3340 normal line height.
3341
3342 - :relative-height FACTOR
3343
3344 The height of the space is computed as the product of the height
3345 of the text having the `display' property and FACTOR.
3346
3347 - :ascent ASCENT
3348
3349 Specifies that ASCENT percent of the height of the stretch should be
3350 used for the ascent of the stretch, i.e. for the part above the
3351 baseline. The value of ASCENT must be a non-negative number less or
3352 equal to 100.
3353
3354 You should not use both `:height' and `:relative-height' together.
3355
3356 *** Images
3357
3358 A display specification for an image has the form `(LOCATION
3359 . IMAGE)', where IMAGE is an image specification. The image replaces,
3360 in the display, the characters having this display specification in
3361 their `display' text property. If LOCATION is `(margin left-margin)',
3362 the image will be displayed in the left marginal area, if it is
3363 `(margin right-margin)' it will be displayed in the right marginal
3364 area, and if LOCATION is `(margin nil)' the image will be displayed in
3365 the text. In the latter case you can also use the simpler form IMAGE
3366 as display specification.
3367
3368 *** Other display properties
3369
3370 - :space-width FACTOR
3371
3372 Specifies that space characters in the text having that property
3373 should be displayed FACTOR times as wide as normal; FACTOR must be an
3374 integer or float.
3375
3376 - :height HEIGHT
3377
3378 Display text having this property in a font that is smaller or larger.
3379
3380 If HEIGHT is a list of the form `(+ N)', where N is an integer, that
3381 means to use a font that is N steps larger. If HEIGHT is a list of
3382 the form `(- N)', that means to use a font that is N steps smaller. A
3383 ``step'' is defined by the set of available fonts; each size for which
3384 a font is available counts as a step.
3385
3386 If HEIGHT is a number, that means to use a font that is HEIGHT times
3387 as tall as the frame's default font.
3388
3389 If HEIGHT is a symbol, it is called as a function with the current
3390 height as argument. The function should return the new height to use.
3391
3392 Otherwise, HEIGHT is evaluated to get the new height, with the symbol
3393 `height' bound to the current specified font height.
3394
3395 - :raise FACTOR
3396
3397 FACTOR must be a number, specifying a multiple of the current
3398 font's height. If it is positive, that means to display the characters
3399 raised. If it is negative, that means to display them lower down. The
3400 amount of raising or lowering is computed without taking account of the
3401 `:height' subproperty.
3402
3403 *** Conditional display properties
3404
3405 All display specifications can be conditionalized. If a specification
3406 has the form `(:when CONDITION . SPEC)', the specification SPEC
3407 applies only when CONDITION yields a non-nil value when evaluated.
3408 During evaluattion, point is temporarily set to the end position of
3409 the text having the `display' property.
3410
3411 The normal specification consisting of SPEC only is equivalent to
3412 `(:when t SPEC)'.
3413
3414 +++
3415 ** New menu separator types.
3416
3417 Emacs now supports more than one menu separator type. Menu items with
3418 item names consisting of dashes only (including zero dashes) are
3419 treated like before. In addition, the following item names are used
3420 to specify other menu separator types.
3421
3422 - `--no-line' or `--space', or `--:space', or `--:noLine'
3423
3424 No separator lines are drawn, but a small space is inserted where the
3425 separator occurs.
3426
3427 - `--single-line' or `--:singleLine'
3428
3429 A single line in the menu's foreground color.
3430
3431 - `--double-line' or `--:doubleLine'
3432
3433 A double line in the menu's foreground color.
3434
3435 - `--single-dashed-line' or `--:singleDashedLine'
3436
3437 A single dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3438
3439 - `--double-dashed-line' or `--:doubleDashedLine'
3440
3441 A double dashed line in the menu's foreground color.
3442
3443 - `--shadow-etched-in' or `--:shadowEtchedIn'
3444
3445 A single line with 3D sunken appearance. This is the the form
3446 displayed for item names consisting of dashes only.
3447
3448 - `--shadow-etched-out' or `--:shadowEtchedOut'
3449
3450 A single line with 3D raised appearance.
3451
3452 - `--shadow-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedInDash'
3453
3454 A single dashed line with 3D sunken appearance.
3455
3456 - `--shadow-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowEtchedOutDash'
3457
3458 A single dashed line with 3D raise appearance.
3459
3460 - `--shadow-double-etched-in' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedIn'
3461
3462 Two lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3463
3464 - `--shadow-double-etched-out' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOut'
3465
3466 Two lines with 3D raised appearance.
3467
3468 - `--shadow-double-etched-in-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedInDash'
3469
3470 Two dashed lines with 3D sunken appearance.
3471
3472 - `--shadow-double-etched-out-dash' or `--:shadowDoubleEtchedOutDash'
3473
3474 Two dashed lines with 3D raised appearance.
3475
3476 Under LessTif/Motif, the last four separator types are displayed like
3477 the corresponding single-line separators.
3478
3479 +++
3480 ** New frame parameters for scroll bar colors.
3481
3482 The new frame parameters `scroll-bar-foreground' and
3483 `scroll-bar-background' can be used to change scroll bar colors.
3484 Their value must be either a color name, a string, or nil to specify
3485 that scroll bars should use a default color. For toolkit scroll bars,
3486 default colors are toolkit specific. For non-toolkit scroll bars, the
3487 default background is the background color of the frame, and the
3488 default foreground is black.
3489
3490 The X resource name of these parameters are `scrollBarForeground'
3491 (class ScrollBarForeground) and `scrollBarBackground' (class
3492 `ScrollBarBackground').
3493
3494 Setting these parameters overrides toolkit specific X resource
3495 settings for scroll bar colors.
3496
3497 +++
3498 ** You can set `redisplay-dont-pause' to a non-nil value to prevent
3499 display updates from being interrupted when input is pending.
3500
3501 ---
3502 ** Changing a window's width may now change its window start if it
3503 starts on a continuation line. The new window start is computed based
3504 on the window's new width, starting from the start of the continued
3505 line as the start of the screen line with the minimum distance from
3506 the original window start.
3507
3508 ---
3509 ** The variable `hscroll-step' and the functions
3510 `hscroll-point-visible' and `hscroll-window-column' have been removed
3511 now that proper horizontal scrolling is implemented.
3512
3513 +++
3514 ** Windows can now be made fixed-width and/or fixed-height.
3515
3516 A window is fixed-size if its buffer has a buffer-local variable
3517 `window-size-fixed' whose value is not nil. A value of `height' makes
3518 windows fixed-height, a value of `width' makes them fixed-width, any
3519 other non-nil value makes them both fixed-width and fixed-height.
3520
3521 The following code makes all windows displaying the current buffer
3522 fixed-width and fixed-height.
3523
3524 (set (make-local-variable 'window-size-fixed) t)
3525
3526 A call to enlarge-window on a window gives an error if that window is
3527 fixed-width and it is tried to change the window's width, or if the
3528 window is fixed-height, and it is tried to change its height. To
3529 change the size of a fixed-size window, bind `window-size-fixed'
3530 temporarily to nil, for example
3531
3532 (let ((window-size-fixed nil))
3533 (enlarge-window 10))
3534
3535 Likewise, an attempt to split a fixed-height window vertically,
3536 or a fixed-width window horizontally results in a error.
3537
3538 ** The cursor-type frame parameter is now supported on MS-DOS
3539 terminals. When Emacs starts, it by default changes the cursor shape
3540 to a solid box, as it does on Unix. The `cursor-type' frame parameter
3541 overrides this as it does on Unix, except that the bar cursor is
3542 horizontal rather than vertical (since the MS-DOS display doesn't
3543 support a vertical-bar cursor).
3544
3545
3546 ^L
3547 * Emacs 20.7 is a bug-fix release with few user-visible changes
3548
3549 ** It is now possible to use CCL-based coding systems for keyboard
3550 input.
3551
3552 ** ange-ftp now handles FTP security extensions, like Kerberos.
3553
3554 ** Rmail has been extended to recognize more forms of digest messages.
3555
3556 ** Now, most coding systems set in keyboard coding system work not
3557 only for character input, but also in incremental search. The
3558 exceptions are such coding systems that handle 2-byte character sets
3559 (e.g euc-kr, euc-jp) and that use ISO's escape sequence
3560 (e.g. iso-2022-jp). They are ignored in incremental search.
3561
3562 ** Support for Macintosh PowerPC-based machines running GNU/Linux has
3563 been added.
3564
3565 ^L
3566 * Emacs 20.6 is a bug-fix release with one user-visible change
3567
3568 ** Support for ARM-based non-RISCiX machines has been added.
3569
3570 ^L
3571 * Emacs 20.5 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
3572
3573 ** Not new, but not mentioned before:
3574 M-w when Transient Mark mode is enabled disables the mark.
3575 \f
3576 * Changes in Emacs 20.4
3577
3578 ** Init file may be called .emacs.el.
3579
3580 You can now call the Emacs init file `.emacs.el'.
3581 Formerly the name had to be `.emacs'. If you use the name
3582 `.emacs.el', you can byte-compile the file in the usual way.
3583
3584 If both `.emacs' and `.emacs.el' exist, the latter file
3585 is the one that is used.
3586
3587 ** shell-command, and shell-command-on-region, now return
3588 the exit code of the command (unless it is asynchronous).
3589 Also, you can specify a place to put the error output,
3590 separate from the command's regular output.
3591 Interactively, the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer
3592 says where to put error output; set it to a buffer name.
3593 In calls from Lisp, an optional argument ERROR-BUFFER specifies
3594 the buffer name.
3595
3596 When you specify a non-nil error buffer (or buffer name), any error
3597 output is inserted before point in that buffer, with \f\n to separate
3598 it from the previous batch of error output. The error buffer is not
3599 cleared, so error output from successive commands accumulates there.
3600
3601 ** Setting the default value of enable-multibyte-characters to nil in
3602 the .emacs file, either explicitly using setq-default, or via Custom,
3603 is now essentially equivalent to using --unibyte: all buffers
3604 created during startup will be made unibyte after loading .emacs.
3605
3606 ** C-x C-f now handles the wildcards * and ? in file names. For
3607 example, typing C-x C-f c*.c RET visits all the files whose names
3608 match c*.c. To visit a file whose name contains * or ?, add the
3609 quoting sequence /: to the beginning of the file name.
3610
3611 ** The M-x commands keep-lines, flush-lines and count-matches
3612 now have the same feature as occur and query-replace:
3613 if the pattern contains any upper case letters, then
3614 they never ignore case.
3615
3616 ** The end-of-line format conversion feature previously mentioned
3617 under `* Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows' actually
3618 applies to all operating systems. Emacs recognizes from the contents
3619 of a file what convention it uses to separate lines--newline, CRLF, or
3620 just CR--and automatically converts the contents to the normal Emacs
3621 convention (using newline to separate lines) for editing. This is a
3622 part of the general feature of coding system conversion.
3623
3624 If you subsequently save the buffer, Emacs converts the text back to
3625 the same format that was used in the file before.
3626
3627 You can turn off end-of-line conversion by setting the variable
3628 `inhibit-eol-conversion' to non-nil, e.g. with Custom in the MULE group.
3629
3630 ** The character set property `prefered-coding-system' has been
3631 renamed to `preferred-coding-system', for the sake of correct spelling.
3632 This is a fairly internal feature, so few programs should be affected.
3633
3634 ** Mode-line display of end-of-line format is changed.
3635 The indication of the end-of-line format of the file visited by a
3636 buffer is now more explicit when that format is not the usual one for
3637 your operating system. For example, the DOS-style end-of-line format
3638 is displayed as "(DOS)" on Unix and GNU/Linux systems. The usual
3639 end-of-line format is still displayed as a single character (colon for
3640 Unix, backslash for DOS and Windows, and forward slash for the Mac).
3641
3642 The values of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos,
3643 eol-mnemonic-mac, and eol-mnemonic-undecided, which are strings,
3644 control what is displayed in the mode line for each end-of-line
3645 format. You can now customize these variables.
3646
3647 ** In the previous version of Emacs, tar-mode didn't work well if a
3648 filename contained non-ASCII characters. Now this is fixed. Such a
3649 filename is decoded by file-name-coding-system if the default value of
3650 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil.
3651
3652 ** The command temp-buffer-resize-mode toggles a minor mode
3653 in which temporary buffers (such as help buffers) are given
3654 windows just big enough to hold the whole contents.
3655
3656 ** If you use completion.el, you must now run the function
3657 dynamic-completion-mode to enable it. Just loading the file
3658 doesn't have any effect.
3659
3660 ** In Flyspell mode, the default is now to make just one Ispell process,
3661 not one per buffer.
3662
3663 ** If you use iswitchb but do not call (iswitchb-default-keybindings) to
3664 use the default keybindings, you will need to add the following line:
3665 (add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook 'iswitchb-minibuffer-setup)
3666
3667 ** Auto-show mode is no longer enabled just by loading auto-show.el.
3668 To control it, set `auto-show-mode' via Custom or use the
3669 `auto-show-mode' command.
3670
3671 ** Handling of X fonts' ascent/descent parameters has been changed to
3672 avoid redisplay problems. As a consequence, compared with previous
3673 versions the line spacing and frame size now differ with some font
3674 choices, typically increasing by a pixel per line. This change
3675 occurred in version 20.3 but was not documented then.
3676
3677 ** If you select the bar cursor style, it uses the frame's
3678 cursor-color, rather than the cursor foreground pixel.
3679
3680 ** In multibyte mode, Rmail decodes incoming MIME messages using the
3681 character set specified in the message. If you want to disable this
3682 feature, set the variable rmail-decode-mime-charset to nil.
3683
3684 ** Not new, but not mentioned previously in NEWS: when you use #! at
3685 the beginning of a file to make it executable and specify an
3686 interpreter program, Emacs looks on the second line for the -*- mode
3687 and variable specification, as well as on the first line.
3688
3689 ** Support for IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters.
3690
3691 The new command M-x codepage-setup creates a special coding system
3692 that can be used to convert text between a specific IBM codepage and
3693 one of the character sets built into Emacs which matches that
3694 codepage. For example, codepage 850 corresponds to Latin-1 character
3695 set, codepage 855 corresponds to Cyrillic-ISO character set, etc.
3696
3697 Windows codepages 1250, 1251 and some others, where Windows deviates
3698 from the corresponding ISO character set, are also supported.
3699
3700 IBM box-drawing characters and other glyphs which don't have
3701 equivalents in the corresponding ISO character set, are converted to
3702 a character defined by dos-unsupported-char-glyph on MS-DOS, and to
3703 `?' on other systems.
3704
3705 IBM codepages are widely used on MS-DOS and MS-Windows, so this
3706 feature is most useful on those platforms, but it can also be used on
3707 Unix.
3708
3709 Emacs compiled for MS-DOS automatically loads the support for the
3710 current codepage when it starts.
3711
3712 ** Mail changes
3713
3714 *** When mail is sent using compose-mail (C-x m), and if
3715 `mail-send-nonascii' is set to the new default value `mime',
3716 appropriate MIME headers are added. The headers are added only if
3717 non-ASCII characters are present in the body of the mail, and no other
3718 MIME headers are already present. For example, the following three
3719 headers are added if the coding system used in the *mail* buffer is
3720 latin-1:
3721
3722 MIME-version: 1.0
3723 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
3724 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
3725
3726 *** The new variable default-sendmail-coding-system specifies the
3727 default way to encode outgoing mail. This has higher priority than
3728 default-buffer-file-coding-system but has lower priority than
3729 sendmail-coding-system and the local value of
3730 buffer-file-coding-system.
3731
3732 You should not set this variable manually. Instead, set
3733 sendmail-coding-system to specify a fixed encoding for all outgoing
3734 mail.
3735
3736 *** When you try to send a message that contains non-ASCII characters,
3737 if the coding system specified by those variables doesn't handle them,
3738 Emacs will ask you to select a suitable coding system while showing a
3739 list of possible coding systems.
3740
3741 ** CC Mode changes
3742
3743 *** c-default-style can now take an association list that maps major
3744 modes to style names. When this variable is an alist, Java mode no
3745 longer hardcodes a setting to "java" style. See the variable's
3746 docstring for details.
3747
3748 *** It's now possible to put a list as the offset on a syntactic
3749 symbol. The list is evaluated recursively until a non-nil offset is
3750 found. This is useful to combine several lineup functions to act in a
3751 prioritized order on a single line. However, none of the supplied
3752 lineup functions use this feature currently.
3753
3754 *** New syntactic symbol catch-clause, which is used on the "catch" and
3755 "finally" lines in try-catch constructs in C++ and Java.
3756
3757 *** New cleanup brace-catch-brace on c-cleanup-list, which does for
3758 "catch" lines what brace-elseif-brace does for "else if" lines.
3759
3760 *** The braces of Java anonymous inner classes are treated separately
3761 from the braces of other classes in auto-newline mode. Two new
3762 symbols inexpr-class-open and inexpr-class-close may be used on
3763 c-hanging-braces-alist to control the automatic newlines used for
3764 anonymous classes.
3765
3766 *** Support for the Pike language added, along with new Pike specific
3767 syntactic symbols: inlambda, lambda-intro-cont
3768
3769 *** Support for Java anonymous classes via new syntactic symbol
3770 inexpr-class. New syntactic symbol inexpr-statement for Pike
3771 support and gcc-style statements inside expressions. New lineup
3772 function c-lineup-inexpr-block.
3773
3774 *** New syntactic symbol brace-entry-open which is used in brace lists
3775 (i.e. static initializers) when a list entry starts with an open
3776 brace. These used to be recognized as brace-list-entry's.
3777 c-electric-brace also recognizes brace-entry-open braces
3778 (brace-list-entry's can no longer be electrified).
3779
3780 *** New command c-indent-line-or-region, not bound by default.
3781
3782 *** `#' is only electric when typed in the indentation of a line.
3783
3784 *** Parentheses are now electric (via the new command c-electric-paren)
3785 for auto-reindenting lines when parens are typed.
3786
3787 *** In "gnu" style, inline-open offset is now set to zero.
3788
3789 *** Uniform handling of the inclass syntactic symbol. The indentation
3790 associated with it is now always relative to the class opening brace.
3791 This means that the indentation behavior has changed in some
3792 circumstances, but only if you've put anything besides 0 on the
3793 class-open syntactic symbol (none of the default styles do that).
3794
3795 ** Gnus changes.
3796
3797 *** New functionality for using Gnus as an offline newsreader has been
3798 added. A plethora of new commands and modes have been added. See the
3799 Gnus manual for the full story.
3800
3801 *** The nndraft backend has returned, but works differently than
3802 before. All Message buffers are now also articles in the nndraft
3803 group, which is created automatically.
3804
3805 *** `gnus-alter-header-function' can now be used to alter header
3806 values.
3807
3808 *** `gnus-summary-goto-article' now accept Message-ID's.
3809
3810 *** A new Message command for deleting text in the body of a message
3811 outside the region: `C-c C-v'.
3812
3813 *** You can now post to component group in nnvirtual groups with
3814 `C-u C-c C-c'.
3815
3816 *** `nntp-rlogin-program' -- new variable to ease customization.
3817
3818 *** `C-u C-c C-c' in `gnus-article-edit-mode' will now inhibit
3819 re-highlighting of the article buffer.
3820
3821 *** New element in `gnus-boring-article-headers' -- `long-to'.
3822
3823 *** `M-i' symbolic prefix command. See the section "Symbolic
3824 Prefixes" in the Gnus manual for details.
3825
3826 *** `L' and `I' in the summary buffer now take the symbolic prefix
3827 `a' to add the score rule to the "all.SCORE" file.
3828
3829 *** `gnus-simplify-subject-functions' variable to allow greater
3830 control over simplification.
3831
3832 *** `A T' -- new command for fetching the current thread.
3833
3834 *** `/ T' -- new command for including the current thread in the
3835 limit.
3836
3837 *** `M-RET' is a new Message command for breaking cited text.
3838
3839 *** \\1-expressions are now valid in `nnmail-split-methods'.
3840
3841 *** The `custom-face-lookup' function has been removed.
3842 If you used this function in your initialization files, you must
3843 rewrite them to use `face-spec-set' instead.
3844
3845 *** Cancelling now uses the current select method. Symbolic prefix
3846 `a' forces normal posting method.
3847
3848 *** New command to translate M******** sm*rtq**t*s into proper text
3849 -- `W d'.
3850
3851 *** For easier debugging of nntp, you can set `nntp-record-commands'
3852 to a non-nil value.
3853
3854 *** nntp now uses ~/.authinfo, a .netrc-like file, for controlling
3855 where and how to send AUTHINFO to NNTP servers.
3856
3857 *** A command for editing group parameters from the summary buffer
3858 has been added.
3859
3860 *** A history of where mails have been split is available.
3861
3862 *** A new article date command has been added -- `article-date-iso8601'.
3863
3864 *** Subjects can be simplified when threading by setting
3865 `gnus-score-thread-simplify'.
3866
3867 *** A new function for citing in Message has been added --
3868 `message-cite-original-without-signature'.
3869
3870 *** `article-strip-all-blank-lines' -- new article command.
3871
3872 *** A new Message command to kill to the end of the article has
3873 been added.
3874
3875 *** A minimum adaptive score can be specified by using the
3876 `gnus-adaptive-word-minimum' variable.
3877
3878 *** The "lapsed date" article header can be kept continually
3879 updated by the `gnus-start-date-timer' command.
3880
3881 *** Web listserv archives can be read with the nnlistserv backend.
3882
3883 *** Old dejanews archives can now be read by nnweb.
3884
3885 *** `gnus-posting-styles' has been re-activated.
3886
3887 ** Changes to TeX and LaTeX mode
3888
3889 *** The new variable `tex-start-options-string' can be used to give
3890 options for the TeX run. The default value causes TeX to run in
3891 nonstopmode. For an interactive TeX run set it to nil or "".
3892
3893 *** The command `tex-feed-input' sends input to the Tex Shell. In a
3894 TeX buffer it is bound to the keys C-RET, C-c RET, and C-c C-m (some
3895 of these keys may not work on all systems). For instance, if you run
3896 TeX interactively and if the TeX run stops because of an error, you
3897 can continue it without leaving the TeX buffer by typing C-RET.
3898
3899 *** The Tex Shell Buffer is now in `compilation-shell-minor-mode'.
3900 All error-parsing commands of the Compilation major mode are available
3901 but bound to keys that don't collide with the shell. Thus you can use
3902 the Tex Shell for command line executions like a usual shell.
3903
3904 *** The commands `tex-validate-region' and `tex-validate-buffer' check
3905 the matching of braces and $'s. The errors are listed in a *Occur*
3906 buffer and you can use C-c C-c or mouse-2 to go to a particular
3907 mismatch.
3908
3909 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
3910
3911 *** The table of contents buffer can now also display labels and
3912 file boundaries in addition to sections. Use `l', `i', and `c' keys.
3913
3914 *** Labels derived from context (the section heading) are now
3915 lowercase by default. To make the label legal in LaTeX, latin-1
3916 characters will lose their accent. All Mule characters will be
3917 removed from the label.
3918
3919 *** The automatic display of cross reference information can also use
3920 a window instead of the echo area. See variable `reftex-auto-view-crossref'.
3921
3922 *** kpsewhich can be used by RefTeX to find TeX and BibTeX files. See the
3923 customization group `reftex-finding-files'.
3924
3925 *** The option `reftex-bibfile-ignore-list' has been renamed to
3926 `reftex-bibfile-ignore-regexps' and indeed can be fed with regular
3927 expressions.
3928
3929 *** Multiple Selection buffers are now hidden buffers.
3930
3931 ** New/deleted modes and packages
3932
3933 *** The package snmp-mode.el provides major modes for editing SNMP and
3934 SNMPv2 MIBs. It has entries on `auto-mode-alist'.
3935
3936 *** The package sql.el provides a major mode, M-x sql-mode, for
3937 editing SQL files, and M-x sql-interactive-mode for interacting with
3938 SQL interpreters. It has an entry on `auto-mode-alist'.
3939
3940 *** M-x highlight-changes-mode provides a minor mode displaying buffer
3941 changes with a special face.
3942
3943 *** ispell4.el has been deleted. It got in the way of ispell.el and
3944 this was hard to fix reliably. It has long been obsolete -- use
3945 Ispell 3.1 and ispell.el.
3946 \f
3947 * MS-DOS changes in Emacs 20.4
3948
3949 ** Emacs compiled for MS-DOS now supports MULE features better.
3950 This includes support for display of all ISO 8859-N character sets,
3951 conversion to and from IBM codepage encoding of non-ASCII characters,
3952 and automatic setup of the MULE environment at startup. For details,
3953 check out the section `MS-DOS and MULE' in the manual.
3954
3955 The MS-DOS installation procedure automatically configures and builds
3956 Emacs with input method support if it finds an unpacked Leim
3957 distribution when the config.bat script is run.
3958
3959 ** Formerly, the value of lpr-command did not affect printing on
3960 MS-DOS unless print-region-function was set to nil, but now it
3961 controls whether an external program is invoked or output is written
3962 directly to a printer port. Similarly, in the previous version of
3963 Emacs, the value of ps-lpr-command did not affect PostScript printing
3964 on MS-DOS unless ps-printer-name was set to something other than a
3965 string (eg. t or `pipe'), but now it controls whether an external
3966 program is used. (These changes were made so that configuration of
3967 printing variables would be almost identical across all platforms.)
3968
3969 ** In the previous version of Emacs, PostScript and non-PostScript
3970 output was piped to external programs, but because most print programs
3971 available for MS-DOS and MS-Windows cannot read data from their standard
3972 input, on those systems the data to be output is now written to a
3973 temporary file whose name is passed as the last argument to the external
3974 program.
3975
3976 An exception is made for `print', a standard program on Windows NT,
3977 and `nprint', a standard program on Novell Netware. For both of these
3978 programs, the command line is constructed in the appropriate syntax
3979 automatically, using only the value of printer-name or ps-printer-name
3980 as appropriate--the value of the relevant `-switches' variable is
3981 ignored, as both programs have no useful switches.
