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