3982
3983 ** The value of the variable dos-printer (cf. dos-ps-printer), if it has
3984 a value, overrides the value of printer-name (cf. ps-printer-name), on
3985 MS-DOS and MS-Windows only. This has been true since version 20.3, but
3986 was not documented clearly before.
3987
3988 ** All the Emacs games now work on MS-DOS terminals.
3989 This includes Tetris and Snake.
3990 \f
3991 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.4
3992
3993 ** New functions line-beginning-position and line-end-position
3994 return the position of the beginning or end of the current line.
3995 They both accept an optional argument, which has the same
3996 meaning as the argument to beginning-of-line or end-of-line.
3997
3998 ** find-file and allied functions now have an optional argument
3999 WILDCARD. If this is non-nil, they do wildcard processing,
4000 and visit all files that match the wildcard pattern.
4001
4002 ** Changes in the file-attributes function.
4003
4004 *** The file size returned by file-attributes may be an integer or a float.
4005 It is an integer if the size fits in a Lisp integer, float otherwise.
4006
4007 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
4008 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a cons cell containing two
4009 integers.
4010
4011 ** The new function directory-files-and-attributes returns a list of
4012 files in a directory and their attributes. It accepts the same
4013 arguments as directory-files and has similar semantics, except that
4014 file names and attributes are returned.
4015
4016 ** The new function file-attributes-lessp is a helper function for
4017 sorting the list generated by directory-files-and-attributes. It
4018 accepts two arguments, each a list of a file name and its atttributes.
4019 It compares the file names of each according to string-lessp and
4020 returns the result.
4021
4022 ** The new function file-expand-wildcards expands a wildcard-pattern
4023 to produce a list of existing files that match the pattern.
4024
4025 ** New functions for base64 conversion:
4026
4027 The function base64-encode-region converts a part of the buffer
4028 into the base64 code used in MIME. base64-decode-region
4029 performs the opposite conversion. Line-breaking is supported
4030 optionally.
4031
4032 Functions base64-encode-string and base64-decode-string do a similar
4033 job on the text in a string. They return the value as a new string.
4034
4035 **
4036 The new function process-running-child-p
4037 will tell you if a subprocess has given control of its
4038 terminal to its own child process.
4039
4040 ** interrupt-process and such functions have a new feature:
4041 when the second argument is `lambda', they send a signal
4042 to the running child of the subshell, if any, but if the shell
4043 itself owns its terminal, no signal is sent.
4044
4045 ** There are new widget types `plist' and `alist' which can
4046 be used for customizing variables whose values are plists or alists.
4047
4048 ** easymenu.el Now understands `:key-sequence' and `:style button'.
4049 :included is an alias for :visible.
4050
4051 easy-menu-add-item now understands the values returned by
4052 easy-menu-remove-item and easy-menu-item-present-p. This can be used
4053 to move or copy menu entries.
4054
4055 ** Multibyte editing changes
4056
4057 *** The definitions of sref and char-bytes are changed. Now, sref is
4058 an alias of aref and char-bytes always returns 1. This change is to
4059 make some Emacs Lisp code which works on 20.2 and earlier also
4060 work on the latest Emacs. Such code uses a combination of sref and
4061 char-bytes in a loop typically as below:
4062 (setq char (sref str idx)
4063 idx (+ idx (char-bytes idx)))
4064 The byte-compiler now warns that this is obsolete.
4065
4066 If you want to know how many bytes a specific multibyte character
4067 (say, CH) occupies in a multibyte buffer, use this code:
4068 (charset-bytes (char-charset ch))
4069
4070 *** In multibyte mode, when you narrow a buffer to some region, and the
4071 region is preceded or followed by non-ASCII codes, inserting or
4072 deleting at the head or the end of the region may signal this error:
4073
4074 Byte combining across boundary of accessible buffer text inhibitted
4075
4076 This is to avoid some bytes being combined together into a character
4077 across the boundary.
4078
4079 *** The functions find-charset-region and find-charset-string include
4080 `unknown' in the returned list in the following cases:
4081 o The current buffer or the target string is unibyte and
4082 contains 8-bit characters.
4083 o The current buffer or the target string is multibyte and
4084 contains invalid characters.
4085
4086 *** The functions decode-coding-region and encode-coding-region remove
4087 text properties of the target region. Ideally, they should correctly
4088 preserve text properties, but for the moment, it's hard. Removing
4089 text properties is better than preserving them in a less-than-correct
4090 way.
4091
4092 *** prefer-coding-system sets EOL conversion of default coding systems.
4093 If the argument to prefer-coding-system specifies a certain type of
4094 end of line conversion, the default coding systems set by
4095 prefer-coding-system will specify that conversion type for end of line.
4096
4097 *** The new function thai-compose-string can be used to properly
4098 compose Thai characters in a string.
4099
4100 ** The primitive `define-prefix-command' now takes an optional third
4101 argument NAME, which should be a string. It supplies the menu name
4102 for the created keymap. Keymaps created in order to be displayed as
4103 menus should always use the third argument.
4104
4105 ** The meanings of optional second arguments for read-char,
4106 read-event, and read-char-exclusive are flipped. Now the second
4107 arguments are INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. These functions use the current
4108 input method (if any) if and only if INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD is non-nil.
4109
4110 ** The new function clear-this-command-keys empties out the contents
4111 of the vector that (this-command-keys) returns. This is useful in
4112 programs that read passwords, to prevent the passwords from echoing
4113 inadvertently as part of the next command in certain cases.
4114
4115 ** The new macro `with-temp-message' displays a temporary message in
4116 the echo area, while executing some Lisp code. Like `progn', it
4117 returns the value of the last form, but it also restores the previous
4118 echo area contents.
4119
4120 (with-temp-message MESSAGE &rest BODY)
4121
4122 ** The function `require' now takes an optional third argument
4123 NOERROR. If it is non-nil, then there is no error if the
4124 requested feature cannot be loaded.
4125
4126 ** In the function modify-face, an argument of (nil) for the
4127 foreground color, background color or stipple pattern
4128 means to clear out that attribute.
4129
4130 ** The `outer-window-id' frame property of an X frame
4131 gives the window number of the outermost X window for the frame.
4132
4133 ** Temporary buffers made with with-output-to-temp-buffer are now
4134 read-only by default, and normally use the major mode Help mode
4135 unless you put them in some other non-Fundamental mode before the
4136 end of with-output-to-temp-buffer.
4137
4138 ** The new functions gap-position and gap-size return information on
4139 the gap of the current buffer.
4140
4141 ** The new functions position-bytes and byte-to-position provide a way
4142 to convert between character positions and byte positions in the
4143 current buffer.
4144
4145 ** vc.el defines two new macros, `edit-vc-file' and `with-vc-file', to
4146 facilitate working with version-controlled files from Lisp programs.
4147 These macros check out a given file automatically if needed, and check
4148 it back in after any modifications have been made.
4149 \f
4150 * Installation Changes in Emacs 20.3
4151
4152 ** The default value of load-path now includes most subdirectories of
4153 the site-specific directories /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp and
4154 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp, in addition to those
4155 directories themselves. Both immediate subdirectories and
4156 subdirectories multiple levels down are added to load-path.
4157
4158 Not all subdirectories are included, though. Subdirectories whose
4159 names do not start with a letter or digit are excluded.
4160 Subdirectories named RCS or CVS are excluded. Also, a subdirectory
4161 which contains a file named `.nosearch' is excluded. You can use
4162 these methods to prevent certain subdirectories from being searched.
4163
4164 Emacs finds these subdirectories and adds them to load-path when it
4165 starts up. While it would be cleaner to find the subdirectories each
4166 time Emacs loads a file, that would be much slower.
4167
4168 This feature is an incompatible change. If you have stored some Emacs
4169 Lisp files in a subdirectory of the site-lisp directory specifically
4170 to prevent them from being used, you will need to rename the
4171 subdirectory to start with a non-alphanumeric character, or create a
4172 `.nosearch' file in it, in order to continue to achieve the desired
4173 results.
4174
4175 ** Emacs no longer includes an old version of the C preprocessor from
4176 GCC. This was formerly used to help compile Emacs with C compilers
4177 that had limits on the significant length of an identifier, but in
4178 fact we stopped supporting such compilers some time ago.
4179 \f
4180 * Changes in Emacs 20.3
4181
4182 ** The new command C-x z (repeat) repeats the previous command
4183 including its argument. If you repeat the z afterward,
4184 it repeats the command additional times; thus, you can
4185 perform many repetitions with one keystroke per repetition.
4186
4187 ** Emacs now supports "selective undo" which undoes only within a
4188 specified region. To do this, set point and mark around the desired
4189 region and type C-u C-x u (or C-u C-_). You can then continue undoing
4190 further, within the same region, by repeating the ordinary undo
4191 command C-x u or C-_. This will keep undoing changes that were made
4192 within the region you originally specified, until either all of them
4193 are undone, or it encounters a change which crosses the edge of that
4194 region.
4195
4196 In Transient Mark mode, undoing when a region is active requests
4197 selective undo.
4198
4199 ** If you specify --unibyte when starting Emacs, then all buffers are
4200 unibyte, except when a Lisp program specifically creates a multibyte
4201 buffer. Setting the environment variable EMACS_UNIBYTE has the same
4202 effect. The --no-unibyte option overrides EMACS_UNIBYTE and directs
4203 Emacs to run normally in multibyte mode.
4204
4205 The option --unibyte does not affect the reading of Emacs Lisp files,
4206 though. If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode, use
4207 -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line. That will force Emacs to
4208 load that file in unibyte mode, regardless of how Emacs was started.
4209
4210 ** toggle-enable-multibyte-characters no longer has a key binding and
4211 no longer appears in the menu bar. We've realized that changing the
4212 enable-multibyte-characters variable in an existing buffer is
4213 something that most users not do.
4214
4215 ** You can specify a coding system to use for the next cut or paste
4216 operations through the window system with the command C-x RET X.
4217 The coding system can make a difference for communication with other
4218 applications.
4219
4220 C-x RET x specifies a coding system for all subsequent cutting and
4221 pasting operations.
4222
4223 ** You can specify the printer to use for commands that do printing by
4224 setting the variable `printer-name'. Just what a printer name looks
4225 like depends on your operating system. You can specify a different
4226 printer for the Postscript printing commands by setting
4227 `ps-printer-name'.
4228
4229 ** Emacs now supports on-the-fly spell checking by the means of a
4230 minor mode. It is called M-x flyspell-mode. You don't have to remember
4231 any other special commands to use it, and you will hardly notice it
4232 except when you make a spelling error. Flyspell works by highlighting
4233 incorrect words as soon as they are completed or as soon as the cursor
4234 hits a new word.
4235
4236 Flyspell mode works with whichever dictionary you have selected for
4237 Ispell in Emacs. In TeX mode, it understands TeX syntax so as not
4238 to be confused by TeX commands.
4239
4240 You can correct a misspelled word by editing it into something
4241 correct. You can also correct it, or accept it as correct, by
4242 clicking on the word with Mouse-2; that gives you a pop-up menu
4243 of various alternative replacements and actions.
4244
4245 Flyspell mode also proposes "automatic" corrections. M-TAB replaces
4246 the current misspelled word with a possible correction. If several
4247 corrections are made possible, M-TAB cycles through them in
4248 alphabetical order, or in order of decreasing likelihood if
4249 flyspell-sort-corrections is nil.
4250
4251 Flyspell mode also flags an error when a word is repeated, if
4252 flyspell-mark-duplications-flag is non-nil.
4253
4254 ** Changes in input method usage.
4255
4256 Now you can use arrow keys (right, left, down, up) for selecting among
4257 the alternatives just the same way as you do by C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p
4258 respectively.
4259
4260 You can use the ENTER key to accept the current conversion.
4261
4262 If you type TAB to display a list of alternatives, you can select one
4263 of the alternatives with Mouse-2.
4264
4265 The meaning of the variable `input-method-verbose-flag' is changed so
4266 that you can set it to t, nil, `default', or `complex-only'.
4267
4268 If the value is nil, extra guidance is never given.
4269
4270 If the value is t, extra guidance is always given.
4271
4272 If the value is `complex-only', extra guidance is always given only
4273 when you are using complex input methods such as chinese-py.
4274
4275 If the value is `default' (this is the default), extra guidance is
4276 given in the following case:
4277 o When you are using a complex input method.
4278 o When you are using a simple input method but not in the minibuffer.
4279
4280 If you are using Emacs through a very slow line, setting
4281 input-method-verbose-flag to nil or to complex-only is a good choice,
4282 and if you are using an input method you are not familiar with,
4283 setting it to t is helpful.
4284
4285 The old command select-input-method is now called set-input-method.
4286
4287 In the language environment "Korean", you can use the following
4288 keys:
4289 Shift-SPC toggle-korean-input-method
4290 C-F9 quail-hangul-switch-symbol-ksc
4291 F9 quail-hangul-switch-hanja
4292 These key bindings are canceled when you switch to another language
4293 environment.
4294
4295 ** The minibuffer history of file names now records the specified file
4296 names, not the entire minibuffer input. For example, if the
4297 minibuffer starts out with /usr/foo/, you might type in /etc/passwd to
4298 get
4299
4300 /usr/foo//etc/passwd
4301
4302 which stands for the file /etc/passwd.
4303
4304 Formerly, this used to put /usr/foo//etc/passwd in the history list.
4305 Now this puts just /etc/passwd in the history list.
4306
4307 ** If you are root, Emacs sets backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to t
4308 at startup, so that saving a file will be sure to preserve
4309 its owner and group.
4310
4311 ** find-func.el can now also find the place of definition of Emacs
4312 Lisp variables in user-loaded libraries.
4313
4314 ** C-x r t (string-rectangle) now deletes the existing rectangle
4315 contents before inserting the specified string on each line.
4316
4317 ** There is a new command delete-whitespace-rectangle
4318 which deletes whitespace starting from a particular column
4319 in all the lines on a rectangle. The column is specified
4320 by the left edge of the rectangle.
4321
4322 ** You can now store a number into a register with C-u NUMBER C-x r n REG,
4323 increment it by INC with C-u INC C-x r + REG (to increment by one, omit
4324 C-u INC), and insert it in the buffer with C-x r g REG. This is useful
4325 for writing keyboard macros.
4326
4327 ** The new command M-x speedbar displays a frame in which directories,
4328 files, and tags can be displayed, manipulated, and jumped to. The
4329 frame defaults to 20 characters in width, and is the same height as
4330 the frame that it was started from. Some major modes define
4331 additional commands for the speedbar, including Rmail, GUD/GDB, and
4332 info.
4333
4334 ** query-replace-regexp is now bound to C-M-%.
4335
4336 ** In Transient Mark mode, when the region is active, M-x
4337 query-replace and the other replace commands now operate on the region
4338 contents only.
4339
4340 ** M-x write-region, when used interactively, now asks for
4341 confirmation before overwriting an existing file. When you call
4342 the function from a Lisp program, a new optional argument CONFIRM
4343 says whether to ask for confirmation in this case.
4344
4345 ** If you use find-file-literally and the file is already visited
4346 non-literally, the command asks you whether to revisit the file
4347 literally. If you say no, it signals an error.
4348
4349 ** Major modes defined with the "derived mode" feature
4350 now use the proper name for the mode hook: WHATEVER-mode-hook.
4351 Formerly they used the name WHATEVER-mode-hooks, but that is
4352 inconsistent with Emacs conventions.
4353
4354 ** shell-command-on-region (and shell-command) reports success or
4355 failure if the command produces no output.
4356
4357 ** Set focus-follows-mouse to nil if your window system or window
4358 manager does not transfer focus to another window when you just move
4359 the mouse.
4360
4361 ** mouse-menu-buffer-maxlen has been renamed to
4362 mouse-buffer-menu-maxlen to be consistent with the other related
4363 function and variable names.
4364
4365 ** The new variable auto-coding-alist specifies coding systems for
4366 reading specific files. This has higher priority than
4367 file-coding-system-alist.
4368
4369 ** If you set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to
4370 t, then Emacs displays non-ASCII characters are displayed by
4371 converting them to the equivalent multibyte characters according to
4372 the current language environment. As a result, they are displayed
4373 according to the current fontset.
4374
4375 ** C-q's handling of codes in the range 0200 through 0377 is changed.
4376
4377 The codes in the range 0200 through 0237 are inserted as one byte of
4378 that code regardless of the values of nonascii-translation-table and
4379 nonascii-insert-offset.
4380
4381 For the codes in the range 0240 through 0377, if
4382 enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil and nonascii-translation-table
4383 nor nonascii-insert-offset can't convert them to valid multibyte
4384 characters, they are converted to Latin-1 characters.
4385
4386 ** If you try to find a file that is not read-accessible, you now get
4387 an error, rather than an empty buffer and a warning.
4388
4389 ** In the minibuffer history commands M-r and M-s, an upper case
4390 letter in the regular expression forces case-sensitive search.
4391
4392 ** In the *Help* buffer, cross-references to commands and variables
4393 are inferred and hyperlinked. Use C-h m in Help mode for the relevant
4394 command keys.
4395
4396 ** M-x apropos-command, with a prefix argument, no longer looks for
4397 user option variables--instead it looks for noninteractive functions.
4398
4399 Meanwhile, the command apropos-variable normally searches for
4400 user option variables; with a prefix argument, it looks at
4401 all variables that have documentation.
4402
4403 ** When you type a long line in the minibuffer, and the minibuffer
4404 shows just one line, automatically scrolling works in a special way
4405 that shows you overlap with the previous line of text. The variable
4406 minibuffer-scroll-overlap controls how many characters of overlap
4407 it should show; the default is 20.
4408
4409 Meanwhile, Resize Minibuffer mode is still available; in that mode,
4410 the minibuffer grows taller (up to a point) as needed to show the whole
4411 of your input.
4412
4413 ** The new command M-x customize-changed-options lets you customize
4414 all the options whose meanings or default values have changed in
4415 recent Emacs versions. You specify a previous Emacs version number as
4416 argument, and the command creates a customization buffer showing all
4417 the customizable options which were changed since that version.
4418 Newly added options are included as well.
4419
4420 If you don't specify a particular version number argument,
4421 then the customization buffer shows all the customizable options
4422 for which Emacs versions of changes are recorded.
4423
4424 This function is also bound to the Changed Options entry in the
4425 Customize menu.
4426
4427 ** When you run M-x grep with a prefix argument, it figures out
4428 the tag around point and puts that into the default grep command.
4429
4430 ** The new command M-* (pop-tag-mark) pops back through a history of
4431 buffer positions from which M-. or other tag-finding commands were
4432 invoked.
4433
4434 ** The new variable comment-padding specifies the number of spaces
4435 that `comment-region' will insert before the actual text of the comment.
4436 The default is 1.
4437
4438 ** In Fortran mode the characters `.', `_' and `$' now have symbol
4439 syntax, not word syntax. Fortran mode now supports `imenu' and has
4440 new commands fortran-join-line (M-^) and fortran-narrow-to-subprogram
4441 (C-x n d). M-q can be used to fill a statement or comment block
4442 sensibly.
4443
4444 ** GUD now supports jdb, the Java debugger, and pdb, the Python debugger.
4445
4446 ** If you set the variable add-log-keep-changes-together to a non-nil
4447 value, the command `C-x 4 a' will automatically notice when you make
4448 two entries in one day for one file, and combine them.
4449
4450 ** You can use the command M-x diary-mail-entries to mail yourself a
4451 reminder about upcoming diary entries. See the documentation string
4452 for a sample shell script for calling this function automatically
4453 every night.
4454
4455 ** Desktop changes
4456
4457 *** All you need to do to enable use of the Desktop package, is to set
4458 the variable desktop-enable to t with Custom.
4459
4460 *** Minor modes are now restored. Which minor modes are restored
4461 and how modes are restored is controlled by `desktop-minor-mode-table'.
4462
4463 ** There is no need to do anything special, now, to enable Gnus to
4464 read and post multi-lingual articles.
4465
4466 ** Outline mode has now support for showing hidden outlines when
4467 doing an isearch. In order for this to happen search-invisible should
4468 be set to open (the default). If an isearch match is inside a hidden
4469 outline the outline is made visible. If you continue pressing C-s and
4470 the match moves outside the formerly invisible outline, the outline is
4471 made invisible again.
4472
4473 ** Mail reading and sending changes
4474
4475 *** The Rmail e command now switches to displaying the whole header of
4476 the message before it lets you edit the message. This is so that any
4477 changes you make in the header will not be lost if you subsequently
4478 toggle.
4479
4480 *** The w command in Rmail, which writes the message body into a file,
4481 now works in the summary buffer as well. (The command to delete the
4482 summary buffer is now Q.) The default file name for the w command, if
4483 the message has no subject, is stored in the variable
4484 rmail-default-body-file.
4485
4486 *** Most of the commands and modes that operate on mail and netnews no
4487 longer depend on the value of mail-header-separator. Instead, they
4488 handle whatever separator the buffer happens to use.
4489
4490 *** If you set mail-signature to a value which is not t, nil, or a string,
4491 it should be an expression. When you send a message, this expression
4492 is evaluated to insert the signature.
4493
4494 *** The new Lisp library feedmail.el (version 8) enhances processing of
4495 outbound email messages. It works in coordination with other email
4496 handling packages (e.g., rmail, VM, gnus) and is responsible for
4497 putting final touches on messages and actually submitting them for
4498 transmission. Users of the emacs program "fakemail" might be
4499 especially interested in trying feedmail.
4500
4501 feedmail is not enabled by default. See comments at the top of
4502 feedmail.el for set-up instructions. Among the bigger features
4503 provided by feedmail are:
4504
4505 **** you can park outgoing messages into a disk-based queue and
4506 stimulate sending some or all of them later (handy for laptop users);
4507 there is also a queue for draft messages
4508
4509 **** you can get one last look at the prepped outbound message and
4510 be prompted for confirmation
4511
4512 **** does smart filling of address headers
4513
4514 **** can generate a MESSAGE-ID: line and a DATE: line; the date can be
4515 the time the message was written or the time it is being sent; this
4516 can make FCC copies more closely resemble copies that recipients get
4517
4518 **** you can specify an arbitrary function for actually transmitting
4519 the message; included in feedmail are interfaces for /bin/[r]mail,
4520 /usr/lib/sendmail, and elisp smtpmail; it's easy to write a new
4521 function for something else (10-20 lines of elisp)
4522
4523 ** Dired changes
4524
4525 *** The Dired function dired-do-toggle, which toggles marked and unmarked
4526 files, is now bound to "t" instead of "T".
4527
4528 *** dired-at-point has been added to ffap.el. It allows one to easily
4529 run Dired on the directory name at point.
4530
4531 *** Dired has a new command: %g. It searches the contents of
4532 files in the directory and marks each file that contains a match
4533 for a specified regexp.
4534
4535 ** VC Changes
4536
4537 *** New option vc-ignore-vc-files lets you turn off version control
4538 conveniently.
4539
4540 *** VC Dired has been completely rewritten. It is now much
4541 faster, especially for CVS, and works very similar to ordinary
4542 Dired.
4543
4544 VC Dired is invoked by typing C-x v d and entering the name of the
4545 directory to display. By default, VC Dired gives you a recursive
4546 listing of all files at or below the given directory which are
4547 currently locked (for CVS, all files not up-to-date are shown).
4548
4549 You can change the listing format by setting vc-dired-recurse to nil,
4550 then it shows only the given directory, and you may also set
4551 vc-dired-terse-display to nil, then it shows all files under version
4552 control plus the names of any subdirectories, so that you can type `i'
4553 on such lines to insert them manually, as in ordinary Dired.
4554
4555 All Dired commands operate normally in VC Dired, except for `v', which
4556 is redefined as the version control prefix. That means you may type
4557 `v l', `v =' etc. to invoke `vc-print-log', `vc-diff' and the like on
4558 the file named in the current Dired buffer line. `v v' invokes
4559 `vc-next-action' on this file, or on all files currently marked.
4560
4561 The new command `v t' (vc-dired-toggle-terse-mode) allows you to
4562 toggle between terse display (only locked files) and full display (all
4563 VC files plus subdirectories). There is also a special command,
4564 `* l', to mark all files currently locked.
4565
4566 Giving a prefix argument to C-x v d now does the same thing as in
4567 ordinary Dired: it allows you to supply additional options for the ls
4568 command in the minibuffer, to fine-tune VC Dired's output.
4569
4570 *** Under CVS, if you merge changes from the repository into a working
4571 file, and CVS detects conflicts, VC now offers to start an ediff
4572 session to resolve them.
4573
4574 Alternatively, you can use the new command `vc-resolve-conflicts' to
4575 resolve conflicts in a file at any time. It works in any buffer that
4576 contains conflict markers as generated by rcsmerge (which is what CVS
4577 uses as well).
4578
4579 *** You can now transfer changes between branches, using the new
4580 command vc-merge (C-x v m). It is implemented for RCS and CVS. When
4581 you invoke it in a buffer under version-control, you can specify
4582 either an entire branch or a pair of versions, and the changes on that
4583 branch or between the two versions are merged into the working file.
4584 If this results in any conflicts, they may be resolved interactively,
4585 using ediff.
4586
4587 ** Changes in Font Lock
4588
4589 *** The face and variable previously known as font-lock-reference-face
4590 are now called font-lock-constant-face to better reflect their typical
4591 use for highlighting constants and labels. (Its face properties are
4592 unchanged.) The variable font-lock-reference-face remains for now for
4593 compatibility reasons, but its value is font-lock-constant-face.
4594
4595 ** Frame name display changes
4596
4597 *** The command set-frame-name lets you set the name of the current
4598 frame. You can use the new command select-frame-by-name to select and
4599 raise a frame; this is mostly useful on character-only terminals, or
4600 when many frames are invisible or iconified.
4601
4602 *** On character-only terminal (not a window system), changing the
4603 frame name is now reflected on the mode line and in the Buffers/Frames
4604 menu.
4605
4606 ** Comint (subshell) changes
4607
4608 *** In Comint modes, the commands to kill, stop or interrupt a
4609 subjob now also kill pending input. This is for compatibility
4610 with ordinary shells, where the signal characters do this.
4611
4612 *** There are new commands in Comint mode.
4613
4614 C-c C-x fetches the "next" line from the input history;
4615 that is, the line after the last line you got.
4616 You can use this command to fetch successive lines, one by one.
4617
4618 C-c SPC accumulates lines of input. More precisely, it arranges to
4619 send the current line together with the following line, when you send
4620 the following line.
4621
4622 C-c C-a if repeated twice consecutively now moves to the process mark,
4623 which separates the pending input from the subprocess output and the
4624 previously sent input.
4625
4626 C-c M-r now runs comint-previous-matching-input-from-input;
4627 it searches for a previous command, using the current pending input
4628 as the search string.
4629
4630 *** New option compilation-scroll-output can be set to scroll
4631 automatically in compilation-mode windows.
4632
4633 ** C mode changes
4634
4635 *** Multiline macros are now handled, both as they affect indentation,
4636 and as recognized syntax. New syntactic symbol cpp-macro-cont is
4637 assigned to second and subsequent lines of a multiline macro
4638 definition.
4639
4640 *** A new style "user" which captures all non-hook-ified
4641 (i.e. top-level) .emacs file variable settings and customizations.
4642 Style "cc-mode" is an alias for "user" and is deprecated. "gnu"
4643 style is still the default however.
4644
4645 *** "java" style now conforms to Sun's JDK coding style.
4646
4647 *** There are new commands c-beginning-of-defun, c-end-of-defun which
4648 are alternatives which you could bind to C-M-a and C-M-e if you prefer
4649 them. They do not have key bindings by default.
4650
4651 *** New and improved implementations of M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)
4652 and M-e (c-end-of-statement).
4653
4654 *** C++ namespace blocks are supported, with new syntactic symbols
4655 namespace-open, namespace-close, and innamespace.
4656
4657 *** File local variable settings of c-file-style and c-file-offsets
4658 makes the style variables local to that buffer only.
4659
4660 *** New indentation functions c-lineup-close-paren,
4661 c-indent-one-line-block, c-lineup-dont-change.
4662
4663 *** Improvements (hopefully!) to the way CC Mode is loaded. You
4664 should now be able to do a (require 'cc-mode) to get the entire
4665 package loaded properly for customization in your .emacs file. A new
4666 variable c-initialize-on-load controls this and is t by default.
4667
4668 ** Changes to hippie-expand.
4669
4670 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-skip-space'. If
4671 non-nil, trailing spaces may be included in the abbreviation to search for,
4672 which then gives the same behavior as the original `dabbrev-expand'.
4673
4674 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-dabbrev-as-symbol'. If
4675 non-nil, characters of syntax '_' is considered part of the word when
4676 expanding dynamically.
4677
4678 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-no-restriction'. If
4679 non-nil, narrowed buffers are widened before they are searched.
4680
4681 *** New customization variable `hippie-expand-only-buffers'. If
4682 non-empty, buffers searched are restricted to the types specified in
4683 this list. Useful for example when constructing new special-purpose
4684 expansion functions with `make-hippie-expand-function'.
4685
4686 *** Text properties of the expansion are no longer copied.
4687
4688 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
4689
4690 *** Any titleword matching a regexp in the new variable
4691 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore (case sensitive) is ignored during
4692 automatic key generation. This replaces variable
4693 bibtex-autokey-titleword-first-ignore, which only checked for matches
4694 against the first word in the title.
4695
4696 *** Autokey generation now uses all words from the title, not just
4697 capitalized words. To avoid conflicts with existing customizations,
4698 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore is set up such that words starting with
4699 lowerkey characters will still be ignored. Thus, if you want to use
4700 lowercase words from the title, you will have to overwrite the
4701 bibtex-autokey-titleword-ignore standard setting.
4702
4703 *** Case conversion of names and title words for automatic key
4704 generation is more flexible. Variable bibtex-autokey-preserve-case is
4705 replaced by bibtex-autokey-titleword-case-convert and
4706 bibtex-autokey-name-case-convert.
4707
4708 ** Changes in vcursor.el.
4709
4710 *** Support for character terminals is available: there is a new keymap
4711 and the vcursor will appear as an arrow between buffer text. A
4712 variable `vcursor-interpret-input' allows input from the vcursor to be
4713 entered exactly as if typed. Numerous functions, including
4714 `vcursor-compare-windows', have been rewritten to improve consistency
4715 in the selection of windows and corresponding keymaps.
4716
4717 *** vcursor options can now be altered with M-x customize under the
4718 Editing group once the package is loaded.
4719
4720 *** Loading vcursor now does not define keys by default, as this is
4721 generally a bad side effect. Use M-x customize to set
4722 vcursor-key-bindings to t to restore the old behaviour.
4723
4724 *** vcursor-auto-disable can be `copy', which turns off copying from the
4725 vcursor, but doesn't disable it, after any non-vcursor command.
4726
4727 ** Ispell changes.
4728
4729 *** You can now spell check comments and strings in the current
4730 buffer with M-x ispell-comments-and-strings. Comments and strings
4731 are identified by syntax tables in effect.
4732
4733 *** Generic region skipping implemented.
4734 A single buffer can be broken into a number of regions where text will
4735 and will not be checked. The definitions of the regions can be user
4736 defined. New applications and improvements made available by this
4737 include:
4738
4739 o URLs are automatically skipped
4740 o EMail message checking is vastly improved.
4741
4742 *** Ispell can highlight the erroneous word even on non-window terminals.
4743
4744 ** Changes to RefTeX mode
4745
4746 RefTeX has been updated in order to make it more usable with very
4747 large projects (like a several volume math book). The parser has been
4748 re-written from scratch. To get maximum speed from RefTeX, check the
4749 section `Optimizations' in the manual.
4750
4751 *** New recursive parser.
4752
4753 The old version of RefTeX created a single large buffer containing the
4754 entire multifile document in order to parse the document. The new
4755 recursive parser scans the individual files.
4756
4757 *** Parsing only part of a document.
4758
4759 Reparsing of changed document parts can now be made faster by enabling
4760 partial scans. To use this feature, read the documentation string of
4761 the variable `reftex-enable-partial-scans' and set the variable to t.
4762
4763 (setq reftex-enable-partial-scans t)
4764
4765 *** Storing parsing information in a file.
4766
4767 This can improve startup times considerably. To turn it on, use
4768
4769 (setq reftex-save-parse-info t)
4770
4771 *** Using multiple selection buffers
4772
4773 If the creation of label selection buffers is too slow (this happens
4774 for large documents), you can reuse these buffers by setting
4775
4776 (setq reftex-use-multiple-selection-buffers t)
4777
4778 *** References to external documents.
4779
4780 The LaTeX package `xr' allows to cross-reference labels in external
4781 documents. RefTeX can provide information about the external
4782 documents as well. To use this feature, set up the \externaldocument
4783 macros required by the `xr' package and rescan the document with
4784 RefTeX. The external labels can then be accessed with the `x' key in
4785 the selection buffer provided by `reftex-reference' (bound to `C-c )').
4786 The `x' key also works in the table of contents buffer.
4787
4788 *** Many more labeled LaTeX environments are recognized by default.
4789
4790 The builtin command list now covers all the standard LaTeX commands,
4791 and all of the major packages included in the LaTeX distribution.
4792
4793 Also, RefTeX now understands the \appendix macro and changes
4794 the enumeration of sections in the *toc* buffer accordingly.
4795
4796 *** Mouse support for selection and *toc* buffers
4797
4798 The mouse can now be used to select items in the selection and *toc*
4799 buffers. See also the new option `reftex-highlight-selection'.
4800
4801 *** New keymaps for selection and table of contents modes.
4802
4803 The selection processes for labels and citation keys, and the table of
4804 contents buffer now have their own keymaps: `reftex-select-label-map',
4805 `reftex-select-bib-map', `reftex-toc-map'. The selection processes
4806 have a number of new keys predefined. In particular, TAB lets you
4807 enter a label with completion. Check the on-the-fly help (press `?'
4808 at the selection prompt) or read the Info documentation to find out
4809 more.
4810
4811 *** Support for the varioref package
4812
4813 The `v' key in the label selection buffer toggles \ref versus \vref.
4814
4815 *** New hooks
4816
4817 Three new hooks can be used to redefine the way labels, references,
4818 and citations are created. These hooks are
4819 `reftex-format-label-function', `reftex-format-ref-function',
4820 `reftex-format-cite-function'.
4821
4822 *** Citations outside LaTeX
4823
4824 The command `reftex-citation' may also be used outside LaTeX (e.g. in
4825 a mail buffer). See the Info documentation for details.
4826
4827 *** Short context is no longer fontified.
4828
4829 The short context in the label menu no longer copies the
4830 fontification from the text in the buffer. If you prefer it to be
4831 fontified, use
4832
4833 (setq reftex-refontify-context t)
4834
4835 ** file-cache-minibuffer-complete now accepts a prefix argument.
4836 With a prefix argument, it does not try to do completion of
4837 the file name within its directory; it only checks for other
4838 directories that contain the same file name.
4839
4840 Thus, given the file name Makefile, and assuming that a file
4841 Makefile.in exists in the same directory, ordinary
4842 file-cache-minibuffer-complete will try to complete Makefile to
4843 Makefile.in and will therefore never look for other directories that
4844 have Makefile. A prefix argument tells it not to look for longer
4845 names such as Makefile.in, so that instead it will look for other
4846 directories--just as if the name were already complete in its present
4847 directory.
4848
4849 ** New modes and packages
4850
4851 *** There is a new alternative major mode for Perl, Cperl mode.
4852 It has many more features than Perl mode, and some people prefer
4853 it, but some do not.
4854
4855 *** There is a new major mode, M-x vhdl-mode, for editing files of VHDL
4856 code.
4857
4858 *** M-x which-function-mode enables a minor mode that displays the
4859 current function name continuously in the mode line, as you move
4860 around in a buffer.
4861
4862 Which Function mode is effective in major modes which support Imenu.
4863
4864 *** Gametree is a major mode for editing game analysis trees. The author
4865 uses it for keeping notes about his postal Chess games, but it should
4866 be helpful for other two-player games as well, as long as they have an
4867 established system of notation similar to Chess.
4868
4869 *** The new minor mode checkdoc-minor-mode provides Emacs Lisp
4870 documentation string checking for style and spelling. The style
4871 guidelines are found in the Emacs Lisp programming manual.
4872
4873 *** The net-utils package makes some common networking features
4874 available in Emacs. Some of these functions are wrappers around
4875 system utilities (ping, nslookup, etc); others are implementations of
4876 simple protocols (finger, whois) in Emacs Lisp. There are also
4877 functions to make simple connections to TCP/IP ports for debugging and
4878 the like.
4879
4880 *** highlight-changes-mode is a minor mode that uses colors to
4881 identify recently changed parts of the buffer text.
4882
4883 *** The new package `midnight' lets you specify things to be done
4884 within Emacs at midnight--by default, kill buffers that you have not
4885 used in a considerable time. To use this feature, customize
4886 the user option `midnight-mode' to t.
4887
4888 *** The file generic-x.el defines a number of simple major modes.
4889
4890 apache-generic-mode: For Apache and NCSA httpd configuration files
4891 samba-generic-mode: Samba configuration files
4892 fvwm-generic-mode: For fvwm initialization files
4893 x-resource-generic-mode: For X resource files
4894 hosts-generic-mode: For hosts files (.rhosts, /etc/hosts, etc)
4895 mailagent-rules-generic-mode: For mailagent .rules files
4896 javascript-generic-mode: For JavaScript files
4897 vrml-generic-mode: For VRML files
4898 java-manifest-generic-mode: For Java MANIFEST files
4899 java-properties-generic-mode: For Java property files
4900 mailrc-generic-mode: For .mailrc files
4901
4902 Platform-specific modes:
4903
4904 prototype-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V prototype files
4905 pkginfo-generic-mode: For Solaris/Sys V pkginfo files
4906 alias-generic-mode: For C shell alias files
4907 inf-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INF files
4908 ini-generic-mode: For MS-Windows INI files
4909 reg-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Registry files
4910 bat-generic-mode: For MS-Windows BAT scripts
4911 rc-generic-mode: For MS-Windows Resource files
4912 rul-generic-mode: For InstallShield scripts
4913 \f
4914 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 since the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4915
4916 ** If you want a Lisp file to be read in unibyte mode,
4917 use -*-unibyte: t;-*- on its first line.
4918 That will force Emacs to read that file in unibyte mode.
4919 Otherwise, the file will be loaded and byte-compiled in multibyte mode.
4920
4921 Thus, each lisp file is read in a consistent way regardless of whether
4922 you started Emacs with --unibyte, so that a Lisp program gives
4923 consistent results regardless of how Emacs was started.
4924
4925 ** The new function assoc-default is useful for searching an alist,
4926 and using a default value if the key is not found there. You can
4927 specify a comparison predicate, so this function is useful for
4928 searching comparing a string against an alist of regular expressions.
4929
4930 ** The functions unibyte-char-to-multibyte and
4931 multibyte-char-to-unibyte convert between unibyte and multibyte
4932 character codes, in a way that is appropriate for the current language
4933 environment.
4934
4935 ** The functions read-event, read-char and read-char-exclusive now
4936 take two optional arguments. PROMPT, if non-nil, specifies a prompt
4937 string. SUPPRESS-INPUT-METHOD, if non-nil, says to disable the
4938 current input method for reading this one event.
4939
4940 ** Two new variables print-escape-nonascii and print-escape-multibyte
4941 now control whether to output certain characters as
4942 backslash-sequences. print-escape-nonascii applies to single-byte
4943 non-ASCII characters; print-escape-multibyte applies to multibyte
4944 characters. Both of these variables are used only when printing
4945 in readable fashion (prin1 uses them, princ does not).
4946 \f
4947 * Lisp changes in Emacs 20.3 before the Emacs Lisp Manual was published
4948
4949 ** Compiled Emacs Lisp files made with the modified "MBSK" version
4950 of Emacs 20.2 do not work in Emacs 20.3.
4951
4952 ** Buffer positions are now measured in characters, as they were
4953 in Emacs 19 and before. This means that (forward-char 1)
4954 always increases point by 1.
4955
4956 The function chars-in-region now just subtracts its arguments. It is
4957 considered obsolete. The function char-boundary-p has been deleted.
4958
4959 See below for additional changes relating to multibyte characters.
4960
4961 ** defcustom, defface and defgroup now accept the keyword `:version'.
4962 Use this to specify in which version of Emacs a certain variable's
4963 default value changed. For example,
4964
4965 (defcustom foo-max 34 "*Maximum number of foo's allowed."
4966 :type 'integer
4967 :group 'foo
4968 :version "20.3")
4969
4970 (defgroup foo-group nil "The foo group."
4971 :version "20.3")
4972
4973 If an entire new group is added or the variables in it have the
4974 default values changed, then just add a `:version' to that group. It
4975 is recommended that new packages added to the distribution contain a
4976 `:version' in the top level group.
4977
4978 This information is used to control the customize-changed-options command.
4979
4980 ** It is now an error to change the value of a symbol whose name
4981 starts with a colon--if it is interned in the standard obarray.
4982
4983 However, setting such a symbol to its proper value, which is that
4984 symbol itself, is not an error. This is for the sake of programs that
4985 support previous Emacs versions by explicitly setting these variables
4986 to themselves.
4987
4988 If you set the variable keyword-symbols-constant-flag to nil,
4989 this error is suppressed, and you can set these symbols to any
4990 values whatever.
4991
4992 ** There is a new debugger command, R.
4993 It evaluates an expression like e, but saves the result
4994 in the buffer *Debugger-record*.
4995
4996 ** Frame-local variables.
4997
4998 You can now make a variable local to various frames. To do this, call
4999 the function make-variable-frame-local; this enables frames to have
5000 local bindings for that variable.
5001
5002 These frame-local bindings are actually frame parameters: you create a
5003 frame-local binding in a specific frame by calling
5004 modify-frame-parameters and specifying the variable name as the
5005 parameter name.
5006
5007 Buffer-local bindings take precedence over frame-local bindings.
5008 Thus, if the current buffer has a buffer-local binding, that binding is
5009 active; otherwise, if the selected frame has a frame-local binding,
5010 that binding is active; otherwise, the default binding is active.
5011
5012 It would not be hard to implement window-local bindings, but it is not
5013 clear that this would be very useful; windows tend to come and go in a
5014 very transitory fashion, so that trying to produce any specific effect
5015 through a window-local binding would not be very robust.
5016
5017 ** `sregexq' and `sregex' are two new functions for constructing
5018 "symbolic regular expressions." These are Lisp expressions that, when
5019 evaluated, yield conventional string-based regexps. The symbolic form
5020 makes it easier to construct, read, and maintain complex patterns.
5021 See the documentation in sregex.el.
5022
5023 ** parse-partial-sexp's return value has an additional element which
5024 is used to pass information along if you pass it to another call to
5025 parse-partial-sexp, starting its scan where the first call ended.
5026 The contents of this field are not yet finalized.
5027
5028 ** eval-region now accepts a fourth optional argument READ-FUNCTION.
5029 If it is non-nil, that function is used instead of `read'.
5030
5031 ** unload-feature by default removes the feature's functions from
5032 known hooks to avoid trouble, but a package providing FEATURE can
5033 define a hook FEATURE-unload-hook to be run by unload-feature instead.
5034
5035 ** read-from-minibuffer no longer returns the argument DEFAULT-VALUE
5036 when the user enters empty input. It now returns the null string, as
5037 it did in Emacs 19. The default value is made available in the
5038 history via M-n, but it is not applied here as a default.
5039
5040 The other, more specialized minibuffer-reading functions continue to
5041 return the default value (not the null string) when the user enters
5042 empty input.
5043
5044 ** The new variable read-buffer-function controls which routine to use
5045 for selecting buffers. For example, if you set this variable to
5046 `iswitchb-read-buffer', iswitchb will be used to read buffer names.
5047 Other functions can also be used if they accept the same arguments as
5048 `read-buffer' and return the selected buffer name as a string.
5049
5050 ** The new function read-passwd reads a password from the terminal,
5051 echoing a period for each character typed. It takes three arguments:
5052 a prompt string, a flag which says "read it twice to make sure", and a
5053 default password to use if the user enters nothing.
5054
5055 ** The variable fill-nobreak-predicate gives major modes a way to
5056 specify not to break a line at certain places. Its value is a
5057 function which is called with no arguments, with point located at the
5058 place where a break is being considered. If the function returns
5059 non-nil, then the line won't be broken there.
5060
5061 ** window-end now takes an optional second argument, UPDATE.
5062 If this is non-nil, then the function always returns an accurate
5063 up-to-date value for the buffer position corresponding to the
5064 end of the window, even if this requires computation.
5065
5066 ** other-buffer now takes an optional argument FRAME
5067 which specifies which frame's buffer list to use.
5068 If it is nil, that means use the selected frame's buffer list.
5069
5070 ** The new variable buffer-display-time, always local in every buffer,
5071 holds the value of (current-time) as of the last time that a window
5072 was directed to display this buffer.
5073
5074 ** It is now meaningful to compare two window-configuration objects
5075 with `equal'. Two window-configuration objects are equal if they
5076 describe equivalent arrangements of windows, in the same frame--in
5077 other words, if they would give the same results if passed to
5078 set-window-configuration.
5079
5080 ** compare-window-configurations is a new function that compares two
5081 window configurations loosely. It ignores differences in saved buffer
5082 positions and scrolling, and considers only the structure and sizes of
5083 windows and the choice of buffers to display.
5084
5085 ** The variable minor-mode-overriding-map-alist allows major modes to
5086 override the key bindings of a minor mode. The elements of this alist
5087 look like the elements of minor-mode-map-alist: (VARIABLE . KEYMAP).
5088
5089 If the VARIABLE in an element of minor-mode-overriding-map-alist has a
5090 non-nil value, the paired KEYMAP is active, and totally overrides the
5091 map (if any) specified for the same variable in minor-mode-map-alist.
5092
5093 minor-mode-overriding-map-alist is automatically local in all buffers,
5094 and it is meant to be set by major modes.
5095
5096 ** The function match-string-no-properties is like match-string
5097 except that it discards all text properties from the result.
5098
5099 ** The function load-average now accepts an optional argument
5100 USE-FLOATS. If it is non-nil, the load average values are returned as
5101 floating point numbers, rather than as integers to be divided by 100.
5102
5103 ** The new variable temporary-file-directory specifies the directory
5104 to use for creating temporary files. The default value is determined
5105 in a reasonable way for your operating system; on GNU and Unix systems
5106 it is based on the TMP and TMPDIR environment variables.
5107
5108 ** Menu changes
5109
5110 *** easymenu.el now uses the new menu item format and supports the
5111 keywords :visible and :filter. The existing keyword :keys is now
5112 better supported.
5113
5114 The variable `easy-menu-precalculate-equivalent-keybindings' controls
5115 a new feature which calculates keyboard equivalents for the menu when
5116 you define the menu. The default is t. If you rarely use menus, you
5117 can set the variable to nil to disable this precalculation feature;
5118 then the calculation is done only if you use the menu bar.
5119
5120 *** A new format for menu items is supported.
5121
5122 In a keymap, a key binding that has the format
5123 (STRING . REAL-BINDING) or (STRING HELP-STRING . REAL-BINDING)
5124 defines a menu item. Now a menu item definition may also be a list that
5125 starts with the symbol `menu-item'.
5126
5127 The format is:
5128 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) or
5129 (menu-item ITEM-NAME REAL-BINDING . ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST)
5130 where ITEM-NAME is an expression which evaluates to the menu item
5131 string, and ITEM-PROPERTY-LIST has the form of a property list.
5132 The supported properties include
5133
5134 :enable FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5135 item is enabled.
5136 :visible FORM Evaluate FORM to determine whether the
5137 item should appear in the menu.
5138 :filter FILTER-FN
5139 FILTER-FN is a function of one argument,
5140 which will be REAL-BINDING.
5141 It should return a binding to use instead.
5142 :keys DESCRIPTION
5143 DESCRIPTION is a string that describes an equivalent keyboard
5144 binding for for REAL-BINDING. DESCRIPTION is expanded with
5145 `substitute-command-keys' before it is used.
5146 :key-sequence KEY-SEQUENCE
5147 KEY-SEQUENCE is a key-sequence for an equivalent
5148 keyboard binding.
5149 :key-sequence nil
5150 This means that the command normally has no
5151 keyboard equivalent.
5152 :help HELP HELP is the extra help string (not currently used).
5153 :button (TYPE . SELECTED)
5154 TYPE is :toggle or :radio.
5155 SELECTED is a form, to be evaluated, and its
5156 value says whether this button is currently selected.
5157
5158 Buttons are at the moment only simulated by prefixes in the menu.
5159 Eventually ordinary X-buttons may be supported.
5160
5161 (menu-item ITEM-NAME) defines unselectable item.
5162
5163 ** New event types
5164
5165 *** The new event type `mouse-wheel' is generated by a wheel on a
5166 mouse (such as the MS Intellimouse). The event contains a delta that
5167 corresponds to the amount and direction that the wheel is rotated,
5168 which is typically used to implement a scroll or zoom. The format is:
5169
5170 (mouse-wheel POSITION DELTA)
5171
5172 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5173 same format as a mouse-click event, and DELTA is a signed number
5174 indicating the number of increments by which the wheel was rotated. A
5175 negative DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated backwards, towards
5176 the user, and a positive DELTA indicates that the wheel was rotated
5177 forward, away from the user.
5178
5179 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5180
5181 *** The new event type `drag-n-drop' is generated when a group of
5182 files is selected in an application outside of Emacs, and then dragged
5183 and dropped onto an Emacs frame. The event contains a list of
5184 filenames that were dragged and dropped, which are then typically
5185 loaded into Emacs. The format is:
5186
5187 (drag-n-drop POSITION FILES)
5188
5189 where POSITION is a list describing the position of the event in the
5190 same format as a mouse-click event, and FILES is the list of filenames
5191 that were dragged and dropped.
5192
5193 As of now, this event type is generated only on MS Windows.
5194
5195 ** Changes relating to multibyte characters.
5196
5197 *** The variable enable-multibyte-characters is now read-only;
5198 any attempt to set it directly signals an error. The only way
5199 to change this value in an existing buffer is with set-buffer-multibyte.
5200
5201 *** In a string constant, `\ ' now stands for "nothing at all". You
5202 can use it to terminate a hex escape which is followed by a character
5203 that could otherwise be read as part of the hex escape.
5204
5205 *** String indices are now measured in characters, as they were
5206 in Emacs 19 and before.
5207
5208 The function chars-in-string has been deleted.
5209 The function concat-chars has been renamed to `string'.
5210
5211 *** The function set-buffer-multibyte sets the flag in the current
5212 buffer that says whether the buffer uses multibyte representation or
5213 unibyte representation. If the argument is nil, it selects unibyte
5214 representation. Otherwise it selects multibyte representation.
5215
5216 This function does not change the contents of the buffer, viewed
5217 as a sequence of bytes. However, it does change the contents
5218 viewed as characters; a sequence of two bytes which is treated as
5219 one character when the buffer uses multibyte representation
5220 will count as two characters using unibyte representation.
5221
5222 This function sets enable-multibyte-characters to record which
5223 representation is in use. It also adjusts various data in the buffer
5224 (including its markers, overlays and text properties) so that they are
5225 consistent with the new representation.
5226
5227 *** string-make-multibyte takes a string and converts it to multibyte
5228 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care
5229 about the representation, because Emacs converts when necessary;
5230 however, it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5231
5232 The conversion of non-ASCII characters works by adding the value of
5233 nonascii-insert-offset to each character, or by translating them
5234 using the table nonascii-translation-table.
5235
5236 *** string-make-unibyte takes a string and converts it to unibyte
5237 representation. Most of the time, you don't need to care about the
5238 representation, but it makes a difference when you compare strings.
5239
5240 The conversion from multibyte to unibyte representation
5241 loses information; the only time Emacs performs it automatically
5242 is when inserting a multibyte string into a unibyte buffer.
5243
5244 *** string-as-multibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5245 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as multibyte.
5246
5247 *** string-as-unibyte takes a string, and returns another string
5248 which contains the same bytes, but treats them as unibyte.
5249
5250 *** The new function compare-strings lets you compare
5251 portions of two strings. Unibyte strings are converted to multibyte,
5252 so that a unibyte string can match a multibyte string.
5253 You can specify whether to ignore case or not.
5254
5255 *** assoc-ignore-case now uses compare-strings so that
5256 it can treat unibyte and multibyte strings as equal.
5257
5258 *** Regular expression operations and buffer string searches now
5259 convert the search pattern to multibyte or unibyte to accord with the
5260 buffer or string being searched.
5261
5262 One consequence is that you cannot always use \200-\377 inside of
5263 [...] to match all non-ASCII characters. This does still work when
5264 searching or matching a unibyte buffer or string, but not when
5265 searching or matching a multibyte string. Unfortunately, there is no
5266 obvious choice of syntax to use within [...] for that job. But, what
5267 you want is just to match all non-ASCII characters, the regular
5268 expression [^\0-\177] works for it.
5269
5270 *** Structure of coding system changed.
5271
5272 All coding systems (including aliases and subsidiaries) are named
5273 by symbols; the symbol's `coding-system' property is a vector
5274 which defines the coding system. Aliases share the same vector
5275 as the principal name, so that altering the contents of this
5276 vector affects the principal name and its aliases. You can define
5277 your own alias name of a coding system by the function
5278 define-coding-system-alias.
5279
5280 The coding system definition includes a property list of its own. Use
5281 the new functions `coding-system-get' and `coding-system-put' to
5282 access such coding system properties as post-read-conversion,
5283 pre-write-conversion, character-translation-table-for-decode,
5284 character-translation-table-for-encode, mime-charset, and
5285 safe-charsets. For instance, (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1
5286 'mime-charset) gives the corresponding MIME-charset parameter
5287 `iso-8859-1'.
5288
5289 Among the coding system properties listed above, safe-charsets is new.
5290 The value of this property is a list of character sets which this
5291 coding system can correctly encode and decode. For instance:
5292 (coding-system-get 'iso-latin-1 'safe-charsets) => (ascii latin-iso8859-1)
5293
5294 Here, "correctly encode" means that the encoded character sets can
5295 also be handled safely by systems other than Emacs as far as they
5296 are capable of that coding system. Though, Emacs itself can encode
5297 the other character sets and read it back correctly.
5298
5299 *** The new function select-safe-coding-system can be used to find a
5300 proper coding system for encoding the specified region or string.
5301 This function requires a user interaction.
5302
5303 *** The new functions find-coding-systems-region and
5304 find-coding-systems-string are helper functions used by
5305 select-safe-coding-system. They return a list of all proper coding
5306 systems to encode a text in some region or string. If you don't want
5307 a user interaction, use one of these functions instead of
5308 select-safe-coding-system.
5309
5310 *** The explicit encoding and decoding functions, such as
5311 decode-coding-region and encode-coding-string, now set
5312 last-coding-system-used to reflect the actual way encoding or decoding
5313 was done.
5314
5315 *** The new function detect-coding-with-language-environment can be
5316 used to detect a coding system of text according to priorities of
5317 coding systems used by some specific language environment.
5318
5319 *** The functions detect-coding-region and detect-coding-string always
5320 return a list if the arg HIGHEST is nil. Thus, if only ASCII
5321 characters are found, they now return a list of single element
5322 `undecided' or its subsidiaries.
5323
5324 *** The new functions coding-system-change-eol-conversion and
5325 coding-system-change-text-conversion can be used to get a different
5326 coding system than what specified only in how end-of-line or text is
5327 converted.
5328
5329 *** The new function set-selection-coding-system can be used to set a
5330 coding system for communicating with other X clients.
5331
5332 *** The function `map-char-table' now passes as argument only valid
5333 character codes, plus generic characters that stand for entire
5334 character sets or entire subrows of a character set. In other words,
5335 each time `map-char-table' calls its FUNCTION argument, the key value
5336 either will be a valid individual character code, or will stand for a
5337 range of characters.
5338
5339 *** The new function `char-valid-p' can be used for checking whether a
5340 Lisp object is a valid character code or not.
5341
5342 *** The new function `charset-after' returns a charset of a character
5343 in the current buffer at position POS.
5344
5345 *** Input methods are now implemented using the variable
5346 input-method-function. If this is non-nil, its value should be a
5347 function; then, whenever Emacs reads an input event that is a printing
5348 character with no modifier bits, it calls that function, passing the
5349 event as an argument. Often this function will read more input, first
5350 binding input-method-function to nil.
5351
5352 The return value should be a list of the events resulting from input
5353 method processing. These events will be processed sequentially as
5354 input, before resorting to unread-command-events. Events returned by
5355 the input method function are not passed to the input method function,
5356 not even if they are printing characters with no modifier bits.
5357
5358 The input method function is not called when reading the second and
5359 subsequent events of a key sequence.
5360
5361 *** You can customize any language environment by using
5362 set-language-environment-hook and exit-language-environment-hook.
5363
5364 The hook `exit-language-environment-hook' should be used to undo
5365 customizations that you made with set-language-environment-hook. For
5366 instance, if you set up a special key binding for a specific language
5367 environment by set-language-environment-hook, you should set up
5368 exit-language-environment-hook to restore the normal key binding.
5369 \f
5370 * Changes in Emacs 20.1
5371
5372 ** Emacs has a new facility for customization of its many user
5373 options. It is called M-x customize. With this facility you can look
5374 at the many user options in an organized way; they are grouped into a
5375 tree structure.
5376
5377 M-x customize also knows what sorts of values are legitimate for each
5378 user option and ensures that you don't use invalid values.
5379
5380 With M-x customize, you can set options either for the present Emacs
5381 session or permanently. (Permanent settings are stored automatically
5382 in your .emacs file.)
5383
5384 ** Scroll bars are now on the left side of the window.
5385 You can change this with M-x customize-option scroll-bar-mode.
5386
5387 ** The mode line no longer includes the string `Emacs'.
5388 This makes more space in the mode line for other information.
5389
5390 ** When you select a region with the mouse, it is highlighted
5391 immediately afterward. At that time, if you type the DELETE key, it
5392 kills the region.
5393
5394 The BACKSPACE key, and the ASCII character DEL, do not do this; they
5395 delete the character before point, as usual.
5396
5397 ** In an incremental search the whole current match is highlighted
5398 on terminals which support this. (You can disable this feature
5399 by setting search-highlight to nil.)
5400
5401 ** In the minibuffer, in some cases, you can now use M-n to
5402 insert the default value into the minibuffer as text. In effect,
5403 the default value (if the minibuffer routines know it) is tacked
5404 onto the history "in the future". (The more normal use of the
5405 history list is to use M-p to insert minibuffer input used in the
5406 past.)
5407
5408 ** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs.
5409 This makes it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode
5410 in Text mode, and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode).
5411 TAB in Text mode now runs the command indent-relative; this
5412 makes a practical difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
5413
5414 As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
5415 and is an alias for it.
5416
5417 If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph,
5418 use the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
5419
5420 ** Scrolling changes
5421
5422 *** Scroll commands to scroll a whole screen now preserve the screen
5423 position of the cursor, if scroll-preserve-screen-position is non-nil.
5424
5425 In this mode, if you scroll several screens back and forth, finishing
5426 on the same screen where you started, the cursor goes back to the line
5427 where it started.
5428
5429 *** If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number, then when you
5430 move point a short distance off the screen, Emacs will scroll the
5431 screen just far enough to bring point back on screen, provided that
5432 does not exceed `scroll-conservatively' lines.
5433
5434 *** The new variable scroll-margin says how close point can come to the
5435 top or bottom of a window. It is a number of screen lines; if point
5436 comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs
5437 recenters the window.
5438
5439 ** International character set support (MULE)
5440
5441 Emacs now supports a wide variety of international character sets,
5442 including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
5443 Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese,
5444 Korean, Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts. These
5445 features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as
5446 MULE (for "MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs")
5447
5448 Users of these scripts have established many more-or-less standard
5449 coding systems for storing files. Emacs uses a single multibyte
5450 character encoding within Emacs buffers; it can translate from a wide
5451 variety of coding systems when reading a file and can translate back
5452 into any of these coding systems when saving a file.
5453
5454 Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used,
5455 generally don't have keys for all the characters in them. So Emacs
5456 supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or
5457 language, to make it possible to type them.
5458
5459 The Emacs internal multibyte encoding represents a non-ASCII
5460 character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
5461
5462 The new prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain
5463 to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.
5464
5465 You can disable multibyte character support as follows:
5466
5467 (setq-default enable-multibyte-characters nil)
5468
5469 Calling the function standard-display-european turns off multibyte
5470 characters, unless you specify a non-nil value for the second
5471 argument, AUTO. This provides compatibility for people who are
5472 already using standard-display-european to continue using unibyte
5473 characters for their work until they want to change.
5474
5475 *** Input methods
5476
5477 An input method is a kind of character conversion which is designed
5478 specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language
5479 has its own input method (though sometimes several languages which use
5480 the same characters can share one input method). Some languages
5481 support several input methods.
5482
5483 The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into
5484 another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods
5485 work.
5486
5487 A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of
5488 characters into one letter. Many European input methods use
5489 composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence which
5490 consists of a letter followed by diacritics. For example, a' is one
5491 sequence of two characters that might be converted into a single
5492 letter.
5493
5494 The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed
5495 by conversion. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way.
5496 First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone
5497 marks; then, sequences of these which make up a whole syllable are
5498 mapped into one syllable sign--most often a "composite character".
5499
5500 None of these methods works very well for Chinese and Japanese, so
5501 they are handled specially. First you input a whole word using
5502 phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs
5503 converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary.
5504
5505 Since there is more than one way to represent a phonetically spelled
5506 word using Chinese characters, Emacs can only guess which one to use;
5507 typically these input methods give you a way to say "guess again" if
5508 the first guess is wrong.
5509
5510 *** The command C-x RET m (toggle-enable-multibyte-characters)
5511 turns multibyte character support on or off for the current buffer.
5512
5513 If multibyte character support is turned off in a buffer, then each
5514 byte is a single character, even codes 0200 through 0377--exactly as
5515 they did in Emacs 19.34. This includes the features for support for
5516 the European characters, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2.
5517
5518 However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
5519 use ISO Latin-1 or ISO Latin-2; the Emacs multibyte character set
5520 includes all the characters in these character sets, and Emacs can
5521 translate automatically to and from either one.
5522
5523 *** Visiting a file in unibyte mode.
5524
5525 Turning off multibyte character support in the buffer after visiting a
5526 file with multibyte code conversion will display the multibyte
5527 sequences already in the buffer, byte by byte. This is probably not
5528 what you want.
5529
5530 If you want to edit a file of unibyte characters (Latin-1, for
5531 example), you can do it by specifying `no-conversion' as the coding
5532 system when reading the file. This coding system also turns off
5533 multibyte characters in that buffer.
5534
5535 If you turn off multibyte character support entirely, this turns off
5536 character conversion as well.
5537
5538 *** Displaying international characters on X Windows.
5539
5540 A font for X typically displays just one alphabet or script.
5541 Therefore, displaying the entire range of characters Emacs supports
5542 requires using many fonts.
5543
5544 Therefore, Emacs now supports "fontsets". Each fontset is a
5545 collection of fonts, each assigned to a range of character codes.
5546
5547 A fontset has a name, like a font. Individual fonts are defined by
5548 the X server; fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. But once you
5549 have defined a fontset, you can use it in a face or a frame just as
5550 you would use a font.
5551
5552 If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it
5553 specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot
5554 display that character. It will display an empty box instead.
5555
5556 The fontset height and width are determined by the ASCII characters
5557 (that is, by the font in the fontset which is used for ASCII
5558 characters). If another font in the fontset has a different height,
5559 or the wrong width, then characters assigned to that font are clipped,
5560 and displayed within a box if highlight-wrong-size-font is non-nil.
5561
5562 *** Defining fontsets.
5563
5564 Emacs does not use any fontset by default. Its default font is still
5565 chosen as in previous versions. You can tell Emacs to use a fontset
5566 with the `-fn' option or the `Font' X resource.
5567
5568 Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
5569 of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset's short name is
5570 `fontset-standard'. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the
5571 standard fontset are created automatically.
5572
5573 If you specify a default ASCII font with the `Font' resource or `-fn'
5574 argument, a fontset is generated from it. This works by replacing the
5575 FOUNDARY, FAMILY, ADD_STYLE, and AVERAGE_WIDTH fields of the font name
5576 with `*' then using this to specify a fontset. This fontset's short
5577 name is `fontset-startup'.
5578
5579 Emacs checks resources of the form Fontset-N where N is 0, 1, 2...
5580 The resource value should have this form:
5581 FONTSET-NAME, [CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME]...
5582 FONTSET-NAME should have the form of a standard X font name, except:
5583 * most fields should be just the wild card "*".
5584 * the CHARSET_REGISTRY field should be "fontset"
5585 * the CHARSET_ENCODING field can be any nickname of the fontset.
5586 The construct CHARSET-NAME:FONT-NAME can be repeated any number
5587 of times; each time specifies the font for one character set.
5588 CHARSET-NAME should be the name name of a character set, and
5589 FONT-NAME should specify an actual font to use for that character set.
5590
5591 Each of these fontsets has an alias which is made from the
5592 last two font name fields, CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING.
5593 You can refer to the fontset by that alias or by its full name.
5594
5595 For any character sets that you don't mention, Emacs tries to choose a
5596 font by substituting into FONTSET-NAME. For instance, with the
5597 following resource,
5598 Emacs*Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
5599 the font for ASCII is generated as below:
5600 -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
5601 Here is the substitution rule:
5602 Change CHARSET_REGISTRY and CHARSET_ENCODING to that of the charset
5603 defined in the variable x-charset-registries. For instance, ASCII has
5604 the entry (ascii . "ISO8859-1") in this variable. Then, reduce
5605 sequences of wild cards -*-...-*- with a single wildcard -*-.
5606 (This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts.)
5607
5608 The function which processes the fontset resource value to create the
5609 fontset is called create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call
5610 that function explicitly to create a fontset.
5611
5612 With the X resource Emacs.Font, you can specify a fontset name just
5613 like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset
5614 name in a wildcard resource like Emacs*Font--that tries to specify the
5615 fontset for other purposes including menus, and they cannot handle
5616 fontsets.
5617
5618 *** The command M-x set-language-environment sets certain global Emacs
5619 defaults for a particular choice of language.
5620
5621 Selecting a language environment typically specifies a default input
5622 method and which coding systems to recognize automatically when
5623 visiting files. However, it does not try to reread files you have
5624 already visited; the text in those buffers is not affected. The
5625 language environment may also specify a default choice of coding
5626 system for new files that you create.
5627
5628 It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use
5629 set-language-environment, because these defaults apply globally to the
5630 whole Emacs session.
5631
5632 For example, M-x set-language-environment RET Latin-1 RET
5633 chooses the Latin-1 character set. In the .emacs file, you can do this
5634 with (set-language-environment "Latin-1").
5635
5636 *** The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system)
5637 specifies the file coding system for the current buffer. This
5638 specifies what sort of character code translation to do when saving
5639 the file. As an argument, you must specify the name of one of the
5640 coding systems that Emacs supports.
5641
5642 *** The command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument)
5643 lets you specify a coding system when you read or write a file.
5644 This command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name.
5645 After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system
5646 is used for *the immediately following command*.
5647
5648 So if the immediately following command is a command to read or
5649 write a file, it uses the specified coding system for that file.
5650
5651 If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
5652 then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
5653
5654 For example, C-x RET c iso-8859-1 RET C-x C-f temp RET
5655 visits the file `temp' treating it as ISO Latin-1.
5656
5657 *** You can specify the coding system for a file using the -*-
5658 construct. Include `coding: CODINGSYSTEM;' inside the -*-...-*-
5659 to specify use of coding system CODINGSYSTEM. You can also
5660 specify the coding system in a local variable list at the end
5661 of the file.
5662
5663 *** The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies
5664 the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character
5665 code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are
5666 translated into that character code.
5667
5668 This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built in
5669 various countries to support the languages of those countries.
5670
5671 By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
5672
5673 *** The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies
5674 the coding system for keyboard input.
5675
5676 Character code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
5677 with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters--for example,
5678 some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
5679
5680 By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
5681
5682 Character code translation of keyboard input is similar to using an
5683 input method, in that both define sequences of keyboard input that
5684 translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed
5685 to be convenient for interactive use, while the code translations are
5686 designed to work with terminals.
5687
5688 *** The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system)
5689 specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess.
5690 This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess
5691 has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
5692 translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command
5693 in the corresponding buffer.
5694
5695 By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
5696
5697 *** The variable file-name-coding-system specifies the coding system
5698 to use for encoding file names before operating on them.
5699 It is also used for decoding file names obtained from the system.
5700
5701 *** The command C-\ (toggle-input-method) activates or deactivates
5702 an input method. If no input method has been selected before, the
5703 command prompts for you to specify the language and input method you
5704 want to use.
5705
5706 C-u C-\ (select-input-method) lets you switch to a different input
5707 method. C-h C-\ (or C-h I) describes the current input method.
5708
5709 *** Some input methods remap the keyboard to emulate various keyboard
5710 layouts commonly used for particular scripts. How to do this
5711 remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify
5712 which layout your keyboard has, use M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
5713
5714 *** The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays
5715 the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, plus
5716 related information.
5717
5718 *** The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays a file called
5719 HELLO, which has examples of text in many languages, using various
5720 scripts.
5721
5722 *** The command C-h L (describe-language-support) displays
5723 information about the support for a particular language.
5724 You specify the language as an argument.
5725
5726 *** The mode line now contains a letter or character that identifies
5727 the coding system used in the visited file. It normally follows the
5728 first dash.
5729
5730 A dash indicates the default state of affairs: no code conversion
5731 (except CRLF => newline if appropriate). `=' means no conversion
5732 whatsoever. The ISO 8859 coding systems are represented by digits
5733 1 through 9. Other coding systems are represented by letters:
5734
5735 A alternativnyj (Russian)
5736 B big5 (Chinese)
5737 C cn-gb-2312 (Chinese)
5738 C iso-2022-cn (Chinese)
5739 D in-is13194-devanagari (Indian languages)
5740 E euc-japan (Japanese)
5741 I iso-2022-cjk or iso-2022-ss2 (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5742 J junet (iso-2022-7) or old-jis (iso-2022-jp-1978-irv) (Japanese)
5743 K euc-korea (Korean)
5744 R koi8 (Russian)
5745 Q tibetan
5746 S shift_jis (Japanese)
5747 T lao
5748 T tis620 (Thai)
5749 V viscii or vscii (Vietnamese)
5750 i iso-2022-lock (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
5751 k iso-2022-kr (Korean)
5752 v viqr (Vietnamese)
5753 z hz (Chinese)
5754
5755 When you are using a character-only terminal (not a window system),
5756 two additional characters appear in between the dash and the file
5757 coding system. These two characters describe the coding system for
5758 keyboard input, and the coding system for terminal output.
5759
5760 *** The new variable rmail-file-coding-system specifies the code
5761 conversion to use for RMAIL files. The default value is nil.
5762
5763 When you read mail with Rmail, each message is decoded automatically
5764 into Emacs' internal format. This has nothing to do with
5765 rmail-file-coding-system. That variable controls reading and writing
5766 Rmail files themselves.
5767
5768 *** The new variable sendmail-coding-system specifies the code
5769 conversion for outgoing mail. The default value is nil.
5770
5771 Actually, there are three different ways of specifying the coding system
5772 for sending mail:
5773
5774 - If you use C-x RET f in the mail buffer, that takes priority.
5775 - Otherwise, if you set sendmail-coding-system non-nil, that specifies it.
5776 - Otherwise, the default coding system for new files is used,
5777 if that is non-nil. That comes from your language environment.
5778 - Otherwise, Latin-1 is used.
5779
5780 *** The command C-h t (help-with-tutorial) accepts a prefix argument
5781 to specify the language for the tutorial file. Currently, English,
5782 Japanese, Korean and Thai are supported. We welcome additional
5783 translations.
5784
5785 ** An easy new way to visit a file with no code or format conversion
5786 of any kind: Use M-x find-file-literally. There is also a command
5787 insert-file-literally which inserts a file into the current buffer
5788 without any conversion.
5789
5790 ** C-q's handling of octal character codes is changed.
5791 You can now specify any number of octal digits.
5792 RET terminates the digits and is discarded;
5793 any other non-digit terminates the digits and is then used as input.
5794
5795 ** There are new commands for looking up Info documentation for
5796 functions, variables and file names used in your programs.
5797
5798 Type M-x info-lookup-symbol to look up a symbol in the buffer at point.
5799 Type M-x info-lookup-file to look up a file in the buffer at point.
5800
5801 Precisely which Info files are used to look it up depends on the major
5802 mode. For example, in C mode, the GNU libc manual is used.
5803
5804 ** M-TAB in most programming language modes now runs the command
5805 complete-symbol. This command performs completion on the symbol name
5806 in the buffer before point.
5807
5808 With a numeric argument, it performs completion based on the set of
5809 symbols documented in the Info files for the programming language that
5810 you are using.
5811
5812 With no argument, it does completion based on the current tags tables,
5813 just like the old binding of M-TAB (complete-tag).
5814
5815 ** File locking works with NFS now.
5816
5817 The lock file for FILENAME is now a symbolic link named .#FILENAME,
5818 in the same directory as FILENAME.
5819
5820 This means that collision detection between two different machines now
5821 works reasonably well; it also means that no file server or directory
5822 can become a bottleneck.
5823
5824 The new method does have drawbacks. It means that collision detection
5825 does not operate when you edit a file in a directory where you cannot
5826 create new files. Collision detection also doesn't operate when the
5827 file server does not support symbolic links. But these conditions are
5828 rare, and the ability to have collision detection while using NFS is
5829 so useful that the change is worth while.
5830
5831 When Emacs or a system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which
5832 are stale. So you may occasionally get warnings about spurious
5833 collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just
5834 tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
5835
5836 ** If you wish to use Show Paren mode to display matching parentheses,
5837 it is no longer sufficient to load paren.el. Instead you must call
5838 show-paren-mode.
5839
5840 ** If you wish to use Delete Selection mode to replace a highlighted
5841 selection when you insert new text, it is no longer sufficient to load
5842 delsel.el. Instead you must call the function delete-selection-mode.
5843
5844 ** If you wish to use Partial Completion mode to complete partial words
5845 within symbols or filenames, it is no longer sufficient to load
5846 complete.el. Instead you must call the function partial-completion-mode.
5847
5848 ** If you wish to use uniquify to rename buffers for you,
5849 it is no longer sufficient to load uniquify.el. You must also
5850 set uniquify-buffer-name-style to one of the non-nil legitimate values.
5851
5852 ** Changes in View mode.
5853
5854 *** Several new commands are available in View mode.
5855 Do H in view mode for a list of commands.
5856
5857 *** There are two new commands for entering View mode:
5858 view-file-other-frame and view-buffer-other-frame.
5859
5860 *** Exiting View mode does a better job of restoring windows to their
5861 previous state.
5862
5863 *** New customization variable view-scroll-auto-exit. If non-nil,
5864 scrolling past end of buffer makes view mode exit.
5865
5866 *** New customization variable view-exits-all-viewing-windows. If
5867 non-nil, view-mode will at exit restore all windows viewing buffer,
5868 not just the selected window.
5869
5870 *** New customization variable view-read-only. If non-nil, visiting a
5871 read-only file automatically enters View mode, and toggle-read-only
5872 turns View mode on or off.
5873
5874 *** New customization variable view-remove-frame-by-deleting controls
5875 how to remove a not needed frame at view mode exit. If non-nil,
5876 delete the frame, if nil make an icon of it.
5877
5878 ** C-x v l, the command to print a file's version control log,
5879 now positions point at the entry for the file's current branch version.
5880
5881 ** C-x v =, the command to compare a file with the last checked-in version,
5882 has a new feature. If the file is currently not locked, so that it is
5883 presumably identical to the last checked-in version, the command now asks
5884 which version to compare with.
5885
5886 ** When using hideshow.el, incremental search can temporarily show hidden
5887 blocks if a match is inside the block.
5888
5889 The block is hidden again if the search is continued and the next match
5890 is outside the block. By customizing the variable
5891 isearch-hide-immediately you can choose to hide all the temporarily
5892 shown blocks only when exiting from incremental search.
5893
5894 By customizing the variable hs-isearch-open you can choose what kind
5895 of blocks to temporarily show during isearch: comment blocks, code
5896 blocks, all of them or none.
5897
5898 ** The new command C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) kills the
5899 current buffer and deletes the selected window. It asks for
5900 confirmation first.
5901
5902 ** C-x C-w, which saves the buffer into a specified file name,
5903 now changes the major mode according to that file name.
5904 However, the mode will not be changed if
5905 (1) a local variables list or the `-*-' line specifies a major mode, or
5906 (2) the current major mode is a "special" mode,
5907 not suitable for ordinary files, or
5908 (3) the new file name does not particularly specify any mode.
5909
5910 This applies to M-x set-visited-file-name as well.
5911
5912 However, if you set change-major-mode-with-file-name to nil, then
5913 these commands do not change the major mode.
5914
5915 ** M-x occur changes.
5916
5917 *** If the argument to M-x occur contains upper case letters,
5918 it performs a case-sensitive search.
5919
5920 *** In the *Occur* buffer made by M-x occur,
5921 if you type g or M-x revert-buffer, this repeats the search
5922 using the same regular expression and the same buffer as before.
5923
5924 ** In Transient Mark mode, the region in any one buffer is highlighted
5925 in just one window at a time. At first, it is highlighted in the
5926 window where you set the mark. The buffer's highlighting remains in
5927 that window unless you select to another window which shows the same
5928 buffer--then the highlighting moves to that window.
5929
5930 ** The feature to suggest key bindings when you use M-x now operates
5931 after the command finishes. The message suggesting key bindings
5932 appears temporarily in the echo area. The previous echo area contents
5933 come back after a few seconds, in case they contain useful information.
5934
5935 ** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
5936 selected buffers, so that the default for C-x b is now based on the
5937 buffers recently selected in the selected frame.
5938
5939 ** Outline mode changes.
5940
5941 *** Outline mode now uses overlays (this is the former noutline.el).
5942
5943 *** Incremental searches skip over invisible text in Outline mode.
5944
5945 ** When a minibuffer window is active but not the selected window, if
5946 you try to use the minibuffer, you used to get a nested minibuffer.
5947 Now, this not only gives an error, it also cancels the minibuffer that
5948 was already active.
5949
5950 The motive for this change is so that beginning users do not
5951 unknowingly move away from minibuffers, leaving them active, and then
5952 get confused by it.
5953
5954 If you want to be able to have recursive minibuffers, you must
5955 set enable-recursive-minibuffers to non-nil.
5956
5957 ** Changes in dynamic abbrevs.
5958
5959 *** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
5960 conversion. If the expansion has mixed case not counting the first
5961 character, and the abbreviation matches the beginning of the expansion
5962 including case, then the expansion is copied verbatim.
5963
5964 The expansion is also copied verbatim if the abbreviation itself has
5965 mixed case. And using SPC M-/ to copy an additional word always
5966 copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is all caps.
5967
5968 *** The values of `dabbrev-case-replace' and `dabbrev-case-fold-search'
5969 are no longer Lisp expressions. They have simply three possible
5970 values.
5971
5972 `dabbrev-case-replace' has these three values: nil (don't preserve
5973 case), t (do), or `case-replace' (do like M-x query-replace).
5974 `dabbrev-case-fold-search' has these three values: nil (don't ignore
5975 case), t (do), or `case-fold-search' (do like search).
5976
5977 ** Minibuffer history lists are truncated automatically now to a
5978 certain length. The variable history-length specifies how long they
5979 can be. The default value is 30.
5980
5981 ** Changes in Mail mode.
5982
5983 *** The key C-x m no longer runs the `mail' command directly.
5984 Instead, it runs the command `compose-mail', which invokes the mail
5985 composition mechanism you have selected with the variable
5986 `mail-user-agent'. The default choice of user agent is
5987 `sendmail-user-agent', which gives behavior compatible with the old
5988 behavior.
5989
5990 C-x 4 m now runs compose-mail-other-window, and C-x 5 m runs
5991 compose-mail-other-frame.
5992
5993 *** While composing a reply to a mail message, from Rmail, you can use
5994 the command C-c C-r to cite just the region from the message you are
5995 replying to. This copies the text which is the selected region in the
5996 buffer that shows the original message.
5997
5998 *** The command C-c C-i inserts a file at the end of the message,
5999 with separator lines around the contents.
6000
6001 *** The command M-x expand-mail-aliases expands all mail aliases
6002 in suitable mail headers. Emacs automatically extracts mail alias
6003 definitions from your mail alias file (e.g., ~/.mailrc). You do not
6004 need to expand mail aliases yourself before sending mail.
6005
6006 *** New features in the mail-complete command.
6007
6008 **** The mail-complete command now inserts the user's full name,
6009 for local users or if that is known. The variable mail-complete-style
6010 controls the style to use, and whether to do this at all.
6011 Its values are like those of mail-from-style.
6012
6013 **** The variable mail-passwd-command lets you specify a shell command
6014 to run to fetch a set of password-entries that add to the ones in
6015 /etc/passwd.
6016
6017 **** The variable mail-passwd-file now specifies a list of files to read
6018 to get the list of user ids. By default, one file is used:
6019 /etc/passwd.
6020
6021 ** You can "quote" a file name to inhibit special significance of
6022 special syntax, by adding `/:' to the beginning. Thus, if you have a
6023 directory named `/foo:', you can prevent it from being treated as a
6024 reference to a remote host named `foo' by writing it as `/:/foo:'.
6025
6026 Emacs uses this new construct automatically when necessary, such as
6027 when you start it with a working directory whose name might otherwise
6028 be taken to be magic.
6029
6030 ** There is a new command M-x grep-find which uses find to select
6031 files to search through, and grep to scan them. The output is
6032 available in a Compile mode buffer, as with M-x grep.
6033
6034 M-x grep now uses the -e option if the grep program supports that.
6035 (-e prevents problems if the search pattern starts with a dash.)
6036
6037 ** In Dired, the & command now flags for deletion the files whose names
6038 suggest they are probably not needed in the long run.
6039
6040 In Dired, * is now a prefix key for mark-related commands.
6041
6042 new key dired.el binding old key
6043 ------- ---------------- -------
6044 * c dired-change-marks c
6045 * m dired-mark m
6046 * * dired-mark-executables * (binding deleted)
6047 * / dired-mark-directories / (binding deleted)
6048 * @ dired-mark-symlinks @ (binding deleted)
6049 * u dired-unmark u
6050 * DEL dired-unmark-backward DEL
6051 * ? dired-unmark-all-files M-C-?
6052 * ! dired-unmark-all-marks
6053 * % dired-mark-files-regexp % m
6054 * C-n dired-next-marked-file M-}
6055 * C-p dired-prev-marked-file M-{
6056
6057 ** Rmail changes.
6058
6059 *** When Rmail cannot convert your incoming mail into Babyl format, it
6060 saves the new mail in the file RMAILOSE.n, where n is an integer
6061 chosen to make a unique name. This way, Rmail will not keep crashing
6062 each time you run it.
6063
6064 *** In Rmail, the variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag now controls
6065 whether to include the line count in the summary. Non-nil means yes.
6066
6067 *** In Rmail summary buffers, d and C-d (the commands to delete
6068 messages) now take repeat counts as arguments. A negative argument
6069 means to move in the opposite direction.
6070
6071 *** In Rmail, the t command now takes an optional argument which lets
6072 you specify whether to show the message headers in full or pruned.
6073
6074 *** In Rmail, the new command w (rmail-output-body-to-file) writes
6075 just the body of the current message into a file, without the headers.
6076 It takes the file name from the message subject, by default, but you
6077 can edit that file name in the minibuffer before it is actually used
6078 for output.
6079
6080 ** Gnus changes.
6081
6082 *** nntp.el has been totally rewritten in an asynchronous fashion.
6083
6084 *** Article prefetching functionality has been moved up into
6085 Gnus.
6086
6087 *** Scoring can now be performed with logical operators like
6088 `and', `or', `not', and parent redirection.
6089
6090 *** Article washing status can be displayed in the
6091 article mode line.
6092
6093 *** gnus.el has been split into many smaller files.
6094
6095 *** Suppression of duplicate articles based on Message-ID.
6096
6097 (setq gnus-suppress-duplicates t)
6098
6099 *** New variables for specifying what score and adapt files
6100 are to be considered home score and adapt files. See
6101 `gnus-home-score-file' and `gnus-home-adapt-files'.
6102
6103 *** Groups can inherit group parameters from parent topics.
6104
6105 *** Article editing has been revamped and is now usable.
6106
6107 *** Signatures can be recognized in more intelligent fashions.
6108 See `gnus-signature-separator' and `gnus-signature-limit'.
6109
6110 *** Summary pick mode has been made to look more nn-like.
6111 Line numbers are displayed and the `.' command can be
6112 used to pick articles.
6113
6114 *** Commands for moving the .newsrc.eld from one server to
6115 another have been added.
6116
6117 `M-x gnus-change-server'
6118
6119 *** A way to specify that "uninteresting" fields be suppressed when
6120 generating lines in buffers.
6121
6122 *** Several commands in the group buffer can be undone with
6123 `M-C-_'.
6124
6125 *** Scoring can be done on words using the new score type `w'.
6126
6127 *** Adaptive scoring can be done on a Subject word-by-word basis:
6128
6129 (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring '(word))
6130
6131 *** Scores can be decayed.
6132
6133 (setq gnus-decay-scores t)
6134
6135 *** Scoring can be performed using a regexp on the Date header. The
6136 Date is normalized to compact ISO 8601 format first.
6137
6138 *** A new command has been added to remove all data on articles from
6139 the native server.
6140
6141 `M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups'
6142
6143 *** A new command for reading collections of documents
6144 (nndoc with nnvirtual on top) has been added -- `M-C-d'.
6145
6146 *** Process mark sets can be pushed and popped.
6147
6148 *** A new mail-to-news backend makes it possible to post
6149 even when the NNTP server doesn't allow posting.
6150
6151 *** A new backend for reading searches from Web search engines
6152 (DejaNews, Alta Vista, InReference) has been added.
6153
6154 Use the `G w' command in the group buffer to create such
6155 a group.
6156
6157 *** Groups inside topics can now be sorted using the standard
6158 sorting functions, and each topic can be sorted independently.
6159
6160 See the commands under the `T S' submap.
6161
6162 *** Subsets of the groups can be sorted independently.
6163
6164 See the commands under the `G P' submap.
6165
6166 *** Cached articles can be pulled into the groups.
6167
6168 Use the `Y c' command.
6169
6170 *** Score files are now applied in a more reliable order.
6171
6172 *** Reports on where mail messages end up can be generated.
6173
6174 `M-x nnmail-split-history'
6175
6176 *** More hooks and functions have been added to remove junk
6177 from incoming mail before saving the mail.
6178
6179 See `nnmail-prepare-incoming-header-hook'.
6180
6181 *** The nnml mail backend now understands compressed article files.
6182
6183 *** To enable Gnus to read/post multi-lingual articles, you must execute
6184 the following code, for instance, in your .emacs.
6185
6186 (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'gnus-mule-initialize)
6187
6188 Then, when you start Gnus, it will decode non-ASCII text automatically
6189 and show appropriate characters. (Note: if you are using gnus-mime
6190 from the SEMI package, formerly known as TM, you should NOT add this
6191 hook to gnus-startup-hook; gnus-mime has its own method of handling
6192 this issue.)
6193
6194 Since it is impossible to distinguish all coding systems
6195 automatically, you may need to specify a choice of coding system for a
6196 particular news group. This can be done by:
6197
6198 (gnus-mule-add-group NEWSGROUP 'CODING-SYSTEM)
6199
6200 Here NEWSGROUP should be a string which names a newsgroup or a tree
6201 of newsgroups. If NEWSGROUP is "XXX.YYY", all news groups under
6202 "XXX.YYY" (including "XXX.YYY.ZZZ") will use the specified coding
6203 system. CODING-SYSTEM specifies which coding system to use (for both
6204 for reading and posting).
6205
6206 CODING-SYSTEM can also be a cons cell of the form
6207 (READ-CODING-SYSTEM . POST-CODING-SYSTEM)
6208 Then READ-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you read messages from the
6209 newsgroups, while POST-CODING-SYSTEM is used when you post messages
6210 there.
6211
6212 Emacs knows the right coding systems for certain newsgroups by
6213 default. Here are some of these default settings:
6214
6215 (gnus-mule-add-group "fj" 'iso-2022-7)
6216 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text" 'hz-gb-2312)
6217 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.hk" 'hz-gb-2312)
6218 (gnus-mule-add-group "alt.chinese.text.big5" 'cn-big5)
6219 (gnus-mule-add-group "soc.culture.vietnamese" '(nil . viqr))
6220
6221 When you reply by mail to an article, these settings are ignored;
6222 the mail is encoded according to sendmail-coding-system, as usual.
6223
6224 ** CC mode changes.
6225
6226 *** If you edit primarily one style of C (or C++, Objective-C, Java)
6227 code, you may want to make the CC Mode style variables have global
6228 values so that you can set them directly in your .emacs file. To do
6229 this, set c-style-variables-are-local-p to nil in your .emacs file.
6230 Note that this only takes effect if you do it *before* cc-mode.el is
6231 loaded.
6232
6233 If you typically edit more than one style of C (or C++, Objective-C,
6234 Java) code in a single Emacs session, you may want to make the CC Mode
6235 style variables have buffer local values. By default, all buffers
6236 share the same style variable settings; to make them buffer local, set
6237 c-style-variables-are-local-p to t in your .emacs file. Note that you
6238 must do this *before* CC Mode is loaded.
6239
6240 *** The new variable c-indentation-style holds the C style name
6241 of the current buffer.
6242
6243 *** The variable c-block-comments-indent-p has been deleted, because
6244 it is no longer necessary. C mode now handles all the supported styles
6245 of block comments, with no need to say which one you will use.
6246
6247 *** There is a new indentation style "python", which specifies the C
6248 style that the Python developers like.
6249
6250 *** There is a new c-cleanup-list option: brace-elseif-brace.
6251 This says to put ...} else if (...) {... on one line,
6252 just as brace-else-brace says to put ...} else {... on one line.
6253
6254 ** VC Changes [new]
6255
6256 ** In vc-retrieve-snapshot (C-x v r), if you don't specify a snapshot
6257 name, it retrieves the *latest* versions of all files in the current
6258 directory and its subdirectories (aside from files already locked).
6259
6260 This feature is useful if your RCS directory is a link to a common
6261 master directory, and you want to pick up changes made by other
6262 developers.
6263
6264 You can do the same thing for an individual file by typing C-u C-x C-q
6265 RET in a buffer visiting that file.
6266
6267 *** VC can now handle files under CVS that are being "watched" by
6268 other developers. Such files are made read-only by CVS. To get a
6269 writable copy, type C-x C-q in a buffer visiting such a file. VC then
6270 calls "cvs edit", which notifies the other developers of it.
6271
6272 *** vc-version-diff (C-u C-x v =) now suggests reasonable defaults for
6273 version numbers, based on the current state of the file.
6274
6275 ** Calendar changes.
6276
6277 A new function, list-holidays, allows you list holidays or subclasses
6278 of holidays for ranges of years. Related menu items allow you do this
6279 for the year of the selected date, or the following/previous years.
6280
6281 ** ps-print changes
6282
6283 There are some new user variables for customizing the page layout.
6284
6285 *** Paper size, paper orientation, columns
6286
6287 The variable `ps-paper-type' determines the size of paper ps-print
6288 formats for; it should contain one of the symbols:
6289 `a4' `a3' `letter' `legal' `letter-small' `tabloid'
6290 `ledger' `statement' `executive' `a4small' `b4' `b5'
6291 It defaults to `letter'.
6292 If you need other sizes, see the variable `ps-page-dimensions-database'.
6293
6294 The variable `ps-landscape-mode' determines the orientation
6295 of the printing on the page. nil, the default, means "portrait" mode,
6296 non-nil means "landscape" mode.
6297
6298 The variable `ps-number-of-columns' must be a positive integer.
6299 It determines the number of columns both in landscape and portrait mode.
6300 It defaults to 1.
6301
6302 *** Horizontal layout
6303
6304 The horizontal layout is determined by the variables
6305 `ps-left-margin', `ps-inter-column', and `ps-right-margin'.
6306 All are measured in points.
6307
6308 *** Vertical layout
6309
6310 The vertical layout is determined by the variables
6311 `ps-bottom-margin', `ps-top-margin', and `ps-header-offset'.
6312 All are measured in points.
6313
6314 *** Headers
6315
6316 If the variable `ps-print-header' is nil, no header is printed. Then
6317 `ps-header-offset' is not relevant and `ps-top-margin' represents the
6318 margin above the text.
6319
6320 If the variable `ps-print-header-frame' is non-nil, a gaudy
6321 framing box is printed around the header.
6322
6323 The contents of the header are determined by `ps-header-lines',
6324 `ps-show-n-of-n', `ps-left-header' and `ps-right-header'.
6325
6326 The height of the header is determined by `ps-header-line-pad',
6327 `ps-header-font-family', `ps-header-title-font-size' and
6328 `ps-header-font-size'.
6329
6330 *** Font managing
6331
6332 The variable `ps-font-family' determines which font family is to be
6333 used for ordinary text. Its value must be a key symbol in the alist
6334 `ps-font-info-database'. You can add other font families by adding
6335 elements to this alist.
6336
6337 The variable `ps-font-size' determines the size of the font
6338 for ordinary text. It defaults to 8.5 points.
6339
6340 ** hideshow changes.
6341
6342 *** now supports hiding of blocks of single line comments (like // for
6343 C++, ; for lisp).
6344
6345 *** Support for java-mode added.
6346
6347 *** When doing `hs-hide-all' it is now possible to also hide the comments
6348 in the file if `hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all' is set.
6349
6350 *** The new function `hs-hide-initial-comment' hides the the comments at
6351 the beginning of the files. Finally those huge RCS logs don't stay in your
6352 way! This is run by default when entering the `hs-minor-mode'.
6353
6354 *** Now uses overlays instead of `selective-display', so is more
6355 robust and a lot faster.
6356
6357 *** A block beginning can span multiple lines.
6358
6359 *** The new variable `hs-show-hidden-short-form' if t, directs hideshow
6360 to show only the beginning of a block when it is hidden. See the
6361 documentation for more details.
6362
6363 ** Changes in Enriched mode.
6364
6365 *** When you visit a file in enriched-mode, Emacs will make sure it is
6366 filled to the current fill-column. This behavior is now independent
6367 of the size of the window. When you save the file, the fill-column in
6368 use is stored as well, so that the whole buffer need not be refilled
6369 the next time unless the fill-column is different.
6370
6371 *** use-hard-newlines is now a minor mode. When it is enabled, Emacs
6372 distinguishes between hard and soft newlines, and treats hard newlines
6373 as paragraph boundaries. Otherwise all newlines inserted are marked
6374 as soft, and paragraph boundaries are determined solely from the text.
6375
6376 ** Font Lock mode
6377
6378 *** Custom support
6379
6380 The variables font-lock-face-attributes, font-lock-display-type and
6381 font-lock-background-mode are now obsolete; the recommended way to specify the
6382 faces to use for Font Lock mode is with M-x customize-group on the new custom
6383 group font-lock-highlighting-faces. If you set font-lock-face-attributes in
6384 your ~/.emacs file, Font Lock mode will respect its value. However, you should
6385 consider converting from setting that variable to using M-x customize.
6386
6387 You can still use X resources to specify Font Lock face appearances.
6388
6389 *** Maximum decoration
6390
6391 Fontification now uses the maximum level of decoration supported by
6392 default. Previously, fontification used a mode-specific default level
6393 of decoration, which is typically the minimum level of decoration
6394 supported. You can set font-lock-maximum-decoration to nil
6395 to get the old behavior.
6396
6397 *** New support
6398
6399 Support is now provided for Java, Objective-C, AWK and SIMULA modes.
6400
6401 Note that Font Lock mode can be turned on without knowing exactly what modes
6402 support Font Lock mode, via the command global-font-lock-mode.
6403
6404 *** Configurable support
6405
6406 Support for C, C++, Objective-C and Java can be more easily configured for
6407 additional types and classes via the new variables c-font-lock-extra-types,
6408 c++-font-lock-extra-types, objc-font-lock-extra-types and, you guessed it,
6409 java-font-lock-extra-types. These value of each of these variables should be a
6410 list of regexps matching the extra type names. For example, the default value
6411 of c-font-lock-extra-types is ("\\sw+_t") which means fontification follows the
6412 convention that C type names end in _t. This results in slower fontification.
6413
6414 Of course, you can change the variables that specify fontification in whatever
6415 way you wish, typically by adding regexps. However, these new variables make
6416 it easier to make specific and common changes for the fontification of types.
6417
6418 *** Adding highlighting patterns to existing support
6419
6420 You can use the new function font-lock-add-keywords to add your own
6421 highlighting patterns, such as for project-local or user-specific constructs,
6422 for any mode.
6423
6424 For example, to highlight `FIXME:' words in C comments, put:
6425
6426 (font-lock-add-keywords 'c-mode '(("\\<FIXME:" 0 font-lock-warning-face t)))
6427
6428 in your ~/.emacs.
6429
6430 *** New faces
6431
6432 Font Lock now defines two new faces, font-lock-builtin-face and
6433 font-lock-warning-face. These are intended to highlight builtin keywords,
6434 distinct from a language's normal keywords, and objects that should be brought
6435 to user attention, respectively. Various modes now use these new faces.
6436
6437 *** Changes to fast-lock support mode
6438
6439 The fast-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now process
6440 cache files silently. You can use the new variable fast-lock-verbose, in the
6441 same way as font-lock-verbose, to control this feature.
6442
6443 *** Changes to lazy-lock support mode
6444
6445 The lazy-lock package, one of the two Font Lock support modes, can now fontify
6446 according to the true syntactic context relative to other lines. You can use
6447 the new variable lazy-lock-defer-contextually to control this feature. If
6448 non-nil, changes to the buffer will cause subsequent lines in the buffer to be
6449 refontified after lazy-lock-defer-time seconds of idle time. If nil, then only
6450 the modified lines will be refontified; this is the same as the previous Lazy
6451 Lock mode behaviour and the behaviour of Font Lock mode.
6452
6453 This feature is useful in modes where strings or comments can span lines.
6454 For example, if a string or comment terminating character is deleted, then if
6455 this feature is enabled subsequent lines in the buffer will be correctly
6456 refontified to reflect their new syntactic context. Previously, only the line
6457 containing the deleted character would be refontified and you would have to use
6458 the command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block) to refontify some lines.
6459
6460 As a consequence of this new feature, two other variables have changed:
6461
6462 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-driven' is renamed `lazy-lock-defer-on-scrolling'.
6463 Variable `lazy-lock-defer-time' can now only be a time, i.e., a number.
6464 Buffer modes for which on-the-fly deferral applies can be specified via the
6465 new variable `lazy-lock-defer-on-the-fly'.
6466
6467 If you set these variables in your ~/.emacs, then you may have to change those
6468 settings.
6469
6470 ** Ada mode changes.
6471
6472 *** There is now better support for using find-file.el with Ada mode.
6473 If you switch between spec and body, the cursor stays in the same
6474 procedure (modulo overloading). If a spec has no body file yet, but
6475 you try to switch to its body file, Ada mode now generates procedure
6476 stubs.
6477
6478 *** There are two new commands:
6479 - `ada-make-local' : invokes gnatmake on the current buffer
6480 - `ada-check-syntax' : check syntax of current buffer.
6481
6482 The user options `ada-compiler-make', `ada-make-options',
6483 `ada-language-version', `ada-compiler-syntax-check', and
6484 `ada-compile-options' are used within these commands.
6485
6486 *** Ada mode can now work with Outline minor mode. The outline level
6487 is calculated from the indenting, not from syntactic constructs.
6488 Outlining does not work if your code is not correctly indented.
6489
6490 *** The new function `ada-gnat-style' converts the buffer to the style of
6491 formatting used in GNAT. It places two blanks after a comment start,
6492 places one blank between a word end and an opening '(', and puts one
6493 space between a comma and the beginning of a word.
6494
6495 ** Scheme mode changes.
6496
6497 *** Scheme mode indentation now uses many of the facilities of Lisp
6498 mode; therefore, the variables to customize it are the variables used
6499 for Lisp mode which have names starting with `lisp-'. The variables
6500 with names starting with `scheme-' which used to do this no longer
6501 have any effect.
6502
6503 If you want to use different indentation for Scheme and Lisp, this is
6504 still possible, but now you must do it by adding a hook to
6505 scheme-mode-hook, which could work by setting the `lisp-' indentation
6506 variables as buffer-local variables.
6507
6508 *** DSSSL mode is a variant of Scheme mode, for editing DSSSL scripts.
6509 Use M-x dsssl-mode.
6510
6511 ** Changes to the emacsclient program
6512
6513 *** If a socket can't be found, and environment variables LOGNAME or
6514 USER are set, emacsclient now looks for a socket based on the UID
6515 associated with the name. That is an emacsclient running as root
6516 can connect to an Emacs server started by a non-root user.
6517
6518 *** The emacsclient program now accepts an option --no-wait which tells
6519 it to return immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the
6520 buffer in Emacs.
6521
6522 *** The new option --alternate-editor allows to specify an editor to
6523 use if Emacs is not running. The environment variable
6524 ALTERNATE_EDITOR can be used for the same effect; the command line
6525 option takes precedence.
6526
6527 ** M-x eldoc-mode enables a minor mode in which the echo area
6528 constantly shows the parameter list for function being called at point
6529 (in Emacs Lisp and Lisp Interaction modes only).
6530
6531 ** C-x n d now runs the new command narrow-to-defun,
6532 which narrows the accessible parts of the buffer to just
6533 the current defun.
6534
6535 ** Emacs now handles the `--' argument in the standard way; all
6536 following arguments are treated as ordinary file names.
6537
6538 ** On MSDOS and Windows, the bookmark file is now called _emacs.bmk,
6539 and the saved desktop file is now called _emacs.desktop (truncated if
6540 necessary).
6541
6542 ** When you kill a buffer that visits a file,
6543 if there are any registers that save positions in the file,
6544 these register values no longer become completely useless.
6545 If you try to go to such a register with C-x j, then you are
6546 asked whether to visit the file again. If you say yes,
6547 it visits the file and then goes to the same position.
6548
6549 ** When you visit a file that changes frequently outside Emacs--for
6550 example, a log of output from a process that continues to run--it may
6551 be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you whenever
6552 you visit the file afresh with C-x C-f.
6553
6554 You can request this behavior for certain files by setting the
6555 variable revert-without-query to a list of regular expressions. If a
6556 file's name matches any of these regular expressions, find-file and
6557 revert-buffer revert the buffer without asking for permission--but
6558 only if you have not edited the buffer text yourself.
6559
6560 ** set-default-font has been renamed to set-frame-font
6561 since it applies only to the current frame.
6562
6563 ** In TeX mode, you can use the variable tex-main-file to specify the
6564 file for tex-file to run TeX on. (By default, tex-main-file is nil,
6565 and tex-file runs TeX on the current visited file.)
6566
6567 This is useful when you are editing a document that consists of
6568 multiple files. In each of the included files, you can set up a local
6569 variable list which specifies the top-level file of your document for
6570 tex-main-file. Then tex-file will run TeX on the whole document
6571 instead of just the file you are editing.
6572
6573 ** RefTeX mode
6574
6575 RefTeX mode is a new minor mode with special support for \label, \ref
6576 and \cite macros in LaTeX documents. RefTeX distinguishes labels of
6577 different environments (equation, figure, ...) and has full support for
6578 multifile documents. To use it, select a buffer with a LaTeX document and
6579 turn the mode on with M-x reftex-mode. Here are the main user commands:
6580
6581 C-c ( reftex-label
6582 Creates a label semi-automatically. RefTeX is context sensitive and
6583 knows which kind of label is needed.
6584
6585 C-c ) reftex-reference
6586 Offers in a menu all labels in the document, along with context of the
6587 label definition. The selected label is referenced as \ref{LABEL}.
6588
6589 C-c [ reftex-citation
6590 Prompts for a regular expression and displays a list of matching BibTeX
6591 database entries. The selected entry is cited with a \cite{KEY} macro.
6592
6593 C-c & reftex-view-crossref
6594 Views the cross reference of a \ref or \cite command near point.
6595
6596 C-c = reftex-toc
6597 Shows a table of contents of the (multifile) document. From there you
6598 can quickly jump to every section.
6599
6600 Under X, RefTeX installs a "Ref" menu in the menu bar, with additional
6601 commands. Press `?' to get help when a prompt mentions this feature.
6602 Full documentation and customization examples are in the file
6603 reftex.el. You can use the finder to view the file documentation:
6604 C-h p --> tex --> reftex.el
6605
6606 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
6607
6608 *** Info documentation is now available.
6609
6610 *** Don't allow parentheses in string constants anymore. This confused
6611 both the BibTeX program and Emacs BibTeX mode.
6612
6613 *** Renamed variable bibtex-mode-user-optional-fields to
6614 bibtex-user-optional-fields.
6615
6616 *** Removed variable bibtex-include-OPTannote
6617 (use bibtex-user-optional-fields instead).
6618
6619 *** New interactive functions to copy and kill fields and complete
6620 entries to the BibTeX kill ring, from where they can be yanked back by
6621 appropriate functions.
6622
6623 *** New interactive functions for repositioning and marking of
6624 entries. They are bound by default to M-C-l and M-C-h.
6625
6626 *** New hook bibtex-clean-entry-hook. It is called after entry has
6627 been cleaned.
6628
6629 *** New variable bibtex-field-delimiters, which replaces variables
6630 bibtex-field-{left|right}-delimiter.
6631
6632 *** New variable bibtex-entry-delimiters to determine how entries
6633 shall be delimited.
6634
6635 *** Allow preinitialization of fields. See documentation of
6636 bibtex-user-optional-fields, bibtex-entry-field-alist, and
6637 bibtex-include-OPTkey for details.
6638
6639 *** Book and InBook entries require either an author or an editor
6640 field. This is now supported by bibtex.el. Alternative fields are
6641 prefixed with `ALT'.
6642
6643 *** New variable bibtex-entry-format, which replaces variable
6644 bibtex-clean-entry-zap-empty-opts and allows specification of many
6645 formatting options performed on cleaning an entry (see variable
6646 documentation).
6647
6648 *** Even more control on how automatic keys are generated. See
6649 documentation of bibtex-generate-autokey for details. Transcriptions
6650 for foreign languages other than German are now handled, too.
6651
6652 *** New boolean user option bibtex-comma-after-last-field to decide if
6653 comma should be inserted at end of last field.
6654
6655 *** New boolean user option bibtex-align-at-equal-sign to determine if
6656 alignment should be made at left side of field contents or at equal
6657 signs. New user options to control entry layout (e.g. indentation).
6658
6659 *** New function bibtex-fill-entry to realign entries.
6660
6661 *** New function bibtex-reformat to reformat region or buffer.
6662
6663 *** New function bibtex-convert-alien to convert a BibTeX database
6664 from alien sources.
6665
6666 *** New function bibtex-complete-key (similar to bibtex-complete-string)
6667 to complete prefix to a key defined in buffer. Mainly useful in
6668 crossref entries.
6669
6670 *** New function bibtex-count-entries to count entries in buffer or
6671 region.
6672
6673 *** Added support for imenu.
6674
6675 *** The function `bibtex-validate' now checks current region instead
6676 of buffer if mark is active. Now it shows all errors of buffer in a
6677 `compilation mode' buffer. You can use the normal commands (e.g.
6678 `next-error') for compilation modes to jump to errors.
6679
6680 *** New variable `bibtex-string-file-path' to determine where the files
6681 from `bibtex-string-files' are searched.
6682
6683 ** Iso Accents mode now supports Latin-3 as an alternative.
6684
6685 ** The command next-error now opens blocks hidden by hideshow.
6686
6687 ** The function using-unix-filesystems has been replaced by the
6688 functions add-untranslated-filesystem and remove-untranslated-filesystem.
6689 Each of these functions takes the name of a drive letter or directory
6690 as an argument.
6691
6692 When a filesystem is added as untranslated, all files on it are read
6693 and written in binary mode (no cr/lf translation is performed).
6694
6695 ** browse-url changes
6696
6697 *** New methods for: Grail (browse-url-generic), MMM (browse-url-mmm),
6698 Lynx in a separate xterm (browse-url-lynx-xterm) or in an Emacs window
6699 (browse-url-lynx-emacs), remote W3 (browse-url-w3-gnudoit), generic
6700 non-remote-controlled browsers (browse-url-generic) and associated
6701 customization variables.
6702
6703 *** New commands `browse-url-of-region' and `browse-url'.
6704
6705 *** URLs marked up with <URL:...> (RFC1738) work if broken across
6706 lines. Browsing methods can be associated with URL regexps
6707 (e.g. mailto: URLs) via `browse-url-browser-function'.
6708
6709 ** Changes in Ediff
6710
6711 *** Clicking Mouse-2 on a brief command description in Ediff control panel
6712 pops up the Info file for this command.
6713
6714 *** There is now a variable, ediff-autostore-merges, which controls whether
6715 the result of a merge is saved in a file. By default, this is done only when
6716 merge is done from a session group (eg, when merging files in two different
6717 directories).
6718
6719 *** Since Emacs 19.31 (this hasn't been announced before), Ediff can compare
6720 and merge groups of files residing in different directories, or revisions of
6721 files in the same directory.
6722
6723 *** Since Emacs 19.31, Ediff can apply multi-file patches interactively.
6724 The patches must be in the context format or GNU unified format. (The bug
6725 related to the GNU format has now been fixed.)
6726
6727 ** Changes in Viper
6728
6729 *** The startup file is now .viper instead of .vip
6730 *** All variable/function names have been changed to start with viper-
6731 instead of vip-.
6732 *** C-\ now simulates the meta-key in all Viper states.
6733 *** C-z in Insert state now escapes to Vi for the duration of the next
6734 Viper command. In Vi and Insert states, C-z behaves as before.
6735 *** C-c \ escapes to Vi for one command if Viper is in Insert or Emacs states.
6736 *** _ is no longer the meta-key in Vi state.
6737 *** The variable viper-insert-state-cursor-color can be used to change cursor
6738 color when Viper is in insert state.
6739 *** If search lands the cursor near the top or the bottom of the window,
6740 Viper pulls the window up or down to expose more context. The variable
6741 viper-adjust-window-after-search controls this behavior.
6742
6743 ** Etags changes.
6744
6745 *** In C, C++, Objective C and Java, Etags tags global variables by
6746 default. The resulting tags files are inflated by 30% on average.
6747 Use --no-globals to turn this feature off. Etags can also tag
6748 variables which are members of structure-like constructs, but it does
6749 not by default. Use --members to turn this feature on.
6750
6751 *** C++ member functions are now recognized as tags.
6752
6753 *** Java is tagged like C++. In addition, "extends" and "implements"
6754 constructs are tagged. Files are recognised by the extension .java.
6755
6756 *** Etags can now handle programs written in Postscript. Files are
6757 recognised by the extensions .ps and .pdb (Postscript with C syntax).
6758 In Postscript, tags are lines that start with a slash.
6759
6760 *** Etags now handles Objective C and Objective C++ code. The usual C and
6761 C++ tags are recognized in these languages; in addition, etags
6762 recognizes special Objective C syntax for classes, class categories,
6763 methods and protocols.
6764
6765 *** Etags also handles Cobol. Files are recognised by the extension
6766 .cobol. The tagged lines are those containing a word that begins in
6767 column 8 and ends in a full stop, i.e. anything that could be a
6768 paragraph name.
6769
6770 *** Regexps in Etags now support intervals, as in ed or grep. The syntax of
6771 an interval is \{M,N\}, and it means to match the preceding expression
6772 at least M times and as many as N times.
6773
6774 ** The format for specifying a custom format for time-stamp to insert
6775 in files has changed slightly.
6776
6777 With the new enhancements to the functionality of format-time-string,
6778 time-stamp-format will change to be eventually compatible with it.
6779 This conversion is being done in two steps to maintain compatibility
6780 with old time-stamp-format values.
6781
6782 In the new scheme, alternate case is signified by the number-sign
6783 (`#') modifier, rather than changing the case of the format character.
6784 This feature is as yet incompletely implemented for compatibility
6785 reasons.
6786
6787 In the old time-stamp-format, all numeric fields defaulted to their
6788 natural width. (With format-time-string, each format has a
6789 fixed-width default.) In this version, you can specify the colon
6790 (`:') modifier to a numeric conversion to mean "give me the historical
6791 time-stamp-format width default." Do not use colon if you are
6792 specifying an explicit width, as in "%02d".
6793
6794 Numbers are no longer truncated to the requested width, except in the
6795 case of "%02y", which continues to give a two-digit year. Digit
6796 truncation probably wasn't being used for anything else anyway.
6797
6798 The new formats will work with old versions of Emacs. New formats are
6799 being recommended now to allow time-stamp-format to change in the
6800 future to be compatible with format-time-string. The new forms being
6801 recommended now will continue to work then.
6802
6803 See the documentation string for the variable time-stamp-format for
6804 details.
6805
6806 ** There are some additional major modes:
6807
6808 dcl-mode, for editing VMS DCL files.
6809 m4-mode, for editing files of m4 input.
6810 meta-mode, for editing MetaFont and MetaPost source files.
6811
6812 ** In Shell mode, the command shell-copy-environment-variable lets you
6813 copy the value of a specified environment variable from the subshell
6814 into Emacs.
6815
6816 ** New Lisp packages include:
6817
6818 *** battery.el displays battery status for laptops.
6819
6820 *** M-x bruce (named after Lenny Bruce) is a program that might
6821 be used for adding some indecent words to your email.
6822
6823 *** M-x crisp-mode enables an emulation for the CRiSP editor.
6824
6825 *** M-x dirtrack arranges for better tracking of directory changes
6826 in shell buffers.
6827
6828 *** The new library elint.el provides for linting of Emacs Lisp code.
6829 See the documentation for `elint-initialize', `elint-current-buffer'
6830 and `elint-defun'.
6831
6832 *** M-x expand-add-abbrevs defines a special kind of abbrev which is
6833 meant for programming constructs. These abbrevs expand like ordinary
6834 ones, when you type SPC, but only at the end of a line and not within
6835 strings or comments.
6836
6837 These abbrevs can act as templates: you can define places within an
6838 abbrev for insertion of additional text. Once you expand the abbrev,
6839 you can then use C-x a p and C-x a n to move back and forth to these
6840 insertion points. Thus you can conveniently insert additional text
6841 at these points.
6842
6843 *** filecache.el remembers the location of files so that you
6844 can visit them by short forms of their names.
6845
6846 *** find-func.el lets you find the definition of the user-loaded
6847 Emacs Lisp function at point.
6848
6849 *** M-x handwrite converts text to a "handwritten" picture.
6850
6851 *** M-x iswitchb-buffer is a command for switching to a buffer, much like
6852 switch-buffer, but it reads the argument in a more helpful way.
6853
6854 *** M-x landmark implements a neural network for landmark learning.
6855
6856 *** M-x locate provides a convenient interface to the `locate' program.
6857
6858 *** M4 mode is a new mode for editing files of m4 input.
6859
6860 *** mantemp.el creates C++ manual template instantiations
6861 from the GCC error messages which indicate which instantiations are needed.
6862
6863 *** mouse-copy.el provides a one-click copy and move feature.
6864 You can drag a region with M-mouse-1, and it is automatically
6865 inserted at point. M-Shift-mouse-1 deletes the text from its
6866 original place after inserting the copy.
6867
6868 *** mouse-drag.el lets you do scrolling by dragging Mouse-2
6869 on the buffer.
6870
6871 You click the mouse and move; that distance either translates into the
6872 velocity to scroll (with mouse-drag-throw) or the distance to scroll
6873 (with mouse-drag-drag). Horizontal scrolling is enabled when needed.
6874
6875 Enable mouse-drag with:
6876 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-throw)
6877 -or-
6878 (global-set-key [down-mouse-2] 'mouse-drag-drag)
6879
6880 *** mspools.el is useful for determining which mail folders have
6881 mail waiting to be read in them. It works with procmail.
6882
6883 *** Octave mode is a major mode for editing files of input for Octave.
6884 It comes with a facility for communicating with an Octave subprocess.
6885
6886 *** ogonek
6887
6888 The ogonek package provides functions for changing the coding of
6889 Polish diacritic characters in buffers. Codings known from various
6890 platforms are supported such as ISO8859-2, Mazovia, IBM Latin2, and
6891 TeX. For example, you can change the coding from Mazovia to
6892 ISO8859-2. Another example is a change of coding from ISO8859-2 to
6893 prefix notation (in which `/a' stands for the aogonek character, for
6894 instance) and vice versa.
6895
6896 To use this package load it using
6897 M-x load-library [enter] ogonek
6898 Then, you may get an explanation by calling one of
6899 M-x ogonek-jak -- in Polish
6900 M-x ogonek-how -- in English
6901 The info specifies the commands and variables provided as well as the
6902 ways of customization in `.emacs'.
6903
6904 *** Interface to ph.
6905
6906 Emacs provides a client interface to CCSO Nameservers (ph/qi)
6907
6908 The CCSO nameserver is used in many universities to provide directory
6909 services about people. ph.el provides a convenient Emacs interface to
6910 these servers.
6911
6912 *** uce.el is useful for replying to unsolicited commercial email.
6913
6914 *** vcursor.el implements a "virtual cursor" feature.
6915 You can move the virtual cursor with special commands
6916 while the real cursor does not move.
6917
6918 *** webjump.el is a "hot list" package which you can set up
6919 for visiting your favorite web sites.
6920
6921 *** M-x winner-mode is a minor mode which saves window configurations,
6922 so you can move back to other configurations that you have recently used.
6923
6924 ** movemail change
6925
6926 Movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root in order for POP
6927 mail retrieval to function properly. This is because it no longer
6928 supports the RPOP (reserved-port POP) protocol; instead, it uses the
6929 user's POP password to authenticate to the mail server.
6930
6931 This change was made earlier, but not reported in NEWS before.
6932 \f
6933 * Emacs 20.1 changes for MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
6934
6935 ** Changes in handling MS-DOS/MS-Windows text files.
6936
6937 Emacs handles three different conventions for representing
6938 end-of-line: CRLF for MSDOS, LF for Unix and GNU, and CR (used on the
6939 Macintosh). Emacs determines which convention is used in a specific
6940 file based on the contents of that file (except for certain special
6941 file names), and when it saves the file, it uses the same convention.
6942
6943 To save the file and change the end-of-line convention, you can use
6944 C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) to specify a different
6945 coding system for the buffer. Then, when you save the file, the newly
6946 specified coding system will take effect. For example, to save with
6947 LF, specify undecided-unix (or some other ...-unix coding system); to
6948 save with CRLF, specify undecided-dos.
6949 \f
6950 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 20.1
6951
6952 ** Byte-compiled files made with Emacs 20 will, in general, work in
6953 Emacs 19 as well, as long as the source code runs in Emacs 19. And
6954 vice versa: byte-compiled files made with Emacs 19 should also run in
6955 Emacs 20, as long as the program itself works in Emacs 20.
6956
6957 ** Windows-specific functions and variables have been renamed
6958 to start with w32- instead of win32-.
6959
6960 In hacker language, calling something a "win" is a form of praise. We
6961 don't want to praise a non-free Microsoft system, so we don't call it
6962 "win".
6963
6964 ** Basic Lisp changes
6965
6966 *** A symbol whose name starts with a colon now automatically
6967 evaluates to itself. Therefore such a symbol can be used as a constant.
6968
6969 *** The defined purpose of `defconst' has been changed. It should now
6970 be used only for values that should not be changed whether by a program
6971 or by the user.
6972
6973 The actual behavior of defconst has not been changed.
6974
6975 *** There are new macros `when' and `unless'
6976
6977 (when CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION (progn BODY...))
6978 (unless CONDITION BODY...) is short for (if CONDITION nil BODY...)
6979
6980 *** Emacs now defines functions caar, cadr, cdar and cddr with their
6981 usual Lisp meanings. For example, caar returns the car of the car of
6982 its argument.
6983
6984 *** equal, when comparing strings, now ignores their text properties.
6985
6986 *** The new function `functionp' tests whether an object is a function.
6987
6988 *** arrayp now returns t for char-tables and bool-vectors.
6989
6990 *** Certain primitives which use characters (as integers) now get an
6991 error if the integer is not a valid character code. These primitives
6992 include insert-char, char-to-string, and the %c construct in the
6993 `format' function.
6994
6995 *** The `require' function now insists on adding a suffix, either .el
6996 or .elc, to the file name. Thus, (require 'foo) will not use a file
6997 whose name is just foo. It insists on foo.el or foo.elc.
6998
6999 *** The `autoload' function, when the file name does not contain
7000 either a directory name or the suffix .el or .elc, insists on
7001 adding one of these suffixes.
7002
7003 *** string-to-number now takes an optional second argument BASE
7004 which specifies the base to use when converting an integer.
7005 If BASE is omitted, base 10 is used.
7006
7007 We have not implemented other radices for floating point numbers,
7008 because that would be much more work and does not seem useful.
7009
7010 *** substring now handles vectors as well as strings.
7011
7012 *** The Common Lisp function eql is no longer defined normally.
7013 You must load the `cl' library to define it.
7014
7015 *** The new macro `with-current-buffer' lets you evaluate an expression
7016 conveniently with a different current buffer. It looks like this:
7017
7018 (with-current-buffer BUFFER BODY-FORMS...)
7019
7020 BUFFER is the expression that says which buffer to use.
7021 BODY-FORMS say what to do in that buffer.
7022
7023 *** The new primitive `save-current-buffer' saves and restores the
7024 choice of current buffer, like `save-excursion', but without saving or
7025 restoring the value of point or the mark. `with-current-buffer'
7026 works using `save-current-buffer'.
7027
7028 *** The new macro `with-temp-file' lets you do some work in a new buffer and
7029 write the output to a specified file. Like `progn', it returns the value
7030 of the last form.
7031
7032 *** The new macro `with-temp-buffer' lets you do some work in a new buffer,
7033 which is discarded after use. Like `progn', it returns the value of the
7034 last form. If you wish to return the buffer contents, use (buffer-string)
7035 as the last form.
7036
7037 *** The new function split-string takes a string, splits it at certain
7038 characters, and returns a list of the substrings in between the
7039 matches.
7040
7041 For example, (split-string "foo bar lose" " +") returns ("foo" "bar" "lose").
7042
7043 *** The new macro with-output-to-string executes some Lisp expressions
7044 with standard-output set up so that all output feeds into a string.
7045 Then it returns that string.
7046
7047 For example, if the current buffer name is `foo',
7048
7049 (with-output-to-string
7050 (princ "The buffer is ")
7051 (princ (buffer-name)))
7052
7053 returns "The buffer is foo".
7054
7055 ** Non-ASCII characters are now supported, if enable-multibyte-characters
7056 is non-nil.
7057
7058 These characters have character codes above 256. When inserted in the
7059 buffer or stored in a string, they are represented as multibyte
7060 characters that occupy several buffer positions each.
7061
7062 *** When enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, a single character in
7063 a buffer or string can be two or more bytes (as many as four).
7064
7065 Buffers and strings are still made up of unibyte elements;
7066 character positions and string indices are always measured in bytes.
7067 Therefore, moving forward one character can increase the buffer
7068 position by 2, 3 or 4. The function forward-char moves by whole
7069 characters, and therefore is no longer equivalent to
7070 (lambda (n) (goto-char (+ (point) n))).
7071
7072 ASCII characters (codes 0 through 127) are still single bytes, always.
7073 Sequences of byte values 128 through 255 are used to represent
7074 non-ASCII characters. These sequences are called "multibyte
7075 characters".
7076
7077 The first byte of a multibyte character is always in the range 128
7078 through 159 (octal 0200 through 0237). These values are called
7079 "leading codes". The second and subsequent bytes are always in the
7080 range 160 through 255 (octal 0240 through 0377). The first byte, the
7081 leading code, determines how many bytes long the sequence is.
7082
7083 *** The function forward-char moves over characters, and therefore
7084 (forward-char 1) may increase point by more than 1 if it moves over a
7085 multibyte character. Likewise, delete-char always deletes a
7086 character, which may be more than one buffer position.
7087
7088 This means that some Lisp programs, which assume that a character is
7089 always one buffer position, need to be changed.
7090
7091 However, all ASCII characters are always one buffer position.
7092
7093 *** The regexp [\200-\377] no longer matches all non-ASCII characters,
7094 because when enable-multibyte-characters is non-nil, these characters
7095 have codes that are not in the range octal 200 to octal 377. However,
7096 the regexp [^\000-\177] does match all non-ASCII characters,
7097 guaranteed.
7098
7099 *** The function char-boundary-p returns non-nil if position POS is
7100 between two characters in the buffer (not in the middle of a
7101 character).
7102
7103 When the value is non-nil, it says what kind of character follows POS:
7104
7105 0 if POS is at an ASCII character or at the end of range,
7106 1 if POS is before a 2-byte length multi-byte form,
7107 2 if POS is at a head of 3-byte length multi-byte form,
7108 3 if POS is at a head of 4-byte length multi-byte form,
7109 4 if POS is at a head of multi-byte form of a composite character.
7110
7111 *** The function char-bytes returns how many bytes the character CHAR uses.
7112
7113 *** Strings can contain multibyte characters. The function
7114 `length' returns the string length counting bytes, which may be
7115 more than the number of characters.
7116
7117 You can include a multibyte character in a string constant by writing
7118 it literally. You can also represent it with a hex escape,
7119 \xNNNNNNN..., using as many digits as necessary. Any character which
7120 is not a valid hex digit terminates this construct. If you want to
7121 follow it with a character that is a hex digit, write backslash and
7122 newline in between; that will terminate the hex escape.
7123
7124 *** The function concat-chars takes arguments which are characters
7125 and returns a string containing those characters.
7126
7127 *** The function sref access a multibyte character in a string.
7128 (sref STRING INDX) returns the character in STRING at INDEX. INDEX
7129 counts from zero. If INDEX is at a position in the middle of a
7130 character, sref signals an error.
7131
7132 *** The function chars-in-string returns the number of characters
7133 in a string. This is less than the length of the string, if the
7134 string contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7135
7136 *** The function chars-in-region returns the number of characters
7137 in a region from BEG to END. This is less than (- END BEG) if the
7138 region contains multibyte characters (the length counts bytes).
7139
7140 *** The function string-to-list converts a string to a list of
7141 the characters in it. string-to-vector converts a string
7142 to a vector of the characters in it.
7143
7144 *** The function store-substring alters part of the contents
7145 of a string. You call it as follows:
7146
7147 (store-substring STRING IDX OBJ)
7148
7149 This says to alter STRING, by storing OBJ starting at index IDX in
7150 STRING. OBJ may be either a character or a (smaller) string.
7151 This function really does alter the contents of STRING.
7152 Since it is impossible to change the length of an existing string,
7153 it is an error if OBJ doesn't fit within STRING's actual length.
7154
7155 *** char-width returns the width (in columns) of the character CHAR,
7156 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7157
7158 *** string-width returns the width (in columns) of the text in STRING,
7159 if it were displayed in the current buffer and the selected window.
7160
7161 *** truncate-string-to-width shortens a string, if necessary,
7162 to fit within a certain number of columns. (Of course, it does
7163 not alter the string that you give it; it returns a new string
7164 which contains all or just part of the existing string.)
7165
7166 (truncate-string-to-width STR END-COLUMN &optional START-COLUMN PADDING)
7167
7168 This returns the part of STR up to column END-COLUMN.
7169
7170 The optional argument START-COLUMN specifies the starting column.
7171 If this is non-nil, then the first START-COLUMN columns of the string
7172 are not included in the resulting value.
7173
7174 The optional argument PADDING, if non-nil, is a padding character to be added
7175 at the beginning and end the resulting string, to extend it to exactly
7176 WIDTH columns. If PADDING is nil, that means do not pad; then, if STRING
7177 is narrower than WIDTH, the value is equal to STRING.
7178
7179 If PADDING and START-COLUMN are both non-nil, and if there is no clean
7180 place in STRING that corresponds to START-COLUMN (because one
7181 character extends across that column), then the padding character
7182 PADDING is added one or more times at the beginning of the result
7183 string, so that its columns line up as if it really did start at
7184 column START-COLUMN.
7185
7186 *** When the functions in the list after-change-functions are called,
7187 the third argument is the number of bytes in the pre-change text, not
7188 necessarily the number of characters. It is, in effect, the
7189 difference in buffer position between the beginning and the end of the
7190 changed text, before the change.
7191
7192 *** The characters Emacs uses are classified in various character
7193 sets, each of which has a name which is a symbol. In general there is
7194 one character set for each script, not for each language.
7195
7196 **** The function charsetp tests whether an object is a character set name.
7197
7198 **** The variable charset-list holds a list of character set names.
7199
7200 **** char-charset, given a character code, returns the name of the character
7201 set that the character belongs to. (The value is a symbol.)
7202
7203 **** split-char, given a character code, returns a list containing the
7204 name of the character set, followed by one or two byte-values
7205 which identify the character within that character set.
7206
7207 **** make-char, given a character set name and one or two subsequent
7208 byte-values, constructs a character code. This is roughly the
7209 opposite of split-char.
7210
7211 **** find-charset-region returns a list of the character sets
7212 of all the characters between BEG and END.
7213
7214 **** find-charset-string returns a list of the character sets
7215 of all the characters in a string.
7216
7217 *** Here are the Lisp facilities for working with coding systems
7218 and specifying coding systems.
7219
7220 **** The function coding-system-list returns a list of all coding
7221 system names (symbols). With optional argument t, it returns a list
7222 of all distinct base coding systems, not including variants.
7223 (Variant coding systems are those like latin-1-dos, latin-1-unix
7224 and latin-1-mac which specify the end-of-line conversion as well
7225 as what to do about code conversion.)
7226
7227 **** coding-system-p tests a symbol to see if it is a coding system
7228 name. It returns t if so, nil if not.
7229
7230 **** file-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7231 for certain file names. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7232 except that the PATTERN is matched against the file name.
7233
7234 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7235 which file names the element applies to. PATTERN should be a regexp
7236 to match against a file name.
7237
7238 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7239 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7240 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7241 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7242 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7243 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7244
7245 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7246 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7247
7248 **** The variable network-coding-system-alist specifies
7249 the coding system to use for network sockets.
7250
7251 Each element has the format (PATTERN . VAL), where PATTERN determines
7252 which network sockets the element applies to. PATTERN should be
7253 either a port number or a regular expression matching some network
7254 service names.
7255
7256 VAL is a coding system, a cons cell containing two coding systems, or
7257 a function symbol. If VAL is a coding system, it is used for both
7258 decoding what received from the network stream and encoding what sent
7259 to the network stream. If VAL is a cons cell containing two coding
7260 systems, the car specifies the coding system for decoding, and the cdr
7261 specifies the coding system for encoding.
7262
7263 If VAL is a function symbol, the function must return a coding system
7264 or a cons cell containing two coding systems, which is used as above.
7265
7266 **** process-coding-system-alist specifies which coding systems to use
7267 for certain subprocess. It works like network-coding-system-alist,
7268 except that the PATTERN is matched against the program name used to
7269 start the subprocess.
7270
7271 **** The variable default-process-coding-system specifies the coding
7272 systems to use for subprocess (and net connection) input and output,
7273 when nothing else specifies what to do. The value is a cons cell
7274 (OUTPUT-CODING . INPUT-CODING). OUTPUT-CODING applies to output
7275 to the subprocess, and INPUT-CODING applies to input from it.
7276
7277 **** The variable coding-system-for-write, if non-nil, specifies the
7278 coding system to use for writing a file, or for output to a synchronous
7279 subprocess.
7280
7281 It also applies to any asynchronous subprocess or network connection,
7282 but in a different way: the value of coding-system-for-write when you
7283 start the subprocess or connection affects that subprocess or
7284 connection permanently or until overridden.
7285
7286 The variable coding-system-for-write takes precedence over
7287 file-coding-system-alist, process-coding-system-alist and
7288 network-coding-system-alist, and all other methods of specifying a
7289 coding system for output. But most of the time this variable is nil.
7290 It exists so that Lisp programs can bind it to a specific coding
7291 system for one operation at a time.
7292
7293 **** coding-system-for-read applies similarly to input from
7294 files, subprocesses or network connections.
7295
7296 **** The function process-coding-system tells you what
7297 coding systems(s) an existing subprocess is using.
7298 The value is a cons cell,
7299 (DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM . ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM)
7300 where DECODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for decoding output from
7301 the subprocess, and ENCODING-CODING-SYSTEM is used for encoding
7302 input to the subprocess.
7303
7304 **** The function set-process-coding-system can be used to
7305 change the coding systems in use for an existing subprocess.
7306
7307 ** Emacs has a new facility to help users manage the many
7308 customization options. To make a Lisp program work with this facility,
7309 you need to use the new macros defgroup and defcustom.
7310
7311 You use defcustom instead of defvar, for defining a user option
7312 variable. The difference is that you specify two additional pieces of
7313 information (usually): the "type" which says what values are
7314 legitimate, and the "group" which specifies the hierarchy for
7315 customization.
7316
7317 Thus, instead of writing
7318
7319 (defvar foo-blurgoze nil
7320 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely.")
7321
7322 you would now write this:
7323
7324 (defcustom foo-blurgoze nil
7325 "*Non-nil means that foo will act very blurgozely."
7326 :type 'boolean
7327 :group foo)
7328
7329 The type `boolean' means that this variable has only
7330 two meaningful states: nil and non-nil. Other type values
7331 describe other possibilities; see the manual for Custom
7332 for a description of them.
7333
7334 The "group" argument is used to specify a group which the option
7335 should belong to. You define a new group like this:
7336
7337 (defgroup ispell nil
7338 "Spell checking using Ispell."
7339 :group 'processes)
7340
7341 The "group" argument in defgroup specifies the parent group. The root
7342 group is called `emacs'; it should not contain any variables itself,
7343 but only other groups. The immediate subgroups of `emacs' correspond
7344 to the keywords used by C-h p. Under these subgroups come
7345 second-level subgroups that belong to individual packages.
7346
7347 Each Emacs package should have its own set of groups. A simple
7348 package should have just one group; a more complex package should
7349 have a hierarchy of its own groups. The sole or root group of a
7350 package should be a subgroup of one or more of the "keyword"
7351 first-level subgroups.
7352
7353 ** New `widget' library for inserting UI components in buffers.
7354
7355 This library, used by the new custom library, is documented in a
7356 separate manual that accompanies Emacs.
7357
7358 ** easy-mmode
7359
7360 The easy-mmode package provides macros and functions that make
7361 developing minor modes easier. Roughly, the programmer has to code
7362 only the functionality of the minor mode. All the rest--toggles,
7363 predicate, and documentation--can be done in one call to the macro
7364 `easy-mmode-define-minor-mode' (see the documentation). See also
7365 `easy-mmode-define-keymap'.
7366
7367 ** Text property changes
7368
7369 *** The `intangible' property now works on overlays as well as on a
7370 text property.
7371
7372 *** The new functions next-char-property-change and
7373 previous-char-property-change scan through the buffer looking for a
7374 place where either a text property or an overlay might change. The
7375 functions take two arguments, POSITION and LIMIT. POSITION is the
7376 starting position for the scan. LIMIT says where to stop the scan.
7377
7378 If no property change is found before LIMIT, the value is LIMIT. If
7379 LIMIT is nil, scan goes to the beginning or end of the accessible part
7380 of the buffer. If no property change is found, the value is the
7381 position of the beginning or end of the buffer.
7382
7383 *** In the `local-map' text property or overlay property, the property
7384 value can now be a symbol whose function definition is a keymap. This
7385 is an alternative to using the keymap itself.
7386
7387 ** Changes in invisibility features
7388
7389 *** Isearch can now temporarily show parts of the buffer which are
7390 hidden by an overlay with a invisible property, when the search match
7391 is inside that portion of the buffer. To enable this the overlay
7392 should have a isearch-open-invisible property which is a function that
7393 would be called having the overlay as an argument, the function should
7394 make the overlay visible.
7395
7396 During incremental search the overlays are shown by modifying the
7397 invisible and intangible properties, if beside this more actions are
7398 needed the overlay should have a isearch-open-invisible-temporary
7399 which is a function. The function is called with 2 arguments: one is
7400 the overlay and the second is nil when it should show the overlay and
7401 t when it should hide it.
7402
7403 *** add-to-invisibility-spec, remove-from-invisibility-spec
7404
7405 Modes that use overlays to hide portions of a buffer should set the
7406 invisible property of the overlay to the mode's name (or another symbol)
7407 and modify the `buffer-invisibility-spec' to include that symbol.
7408 Use `add-to-invisibility-spec' and `remove-from-invisibility-spec' to
7409 manipulate the `buffer-invisibility-spec'.
7410 Here is an example of how to do this:
7411
7412 ;; If we want to display an ellipsis:
7413 (add-to-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7414 ;; If you don't want ellipsis:
7415 (add-to-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7416
7417 ...
7418 (overlay-put (make-overlay beginning end) 'invisible 'my-symbol)
7419
7420 ...
7421 ;; When done with the overlays:
7422 (remove-from-invisibility-spec '(my-symbol . t))
7423 ;; Or respectively:
7424 (remove-from-invisibility-spec 'my-symbol)
7425
7426 ** Changes in syntax parsing.
7427
7428 *** The syntax-directed buffer-scan functions (such as
7429 `parse-partial-sexp', `forward-word' and similar functions) can now
7430 obey syntax information specified by text properties, if the variable
7431 `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil.
7432
7433 If the value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is nil, the behavior
7434 is as before: the syntax-table of the current buffer is always
7435 used to determine the syntax of the character at the position.
7436
7437 When `parse-sexp-lookup-properties' is non-nil, the syntax of a
7438 character in the buffer is calculated thus:
7439
7440 a) if the `syntax-table' text-property of that character
7441 is a cons, this cons becomes the syntax-type;
7442
7443 Valid values of `syntax-table' text-property are: nil, a valid
7444 syntax-table, and a valid syntax-table element, i.e.,
7445 a cons cell of the form (SYNTAX-CODE . MATCHING-CHAR).
7446
7447 b) if the character's `syntax-table' text-property
7448 is a syntax table, this syntax table is used
7449 (instead of the syntax-table of the current buffer) to
7450 determine the syntax type of the character.
7451
7452 c) otherwise the syntax-type is determined by the syntax-table
7453 of the current buffer.
7454
7455 *** The meaning of \s in regular expressions is also affected by the
7456 value of `parse-sexp-lookup-properties'. The details are the same as
7457 for the syntax-directed buffer-scan functions.
7458
7459 *** There are two new syntax-codes, `!' and `|' (numeric values 14
7460 and 15). A character with a code `!' starts a comment which is ended
7461 only by another character with the same code (unless quoted). A
7462 character with a code `|' starts a string which is ended only by
7463 another character with the same code (unless quoted).
7464
7465 These codes are mainly meant for use as values of the `syntax-table'
7466 text property.
7467
7468 *** The function `parse-partial-sexp' has new semantics for the sixth
7469 arg COMMENTSTOP. If it is `syntax-table', parse stops after the start
7470 of a comment or a string, or after end of a comment or a string.
7471
7472 *** The state-list which the return value from `parse-partial-sexp'
7473 (and can also be used as an argument) now has an optional ninth
7474 element: the character address of the start of last comment or string;
7475 nil if none. The fourth and eighth elements have special values if the
7476 string/comment is started by a "!" or "|" syntax-code.
7477
7478 *** Since new features of `parse-partial-sexp' allow a complete
7479 syntactic parsing, `font-lock' no longer supports
7480 `font-lock-comment-start-regexp'.
7481
7482 ** Changes in face features
7483
7484 *** The face functions are now unconditionally defined in Emacs, even
7485 if it does not support displaying on a device that supports faces.
7486
7487 *** The function face-documentation returns the documentation string
7488 of a face (or nil if it doesn't have one).
7489
7490 *** The function face-bold-p returns t if a face should be bold.
7491 set-face-bold-p sets that flag.
7492
7493 *** The function face-italic-p returns t if a face should be italic.
7494 set-face-italic-p sets that flag.
7495
7496 *** You can now specify foreground and background colors for text
7497 by adding elements of the form (foreground-color . COLOR-NAME)
7498 and (background-color . COLOR-NAME) to the list of faces in
7499 the `face' property (either the character's text property or an
7500 overlay property).
7501
7502 This means that you no longer need to create named faces to use
7503 arbitrary colors in a Lisp package.
7504
7505 ** Changes in file-handling functions
7506
7507 *** File-access primitive functions no longer discard an extra redundant
7508 directory name from the beginning of the file name. In other words,
7509 they no longer do anything special with // or /~. That conversion
7510 is now done only in substitute-in-file-name.
7511
7512 This makes it possible for a Lisp program to open a file whose name
7513 begins with ~.
7514
7515 *** If copy-file is unable to set the date of the output file,
7516 it now signals an error with the condition file-date-error.
7517
7518 *** The inode number returned by file-attributes may be an integer (if
7519 the number fits in a Lisp integer) or a list of integers.
7520
7521 *** insert-file-contents can now read from a special file,
7522 as long as the arguments VISIT and REPLACE are nil.
7523
7524 *** The RAWFILE arg to find-file-noselect, if non-nil, now suppresses
7525 character code conversion as well as other things.
7526
7527 Meanwhile, this feature does work with remote file names
7528 (formerly it did not).
7529
7530 *** Lisp packages which create temporary files should use the TMPDIR
7531 environment variable to decide which directory to put them in.
7532
7533 *** interpreter-mode-alist elements now specify regexps
7534 instead of constant strings.
7535
7536 *** expand-file-name no longer treats `//' or `/~' specially. It used
7537 to delete all the text of a file name up through the first slash of
7538 any `//' or `/~' sequence. Now it passes them straight through.
7539
7540 substitute-in-file-name continues to treat those sequences specially,
7541 in the same way as before.
7542
7543 *** The variable `format-alist' is more general now.
7544 The FROM-FN and TO-FN in a format definition can now be strings
7545 which specify shell commands to use as filters to perform conversion.
7546
7547 *** The new function access-file tries to open a file, and signals an
7548 error if that fails. If the open succeeds, access-file does nothing
7549 else, and returns nil.
7550
7551 *** The function insert-directory now signals an error if the specified
7552 directory cannot be listed.
7553
7554 ** Changes in minibuffer input
7555
7556 *** The functions read-buffer, read-variable, read-command, read-string
7557 read-file-name, read-from-minibuffer and completing-read now take an
7558 additional argument which specifies the default value. If this
7559 argument is non-nil, it should be a string; that string is used in two
7560 ways:
7561
7562 It is returned if the user enters empty input.
7563 It is available through the history command M-n.
7564
7565 *** The functions read-string, read-from-minibuffer,
7566 read-no-blanks-input and completing-read now take an additional
7567 argument INHERIT-INPUT-METHOD. If this is non-nil, then the
7568 minibuffer inherits the current input method and the setting of
7569 enable-multibyte-characters from the previously current buffer.
7570
7571 In an interactive spec, you can use M instead of s to read an
7572 argument in this way.
7573
7574 *** All minibuffer input functions discard text properties
7575 from the text you enter in the minibuffer, unless the variable
7576 minibuffer-allow-text-properties is non-nil.
7577
7578 ** Echo area features
7579
7580 *** Clearing the echo area now runs the normal hook
7581 echo-area-clear-hook. Note that the echo area can be used while the
7582 minibuffer is active; in that case, the minibuffer is still active
7583 after the echo area is cleared.
7584
7585 *** The function current-message returns the message currently displayed
7586 in the echo area, or nil if there is none.
7587
7588 ** Keyboard input features
7589
7590 *** tty-erase-char is a new variable that reports which character was
7591 set up as the terminal's erase character when time Emacs was started.
7592
7593 *** num-nonmacro-input-events is the total number of input events
7594 received so far from the terminal. It does not count those generated
7595 by keyboard macros.
7596
7597 ** Frame-related changes
7598
7599 *** make-frame runs the normal hook before-make-frame-hook just before
7600 creating a frame, and just after creating a frame it runs the abnormal
7601 hook after-make-frame-functions with the new frame as arg.
7602
7603 *** The new hook window-configuration-change-hook is now run every time
7604 the window configuration has changed. The frame whose configuration
7605 has changed is the selected frame when the hook is run.
7606
7607 *** Each frame now independently records the order for recently
7608 selected buffers, in its buffer-list frame parameter, so that the
7609 value of other-buffer is now based on the buffers recently displayed
7610 in the selected frame.
7611
7612 *** The value of the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars
7613 is now `left', `right' or nil. A non-nil value specifies
7614 which side of the window to put the scroll bars on.
7615
7616 ** X Windows features
7617
7618 *** You can examine X resources for other applications by binding
7619 x-resource-class around a call to x-get-resource. The usual value of
7620 x-resource-class is "Emacs", which is the correct value for Emacs.
7621
7622 *** In menus, checkboxes and radio buttons now actually work.
7623 The menu displays the current status of the box or button.
7624
7625 *** The function x-list-fonts now takes an optional fourth argument
7626 MAXIMUM which sets a limit on how many matching fonts to return.
7627 A smaller value of MAXIMUM makes the function faster.
7628
7629 If the only question is whether *any* font matches the pattern,
7630 it is good to supply 1 for this argument.
7631
7632 ** Subprocess features
7633
7634 *** A reminder: it is no longer necessary for subprocess filter
7635 functions and sentinels to do save-match-data, because Emacs does this
7636 automatically.
7637
7638 *** The new function shell-command-to-string executes a shell command
7639 and returns the output from the command as a string.
7640
7641 *** The new function process-contact returns t for a child process,
7642 and (HOSTNAME SERVICE) for a net connection.
7643
7644 ** An error in running pre-command-hook or post-command-hook
7645 does clear the variable to nil. The documentation was wrong before.
7646
7647 ** In define-key-after, if AFTER is t, the new binding now always goes
7648 at the end of the keymap. If the keymap is a menu, this means it
7649 goes after the other menu items.
7650
7651 ** If you have a program that makes several changes in the same area
7652 of the buffer, you can use the macro combine-after-change-calls
7653 around that Lisp code to make it faster when after-change hooks
7654 are in use.
7655
7656 The macro arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a
7657 series of several changes--if that seems safe.
7658
7659 Don't alter the variables after-change-functions and
7660 after-change-function within the body of a combine-after-change-calls
7661 form.
7662
7663 ** If you define an abbrev (with define-abbrev) whose EXPANSION
7664 is not a string, then the abbrev does not expand in the usual sense,
7665 but its hook is still run.
7666
7667 ** Normally, the Lisp debugger is not used (even if you have enabled it)
7668 for errors that are handled by condition-case.
7669
7670 If you set debug-on-signal to a non-nil value, then the debugger is called
7671 regardless of whether there is a handler for the condition. This is
7672 useful for debugging problems that happen inside of a condition-case.
7673
7674 This mode of operation seems to be unreliable in other ways. Errors that
7675 are normal and ought to be handled, perhaps in timers or process
7676 filters, will instead invoke the debugger. So don't say you weren't
7677 warned.
7678
7679 ** The new variable ring-bell-function lets you specify your own
7680 way for Emacs to "ring the bell".
7681
7682 ** If run-at-time's TIME argument is t, the action is repeated at
7683 integral multiples of REPEAT from the epoch; this is useful for
7684 functions like display-time.
7685
7686 ** You can use the function locate-library to find the precise file
7687 name of a Lisp library. This isn't new, but wasn't documented before.
7688
7689 ** Commands for entering view mode have new optional arguments that
7690 can be used from Lisp. Low-level entrance to and exit from view mode
7691 is done by functions view-mode-enter and view-mode-exit.
7692
7693 ** batch-byte-compile-file now makes Emacs return a nonzero status code
7694 if there is an error in compilation.
7695
7696 ** pop-to-buffer, switch-to-buffer-other-window and
7697 switch-to-buffer-other-frame now accept an additional optional
7698 argument NORECORD, much like switch-to-buffer. If it is non-nil,
7699 they don't put the buffer at the front of the buffer list.
7700
7701 ** If your .emacs file leaves the *scratch* buffer non-empty,
7702 Emacs does not display the startup message, so as to avoid changing
7703 the *scratch* buffer.
7704
7705 ** The new function regexp-opt returns an efficient regexp to match a string.
7706 The arguments are STRINGS and (optionally) PAREN. This function can be used
7707 where regexp matching or searching is intensively used and speed is important,
7708 e.g., in Font Lock mode.
7709
7710 ** The variable buffer-display-count is local to each buffer,
7711 and is incremented each time the buffer is displayed in a window.
7712 It starts at 0 when the buffer is created.
7713
7714 ** The new function compose-mail starts composing a mail message
7715 using the user's chosen mail composition agent (specified with the
7716 variable mail-user-agent). It has variants compose-mail-other-window
7717 and compose-mail-other-frame.
7718
7719 ** The `user-full-name' function now takes an optional parameter which
7720 can either be a number (the UID) or a string (the login name). The
7721 full name of the specified user will be returned.
7722
7723 ** Lisp packages that load files of customizations, or any other sort
7724 of user profile, should obey the variable init-file-user in deciding
7725 where to find it. They should load the profile of the user name found
7726 in that variable. If init-file-user is nil, meaning that the -q
7727 option was used, then Lisp packages should not load the customization
7728 files at all.
7729
7730 ** format-time-string now allows you to specify the field width
7731 and type of padding. This works as in printf: you write the field
7732 width as digits in the middle of a %-construct. If you start
7733 the field width with 0, it means to pad with zeros.
7734
7735 For example, %S normally specifies the number of seconds since the
7736 minute; %03S means to pad this with zeros to 3 positions, %_3S to pad
7737 with spaces to 3 positions. Plain %3S pads with zeros, because that
7738 is how %S normally pads to two positions.
7739
7740 ** thing-at-point now supports a new kind of "thing": url.
7741
7742 ** imenu.el changes.
7743
7744 You can now specify a function to be run when selecting an
7745 item from menu created by imenu.
7746
7747 An example of using this feature: if we define imenu items for the
7748 #include directives in a C file, we can open the included file when we
7749 select one of those items.
7750 \f
7751 * Emacs 19.34 is a bug-fix release with no user-visible changes.
7752 \f
7753 * Changes in Emacs 19.33.
7754
7755 ** Bibtex mode no longer turns on Auto Fill automatically. (No major
7756 mode should do that--it is the user's choice.)
7757
7758 ** The variable normal-auto-fill-function specifies the function to
7759 use for auto-fill-function, if and when Auto Fill is turned on.
7760 Major modes can set this locally to alter how Auto Fill works.
7761 \f
7762 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.32
7763
7764 ** C-x f with no argument now signals an error.
7765 To set the fill column at the current column, use C-u C-x f.
7766
7767 ** Expanding dynamic abbrevs with M-/ is now smarter about case
7768 conversion. If you type the abbreviation with mixed case, and it
7769 matches the beginning of the expansion including case, then the
7770 expansion is copied verbatim. Using SPC M-/ to copy an additional
7771 word always copies it verbatim except when the previous copied word is
7772 all caps.
7773
7774 ** On a non-windowing terminal, which can display only one Emacs frame
7775 at a time, creating a new frame with C-x 5 2 also selects that frame.
7776
7777 When using a display that can show multiple frames at once, C-x 5 2
7778 does make the frame visible, but does not select it. This is the same
7779 as in previous Emacs versions.
7780
7781 ** You can use C-x 5 2 to create multiple frames on MSDOS, just as on a
7782 non-X terminal on Unix. Of course, only one frame is visible at any
7783 time, since your terminal doesn't have the ability to display multiple
7784 frames.
7785
7786 ** On Windows, set win32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value
7787 if you would like tapping the Alt key to invoke the Windows menu.
7788 This feature is not enabled by default; since the Alt key is also the
7789 Meta key, it is too easy and painful to activate this feature by
7790 accident.
7791
7792 ** The command apply-macro-to-region-lines repeats the last defined
7793 keyboard macro once for each complete line within the current region.
7794 It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of that
7795 line and then executing the macro.
7796
7797 This command is not new, but was never documented before.
7798
7799 ** You can now use Mouse-1 to place the region around a string constant
7800 (something surrounded by doublequote characters or other delimiter
7801 characters of like syntax) by double-clicking on one of the delimiting
7802 characters.
7803
7804 ** Font Lock mode
7805
7806 *** Font Lock support modes
7807
7808 Font Lock can be configured to use Fast Lock mode and Lazy Lock mode (see
7809 below) in a flexible way. Rather than adding the appropriate function to the
7810 hook font-lock-mode-hook, you can use the new variable font-lock-support-mode
7811 to control which modes have Fast Lock mode or Lazy Lock mode turned on when
7812 Font Lock mode is enabled.
7813
7814 For example, to use Fast Lock mode when Font Lock mode is turned on, put:
7815
7816 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'fast-lock-mode)
7817
7818 in your ~/.emacs.
7819
7820 *** lazy-lock
7821
7822 The lazy-lock package speeds up Font Lock mode by making fontification occur
7823 only when necessary, such as when a previously unfontified part of the buffer
7824 becomes visible in a window. When you create a buffer with Font Lock mode and
7825 Lazy Lock mode turned on, the buffer is not fontified. When certain events
7826 occur (such as scrolling), Lazy Lock makes sure that the visible parts of the
7827 buffer are fontified. Lazy Lock also defers on-the-fly fontification until
7828 Emacs has been idle for a given amount of time.
7829
7830 To use this package, put in your ~/.emacs:
7831
7832 (setq font-lock-support-mode 'lazy-lock-mode)
7833
7834 To control the package behaviour, see the documentation for `lazy-lock-mode'.
7835
7836 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
7837
7838 *** For all entries allow spaces and tabs between opening brace or
7839 paren and key.
7840
7841 *** Non-escaped double-quoted characters (as in `Sch"of') are now
7842 supported.
7843
7844 ** Gnus changes.
7845
7846 Gnus, the Emacs news reader, has undergone further rewriting. Many new
7847 commands and variables have been added. There should be no
7848 significant incompatibilities between this Gnus version and the
7849 previously released version, except in the message composition area.
7850
7851 Below is a list of the more user-visible changes. Coding changes
7852 between Gnus 5.1 and 5.2 are more extensive.
7853
7854 *** A new message composition mode is used. All old customization
7855 variables for mail-mode, rnews-reply-mode and gnus-msg are now
7856 obsolete.
7857
7858 *** Gnus is now able to generate "sparse" threads -- threads where
7859 missing articles are represented by empty nodes.
7860
7861 (setq gnus-build-sparse-threads 'some)
7862
7863 *** Outgoing articles are stored on a special archive server.
7864
7865 To disable this: (setq gnus-message-archive-group nil)
7866
7867 *** Partial thread regeneration now happens when articles are
7868 referred.
7869
7870 *** Gnus can make use of GroupLens predictions:
7871
7872 (setq gnus-use-grouplens t)
7873
7874 *** A trn-line tree buffer can be displayed.
7875
7876 (setq gnus-use-trees t)
7877
7878 *** An nn-like pick-and-read minor mode is available for the summary
7879 buffers.
7880
7881 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
7882
7883 *** In binary groups you can use a special binary minor mode:
7884
7885 `M-x gnus-binary-mode'
7886
7887 *** Groups can be grouped in a folding topic hierarchy.
7888
7889 (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)
7890
7891 *** Gnus can re-send and bounce mail.
7892
7893 Use the `S D r' and `S D b'.
7894
7895 *** Groups can now have a score, and bubbling based on entry frequency
7896 is possible.
7897
7898 (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group)
7899
7900 *** Groups can be process-marked, and commands can be performed on
7901 groups of groups.
7902
7903 *** Caching is possible in virtual groups.
7904
7905 *** nndoc now understands all kinds of digests, mail boxes, rnews news
7906 batches, ClariNet briefs collections, and just about everything else.
7907
7908 *** Gnus has a new backend (nnsoup) to create/read SOUP packets.
7909
7910 *** The Gnus cache is much faster.
7911
7912 *** Groups can be sorted according to many criteria.
7913
7914 For instance: (setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-rank)
7915
7916 *** New group parameters have been introduced to set list-address and
7917 expiration times.
7918
7919 *** All formatting specs allow specifying faces to be used.
7920
7921 *** There are several more commands for setting/removing/acting on
7922 process marked articles on the `M P' submap.
7923
7924 *** The summary buffer can be limited to show parts of the available
7925 articles based on a wide range of criteria. These commands have been
7926 bound to keys on the `/' submap.
7927
7928 *** Articles can be made persistent -- as an alternative to saving
7929 articles with the `*' command.
7930
7931 *** All functions for hiding article elements are now toggles.
7932
7933 *** Article headers can be buttonized.
7934
7935 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head)
7936
7937 *** All mail backends support fetching articles by Message-ID.
7938
7939 *** Duplicate mail can now be treated properly. See the
7940 `nnmail-treat-duplicates' variable.
7941
7942 *** All summary mode commands are available directly from the article
7943 buffer.
7944
7945 *** Frames can be part of `gnus-buffer-configuration'.
7946
7947 *** Mail can be re-scanned by a daemonic process.
7948
7949 *** Gnus can make use of NoCeM files to filter spam.
7950
7951 (setq gnus-use-nocem t)
7952
7953 *** Groups can be made permanently visible.
7954
7955 (setq gnus-permanently-visible-groups "^nnml:")
7956
7957 *** Many new hooks have been introduced to make customizing easier.
7958
7959 *** Gnus respects the Mail-Copies-To header.
7960
7961 *** Threads can be gathered by looking at the References header.
7962
7963 (setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
7964 'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
7965
7966 *** Read articles can be stored in a special backlog buffer to avoid
7967 refetching.
7968
7969 (setq gnus-keep-backlog 50)
7970
7971 *** A clean copy of the current article is always stored in a separate
7972 buffer to allow easier treatment.
7973
7974 *** Gnus can suggest where to save articles. See `gnus-split-methods'.
7975
7976 *** Gnus doesn't have to do as much prompting when saving.
7977
7978 (setq gnus-prompt-before-saving t)
7979
7980 *** gnus-uu can view decoded files asynchronously while fetching
7981 articles.
7982
7983 (setq gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions 'gnus-uu-grab-view)
7984
7985 *** Filling in the article buffer now works properly on cited text.
7986
7987 *** Hiding cited text adds buttons to toggle hiding, and how much
7988 cited text to hide is now customizable.
7989
7990 (setq gnus-cited-lines-visible 2)
7991
7992 *** Boring headers can be hidden.
7993
7994 (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-hide-boring-headers)
7995
7996 *** Default scoring values can now be set from the menu bar.
7997
7998 *** Further syntax checking of outgoing articles have been added.
7999
8000 The Gnus manual has been expanded. It explains all these new features
8001 in greater detail.
8002 \f
8003 * Lisp Changes in Emacs 19.32
8004
8005 ** The function set-visited-file-name now accepts an optional
8006 second argument NO-QUERY. If it is non-nil, then the user is not
8007 asked for confirmation in the case where the specified file already
8008 exists.
8009
8010 ** The variable print-length applies to printing vectors and bitvectors,
8011 as well as lists.
8012
8013 ** The new function keymap-parent returns the parent keymap
8014 of a given keymap.
8015
8016 ** The new function set-keymap-parent specifies a new parent for a
8017 given keymap. The arguments are KEYMAP and PARENT. PARENT must be a
8018 keymap or nil.
8019
8020 ** Sometimes menu keymaps use a command name, a symbol, which is really
8021 an automatically generated alias for some other command, the "real"
8022 name. In such a case, you should give that alias symbol a non-nil
8023 menu-alias property. That property tells the menu system to look for
8024 equivalent keys for the real name instead of equivalent keys for the
8025 alias.
8026 \f
8027 * Editing Changes in Emacs 19.31
8028
8029 ** Freedom of the press restricted in the United States.
8030
8031 Emacs has been censored in accord with the Communications Decency Act.
8032 This includes removing some features of the doctor program. That law
8033 was described by its supporters as a ban on pornography, but it bans
8034 far more than that. The Emacs distribution has never contained any
8035 pornography, but parts of it were nonetheless prohibited.
8036
8037 For information on US government censorship of the Internet, and what
8038 you can do to bring back freedom of the press, see the web site
8039 `http://www.vtw.org/'.
8040
8041 ** A note about C mode indentation customization.
8042
8043 The old (Emacs 19.29) ways of specifying a C indentation style
8044 do not normally work in the new implementation of C mode.
8045 It has its own methods of customizing indentation, which are
8046 much more powerful than the old C mode. See the Editing Programs
8047 chapter of the manual for details.
8048
8049 However, you can load the library cc-compat to make the old
8050 customization variables take effect.
8051
8052 ** Marking with the mouse.
8053
8054 When you mark a region with the mouse, the region now remains
8055 highlighted until the next input event, regardless of whether you are
8056 using M-x transient-mark-mode.
8057
8058 ** Improved Windows NT/95 support.
8059
8060 *** Emacs now supports scroll bars on Windows NT and Windows 95.
8061
8062 *** Emacs now supports subprocesses on Windows 95. (Subprocesses used
8063 to work on NT only and not on 95.)
8064
8065 *** There are difficulties with subprocesses, though, due to problems
8066 in Windows, beyond the control of Emacs. They work fine as long as
8067 you run Windows applications. The problems arise when you run a DOS
8068 application in a subprocesses. Since current shells run as DOS
8069 applications, these problems are significant.
8070
8071 If you run a DOS application in a subprocess, then the application is
8072 likely to busy-wait, which means that your machine will be 100% busy.
8073 However, if you don't mind the temporary heavy load, the subprocess
8074 will work OK as long as you tell it to terminate before you start any
8075 other DOS application as a subprocess.
8076
8077 Emacs is unable to terminate or interrupt a DOS subprocess.
8078 You have to do this by providing input directly to the subprocess.
8079
8080 If you run two DOS applications at the same time in two separate
8081 subprocesses, even if one of them is asynchronous, you will probably
8082 have to reboot your machine--until then, it will remain 100% busy.
8083 Windows simply does not cope when one Windows process tries to run two
8084 separate DOS subprocesses. Typing CTL-ALT-DEL and then choosing
8085 Shutdown seems to work although it may take a few minutes.
8086
8087 ** M-x resize-minibuffer-mode.
8088
8089 This command, not previously mentioned in NEWS, toggles a mode in
8090 which the minibuffer window expands to show as many lines as the
8091 minibuffer contains.
8092
8093 ** `title' frame parameter and resource.
8094
8095 The `title' X resource now specifies just the frame title, nothing else.
8096 It does not affect the name used for looking up other X resources.
8097 It works by setting the new `title' frame parameter, which likewise
8098 affects just the displayed title of the frame.
8099
8100 The `name' parameter continues to do what it used to do:
8101 it specifies the frame name for looking up X resources,
8102 and also serves as the default for the displayed title
8103 when the `title' parameter is unspecified or nil.
8104
8105 ** Emacs now uses the X toolkit by default, if you have a new
8106 enough version of X installed (X11R5 or newer).
8107
8108 ** When you compile Emacs with the Motif widget set, Motif handles the
8109 F10 key by activating the menu bar. To avoid confusion, the usual
8110 Emacs binding of F10 is replaced with a no-op when using Motif.
8111
8112 If you want to be able to use F10 in Emacs, you can rebind the Motif
8113 menubar to some other key which you don't use. To do so, add
8114 something like this to your X resources file. This example rebinds
8115 the Motif menu bar activation key to S-F12:
8116
8117 Emacs*defaultVirtualBindings: osfMenuBar : Shift<Key>F12
8118
8119 ** In overwrite mode, DEL now inserts spaces in most cases
8120 to replace the characters it "deletes".
8121
8122 ** The Rmail summary now shows the number of lines in each message.
8123
8124 ** Rmail has a new command M-x unforward-rmail-message, which extracts
8125 a forwarded message from the message that forwarded it. To use it,
8126 select a message which contains a forwarded message and then type the command.
8127 It inserts the forwarded message as a separate Rmail message
8128 immediately after the selected one.
8129
8130 This command also undoes the textual modifications that are standardly
8131 made, as part of forwarding, by Rmail and other mail reader programs.
8132
8133 ** Turning off saving of .saves-... files in your home directory.
8134
8135 Each Emacs session writes a file named .saves-... in your home
8136 directory to record which files M-x recover-session should recover.
8137 If you exit Emacs normally with C-x C-c, it deletes that file. If
8138 Emacs or the operating system crashes, the file remains for M-x
8139 recover-session.
8140
8141 You can turn off the writing of these files by setting
8142 auto-save-list-file-name to nil. If you do this, M-x recover-session
8143 will not work.
8144
8145 Some previous Emacs versions failed to delete these files even on
8146 normal exit. This is fixed now. If you are thinking of turning off
8147 this feature because of past experiences with versions that had this
8148 bug, it would make sense to check whether you still want to do so
8149 now that the bug is fixed.
8150
8151 ** Changes to Version Control (VC)
8152
8153 There is a new variable, vc-follow-symlinks. It indicates what to do
8154 when you visit a link to a file that is under version control.
8155 Editing the file through the link bypasses the version control system,
8156 which is dangerous and probably not what you want.
8157
8158 If this variable is t, VC follows the link and visits the real file,
8159 telling you about it in the echo area. If it is `ask' (the default),
8160 VC asks for confirmation whether it should follow the link. If nil,
8161 the link is visited and a warning displayed.
8162
8163 ** iso-acc.el now lets you specify a choice of language.
8164 Languages include "latin-1" (the default) and "latin-2" (which
8165 is designed for entering ISO Latin-2 characters).
8166
8167 There are also choices for specific human languages such as French and
8168 Portuguese. These are subsets of Latin-1, which differ in that they
8169 enable only the accent characters needed for particular language.
8170 The other accent characters, not needed for the chosen language,
8171 remain normal.
8172
8173 ** Posting articles and sending mail now has M-TAB completion on various
8174 header fields (Newsgroups, To, CC, ...).
8175
8176 Completion in the Newsgroups header depends on the list of groups
8177 known to your news reader. Completion in the Followup-To header
8178 offers those groups which are in the Newsgroups header, since
8179 Followup-To usually just holds one of those.
8180
8181 Completion in fields that hold mail addresses works based on the list
8182 of local users plus your aliases. Additionally, if your site provides
8183 a mail directory or a specific host to use for any unrecognized user
8184 name, you can arrange to query that host for completion also. (See the
8185 documentation of variables `mail-directory-process' and
8186 `mail-directory-stream'.)
8187
8188 ** A greatly extended sgml-mode offers new features such as (to be configured)
8189 skeletons with completing read for tags and attributes, typing named
8190 characters including optionally all 8bit characters, making tags invisible
8191 with optional alternate display text, skipping and deleting tag(pair)s.
8192
8193 Note: since Emacs' syntax feature cannot limit the special meaning of ', " and
8194 - to inside <>, for some texts the result, especially of font locking, may be
8195 wrong (see `sgml-specials' if you get wrong results).
8196
8197 The derived html-mode configures this with tags and attributes more or
8198 less HTML3ish. It also offers optional quick keys like C-c 1 for
8199 headline or C-c u for unordered list (see `html-quick-keys'). Edit /
8200 Text Properties / Face or M-g combinations create tags as applicable.
8201 Outline minor mode is supported and level 1 font-locking tries to
8202 fontify tag contents (which only works when they fit on one line, due
8203 to a limitation in font-lock).
8204
8205 External viewing via browse-url can occur automatically upon saving.
8206
8207 ** M-x imenu-add-to-menubar now adds to the menu bar for the current
8208 buffer only. If you want to put an Imenu item in the menu bar for all
8209 buffers that use a particular major mode, use the mode hook, as in
8210 this example:
8211
8212 (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook
8213 '(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Index")))
8214
8215 ** Changes in BibTeX mode.
8216
8217 *** Field names may now contain digits, hyphens, and underscores.
8218
8219 *** Font Lock mode is now supported.
8220
8221 *** bibtex-make-optional-field is no longer interactive.
8222
8223 *** If bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is non-nil, inserting new
8224 entries is now done with a faster algorithm. However, inserting
8225 will fail in this case if the buffer contains invalid entries or
8226 isn't in sorted order, so you should finish each entry with C-c C-c
8227 (bibtex-close-entry) after you have inserted or modified it.
8228 The default value of bibtex-maintain-sorted-entries is nil.
8229
8230 *** Function `show-all' is no longer bound to a key, since C-u C-c C-q
8231 does the same job.
8232
8233 *** Entries with quotes inside quote-delimited fields (as `author =
8234 "Stefan Sch{\"o}f"') are now supported.
8235
8236 *** Case in field names doesn't matter anymore when searching for help
8237 text.
8238
8239 ** Font Lock mode
8240
8241 *** Global Font Lock mode
8242
8243 Font Lock mode can be turned on globally, in buffers that support it, by the
8244 new command global-font-lock-mode. You can use the new variable
8245 font-lock-global-modes to control which modes have Font Lock mode automagically
8246 turned on. By default, this variable is set so that Font Lock mode is turned
8247 on globally where the buffer mode supports it.
8248
8249 For example, to automagically turn on Font Lock mode where supported, put:
8250
8251 (global-font-lock-mode t)
8252
8253 in your ~/.emacs.
8254
8255 *** Local Refontification
8256
8257 In Font Lock mode, editing a line automatically refontifies that line only.
8258 However, if your change alters the syntactic context for following lines,
8259 those lines remain incorrectly fontified. To refontify them, use the new
8260 command M-g M-g (font-lock-fontify-block).
8261
8262 In certain major modes, M-g M-g refontifies the entire current function.
8263 (The variable font-lock-mark-block-function controls how to find the
8264 current function.) In other major modes, M-g M-g refontifies 16 lines
8265 above and below point.
8266
8267 With a prefix argument N, M-g M-g refontifies N lines above and below point.
8268
8269 ** Follow mode
8270
8271 Follow mode is a new minor mode combining windows showing the same
8272 buffer into one tall "virtual window". The windows are typically two
8273 side-by-side windows. Follow mode makes them scroll together as if
8274 they were a unit. To use it, go to a frame with just one window,
8275 split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x
8276 follow-mode.
8277
8278 M-x follow-mode turns off Follow mode if it is already enabled.
8279
8280 To display two side-by-side windows and activate Follow mode, use the
8281 command M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split.
8282
8283 ** hide-show changes.
8284
8285 The hooks hs-hide-hooks and hs-show-hooks have been renamed
8286 to hs-hide-hook and hs-show-hook, to follow the convention for
8287 normal hooks.
8288
8289 ** Simula mode now has a menu containing the most important commands.
8290 The new command simula-indent-exp is bound to C-M-q.
8291
8292 ** etags can now handle programs written in Erlang. Files are
8293 recognised by the extensions .erl and .hrl. The tagged lines are
8294 those that begin a function, record, or macro.
8295
8296 ** MSDOS Changes
8297
8298 *** It is now possible to compile Emacs with the version 2 of DJGPP.
8299 Compilation with DJGPP version 1 also still works.
8300
8301 *** The documentation of DOS-specific aspects of Emacs was rewritten
8302 and expanded; see the ``MS-DOS'' node in the on-line docs.
8303
8304 *** Emacs now uses ~ for backup file names, not .bak.
8305
8306 *** You can simulate mouse-3 on two-button mice by simultaneously
8307 pressing both mouse buttons.
8308
8309 *** A number of packages and commands which previously failed or had
8310 restricted functionality on MS-DOS, now work. The most important ones
8311 are:
8312
8313 **** Printing (both with `M-x lpr-buffer' and with `ps-print' package)
8314 now works.
8315
8316 **** `Ediff' works (in a single-frame mode).
8317
8318 **** `M-x display-time' can be used on MS-DOS (due to the new
8319 implementation of Emacs timers, see below).
8320
8321 **** `Dired' supports Unix-style shell wildcards.
8322
8323 **** The `c-macro-expand' command now works as on other platforms.
8324
8325 **** `M-x recover-session' works.
8326
8327 **** `M-x list-colors-display' displays all the available colors.
8328
8329 **** The `TPU-EDT' package works.
8330 \f
8331 * Lisp changes in Emacs 19.31.
8332
8333 ** The function using-unix-filesystems on Windows NT and Windows 95
8334 tells Emacs to read and write files assuming that they reside on a
8335 remote Unix filesystem. No CR/LF translation is done on any files in
8336 this case. Invoking using-unix-filesystems with t activates this
8337 behavior, and invoking it with any other value deactivates it.
8338
8339 ** Change in system-type and system-configuration values.
8340
8341 The value of system-type on a Linux-based GNU system is now `lignux',
8342 not `linux'. This means that some programs which use `system-type'
8343 need to be changed. The value of `system-configuration' will also
8344 be different.
8345
8346 It is generally recommended to use `system-configuration' rather
8347 than `system-type'.
8348
8349 See the file LINUX-GNU in this directory for more about this.
8350
8351 ** The functions shell-command and dired-call-process
8352 now run file name handlers for default-directory, if it has them.
8353
8354 ** Undoing the deletion of text now restores the positions of markers
8355 that pointed into or next to the deleted text.
8356
8357 ** Timers created with run-at-time now work internally to Emacs, and
8358 no longer use a separate process. Therefore, they now work more
8359 reliably and can be used for shorter time delays.
8360
8361 The new function run-with-timer is a convenient way to set up a timer
8362 to run a specified amount of time after the present. A call looks
8363 like this:
8364
8365 (run-with-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8366
8367 SECS says how many seconds should elapse before the timer happens.
8368 It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the timer
8369 becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments ARGS.
8370
8371 REPEAT gives the interval for repeating the timer (measured in
8372 seconds). It may be an integer or a floating point number. nil or 0
8373 means don't repeat at all--call FUNCTION just once.
8374
8375 *** with-timeout provides an easy way to do something but give
8376 up if too much time passes.
8377
8378 (with-timeout (SECONDS TIMEOUT-FORMS...) BODY...)
8379
8380 This executes BODY, but gives up after SECONDS seconds.
8381 If it gives up, it runs the TIMEOUT-FORMS and returns the value
8382 of the last one of them. Normally it returns the value of the last
8383 form in BODY.
8384
8385 *** You can now arrange to call a function whenever Emacs is idle for
8386 a certain length of time. To do this, call run-with-idle-timer. A
8387 call looks like this:
8388
8389 (run-with-idle-timer SECS REPEAT FUNCTION ARGS...)
8390
8391 SECS says how many seconds of idleness should elapse before the timer
8392 runs. It may be an integer or a floating point number. When the
8393 timer becomes ripe, the action is to call FUNCTION with arguments
8394 ARGS.
8395
8396 Emacs becomes idle whenever it finishes executing a keyboard or mouse
8397 command. It remains idle until it receives another keyboard or mouse
8398 command.
8399
8400 REPEAT, if non-nil, means this timer should be activated again each
8401 time Emacs becomes idle and remains idle for SECS seconds The timer
8402 does not repeat if Emacs *remains* idle; it runs at most once after
8403 each time Emacs becomes idle.
8404
8405 If REPEAT is nil, the timer runs just once, the first time Emacs is
8406 idle for SECS seconds.
8407
8408 *** post-command-idle-hook is now obsolete; you shouldn't use it at
8409 all, because it interferes with the idle timer mechanism. If your
8410 programs use post-command-idle-hook, convert them to use idle timers
8411 instead.
8412
8413 *** y-or-n-p-with-timeout lets you ask a question but give up if
8414 there is no answer within a certain time.
8415
8416 (y-or-n-p-with-timeout PROMPT SECONDS DEFAULT-VALUE)
8417
8418 asks the question PROMPT (just like y-or-n-p). If the user answers
8419 within SECONDS seconds, it returns the answer that the user gave.
8420 Otherwise it gives up after SECONDS seconds, and returns DEFAULT-VALUE.
8421
8422 ** Minor change to `encode-time': you can now pass more than seven
8423 arguments. If you do that, the first six arguments have the usual
8424 meaning, the last argument is interpreted as the time zone, and the
8425 arguments in between are ignored.
8426
8427 This means that it works to use the list returned by `decode-time' as
8428 the list of arguments for `encode-time'.
8429
8430 ** The default value of load-path now includes the directory
8431 /usr/local/share/emacs/VERSION/site-lisp In addition to
8432 /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp. You can use this new directory for
8433 site-specific Lisp packages that belong with a particular Emacs
8434 version.
8435
8436 It is not unusual for a Lisp package that works well in one Emacs
8437 version to cause trouble in another. Sometimes packages need updating
8438 for incompatible changes; sometimes they look at internal data that
8439 has changed; sometimes the package has been installed in Emacs itself
8440 and the installed version should be used. Whatever the reason for the
8441 problem, this new feature makes it easier to solve.
8442
8443 ** When your program contains a fixed file name (like .completions or
8444 .abbrev.defs), the file name usually needs to be different on operating
8445 systems with limited file name syntax.
8446
8447 Now you can avoid ad-hoc conditionals by using the function
8448 convert-standard-filename to convert the file name to a proper form
8449 for each operating system. Here is an example of use, from the file
8450 completions.el:
8451
8452 (defvar save-completions-file-name
8453 (convert-standard-filename "~/.completions")
8454 "*The filename to save completions to.")
8455
8456 This sets the variable save-completions-file-name to a value that
8457 depends on the operating system, because the definition of
8458 convert-standard-filename depends on the operating system. On
8459 Unix-like systems, it returns the specified file name unchanged. On
8460 MS-DOS, it adapts the name to fit the limitations of that system.
8461
8462 ** The interactive spec N now returns the numeric prefix argument
8463 rather than the raw prefix argument. (It still reads a number using the
8464 minibuffer if there is no prefix argument at all.)
8465
8466 ** When a process is deleted, this no longer disconnects the process
8467 marker from its buffer position.
8468
8469 ** The variable garbage-collection-messages now controls whether
8470 Emacs displays a message at the beginning and end of garbage collection.
8471 The default is nil, meaning there are no messages.
8472
8473 ** The variable debug-ignored-errors specifies certain kinds of errors
8474 that should not enter the debugger. Its value is a list of error
8475 condition symbols and/or regular expressions. If the error has any
8476 of the condition symbols listed, or if any of the regular expressions
8477 matches the error message, then that error does not enter the debugger,
8478 regardless of the value of debug-on-error.
8479
8480 This variable is initialized to match certain common but uninteresting
8481 errors that happen often during editing.
8482
8483 ** The new function error-message-string converts an error datum
8484 into its error message. The error datum is what condition-case
8485 puts into the variable, to describe the error that happened.
8486
8487 ** Anything that changes which buffer appears in a given window
8488 now runs the window-scroll-functions for that window.
8489
8490 ** The new function get-buffer-window-list returns a list of windows displaying
8491 a buffer. The function is called with the buffer (a buffer object or a buffer
8492 name) and two optional arguments specifying the minibuffer windows and frames
8493 to search. Therefore this function takes optional args like next-window etc.,
8494 and not get-buffer-window.
8495
8496 ** buffer-substring now runs the hook buffer-access-fontify-functions,
8497 calling each function with two arguments--the range of the buffer
8498 being accessed. buffer-substring-no-properties does not call them.
8499
8500 If you use this feature, you should set the variable
8501 buffer-access-fontified-property to a non-nil symbol, which is a
8502 property name. Then, if all the characters in the buffer range have a
8503 non-nil value for that property, the buffer-access-fontify-functions
8504 are not called. When called, these functions should put a non-nil
8505 property on the text that they fontify, so that they won't get called
8506 over and over for the same text.
8507
8508 ** Changes in lisp-mnt.el
8509
8510 *** The lisp-mnt package can now recognize file headers that are written
8511 in the formats used by the `what' command and the RCS `ident' command:
8512
8513 ;; @(#) HEADER: text
8514 ;; $HEADER: text $
8515
8516 in addition to the normal
8517
8518 ;; HEADER: text
8519
8520 *** The commands lm-verify and lm-synopsis are now interactive. lm-verify
8521 checks that the library file has proper sections and headers, and
8522 lm-synopsis extracts first line "synopsis'"information.
8523
8524
8525 \f
8526 * For older news, see the file ONEWS
8527
8528 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8529 Copyright information:
8530
8531 Copyright (C) 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8532
8533 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8534 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8535 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8536 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8537
8538 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8539 of this document, or of portions of it,
8540 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8541 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8542 \f
8543 Local variables:
8544 mode: outline
8545 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
8546 end: